-My name is Samantha Kallis
and I'm a Visual Development Artist.
A Visual Development Artist will design anything
from characters, props, textures,
background paintings,
pretty much anything that shows up on-screen,
somebody designed.
Today, I chose the theme of "Adventure."
I chose "Adventure" because, to me,
it's important to live your life adventurously
but also be adventurous in your art.
As an artist, if you're not adventurous
and you don't take chances,
then you end up just drawing the same old, tired thing
that you're comfortable with, and you never do anything new.
You never grow.
I guess the big adventure for me the last couple months
has been getting to work at Sony and working at Nickelodeon,
and actually getting my hands dirty
with animated television shows and features.
Learning from professionals who I really admire --
that's been the big adventure for me.
I think the one thing that I really learned
in the course of my own adventure
is that you really have to think of yourself --
Even though I'm an artist, I have to think of myself,
in a way, as a writer.
Everything I do is storytelling,
and everything that I create has to go back to that story
and make sure I'm strengthening that story.
Some of the ways
that I manage to always keep story in mind
when I'm drawing is that I have to think about --
"Am I making this just to make a pretty picture,
or am I making it because it goes back to a point
that will say something about that character or that event?"
For example,
why is this character wearing a tattered coat
instead of a fancy coat?
It has to say something about who he is, or, you know,
where he's been.
I think for me, the narrative of the piece
that I created today, I mean,
obviously, ships and adventure
and going on a journey someplace...
My mom always likes to tell me --
Whenever I'm getting down about not moving forward in my life,
she always likes to say that,
"You have to do something, anything,
to shake up the universe."
So I think making a big move or a little move,
just something to get you out there.
And that's kind of what this ship
going through this strange, alien landscape means to me,
like, they're shaking up their universe
by maybe exploring a new one.
From there, it really just evolved
into "What kind of landscape is this?"
and "Where are they going?" And I thought,
"Yeah, I really want to put two moons in here
and make it about aliens."
Okay, step by step, the process of what we saw today
is sort of the initial spark of the idea,
and I have my reference photos.
Then I just sort of, like -- for this particular piece --
just went at it sketching and putting in the big shapes
so that I had sort of a backdrop for my ideas.
And you notice the shapes change pretty dramatically
over the course of the painting, because, you know,
just compositionally, I'm always thinking about it.
And you start painting it up,
you start putting some texture on.
I have a library of watercolor textures
and washes that I've created and scanned into the computer.
Those I use on multiple layers at different opacities
or different layer modes
to sort of give the painting a hand-drawn
or touched-by-human-beings feeling,
because sometimes digital paintings
can get a little cold.
I use a lot of Photoshop tricks,
but then, you can also see the actual,
more traditional-style painting as I get closer in
with, like, the detailed objects of the ship.
So, I suppose my process is a lot of trial and error
and a lot of not being afraid to go back a couple steps
and see if something else works and move things around.
The reason why I definitely like working digitally
rather than with traditional paint
is the "undo" function and the ability to change
what I don't like in my work really easily.
I think, also, in terms of work,
it's so much faster.
I don't have to sit around
and literally wait for paint to dry.
I can just paint it and go.
I would say that in terms of what I want to paint
before I start -- For this instance,
it was literally the idea of, like,
"I really want to draw a ship,"
so I started looking at ships and came across one
that I wanted to sort of integrate into a painting.
I think the reason why adventure's important to me
is because the life that you live
informs the art that you make,
and if you live a life that doesn't have any adventure
or doesn't have anything new in it,
then you're not gonna have any material
in your sort of mental library to draw from
when you want to sit down and make something.
So I think you have to get out there
and you have to live in order to make art.