Mastersession: Leonid Kozienko
07/26/02 @554 | Martin | comments (11)
Leonid Kozienko is a digital artist from Russia who mainly focusses on digital painting and illustration. His work is being published online since 1999 and has spread itself all over the web, including our pic of the day section. With a traditional background and a wide range of skills Leonids work is varied and of high quality. Time for GFXartist to catch up and fire some questions.

GFXartist: Leonid, you are from Russia if I'm correct. How would you describe the art scene there?

Title: Yuna 2 This painting has a strong 3D feel to it, but so far Leonid stil sticks to 2D

Leonid: Yes, I'm from Russia and lets take a look at art scene here. There are illustrators working for various book publishers, doing covers for books, CDs and advertisement. Some people working in the game industry doing concept and in-game art. However I don't know many pros in this field. Timur Mutsaev has fantastic skills. I really like his pencil drawings as well as watercolors. Another man I really admire is Roman Kochnev. First time I saw his paintings in a magazine when I was a kid. I was really impressed with the fantastic spaceships he did. Russian game industry is still young and growing so I hope we'll hear new names soon. The situation is better in 3d graphics and design. There are lots of people doing 3d these days. Most of them are, of course, people with a little (or without) experience in traditional art. I often see technically skilled images but with no soul behind them. If you take a look at works of true 3d masters you'll see some story or message behind. Digital painters (or 2d) are much smaller group comparing to 3d community. Traditional painters are poorly presented on the net and many of them just hate computers and all that digital media. There are many art schools in Russia where young people study art. I myself spent about 6 years in art school and realized that creativeness is somehow limited. You're drawing the same things for years and as a result you're getting totally bored. At least this happens with me. The good side of traditional art training is that you'll learn the basics. It's like a basement for the building. You can't build a good house without basement, so before expressing you personality in art you have to master common basic skills and techniques. Finally, please keep in mind that it's not a complete observation of an art scene in Russia, it's just a quick overview based on my own experience.

Title: Zeppelin Created in 2001, it shows how Leonids techniques improve with great leaps. The detail is amazing and this is just half the image

GFXartist: You never cease to amaze us. I've seen illustrations, real life and fantasy/scifi paintings, manga, even game sprites. Have I left anything out? Can we expect more, perhaps animation or 3D in the future, or do you stick with the 2D stills?

Title: Fess A book illustration for a fantasy novel written by Nick Perumov

Leonid: Thanks! Well I just like to explore new areas, new horizons and share my impressions with others. The world is full of interesting things and I'm trying to catch and express them using the word of art. I really like animation both hand-drawn and cg. I'm also obsessed with special effects (or VFX) for movies. Now I spent my spare time learning about Hayao Miyazaki, the famous Japanese animator and his Studio Ghibli. I think been able to tell stories using motion picture is more than amazing. Still pictures are fine but when multiplied by motion, music, actor's voices etc. they are really becomes to life. I'm not interested to produce 3d for 3d's sake tough. It's just another tool to express your ideas. If I need a beautiful landscape for the simple pan shot, I'll use good old matte painting (also it's faster if you're on a tight deadline). But if I have crazy camera movement in truly 3d environment and/or moving objects then nothing can beats 3d, except maybe real models but that’s another story. So idea comes first and only then you're looking for the way to present it better for the audience.

GFXartist: What is the most challenging project you've done lately and in which areas did it challenge you?

Leonid: I've been worked on intro cinematics for Imerion PC game and found it really challenging. Of course it's far away from those mind-blowing Blizzard's cut scenes but for me it was great experience. I've got a chance to complete an animation from storyboards to final composing and in fact I did everything except music. I run onto many problems - believe me or not but even the simplest pan shot was a problem. Another problem was extremely tight deadline. I worked almost days and nights and often physically have no time to redo or improve this or that effect. And because of that the usage of 3d was so limited. However the movie was shown at Milia, France and gets some good response.

GFXartist: You finished artschool and studied architecture for a while. How did this contribute to your painting? Do you still pick up a 'real' brush now and then, or is it all digital.

Title: Slider Whether Leonid painted this with or 'without too much thinking', it will definately pull you into another world

Leonid: Traditional training is very important. Unfortunately I didn't understand that when I studied at artschool. I was just a kid full of energy and it was boring to spent your time drawing the same cubes or plates all the time. But now I feel it was really important to learn those
basics. Anyway I've got some experience after all! I also took architecture courses for a while and once again only now I become to understand how all those rules and principles are important. It really helps when you paint. You know how and why light strikes on object this way, you know how the perspective works, you know how to compose your scene and so on. Of course I'm not a master in all these aspects and if you take a look at my paintings you’ll notice a lot of errors. But I'm trying to learn as much as I can. I'm also thinking go back to traditional art and pick up a real brush again. I just spent too much time in front of my monitor with a stylus. Finally, digital art 'lives' on the display while you can put real painting on your wall, and the most important, you don't need electricity! ;)

GFXartist: What happens before a painting gets painted? Are they the product of fantasy stories you create in your mind and intense daydreams? Does every painting have a little story or a world of fantasy behind it?

Leonid: I'm always trying to do a picture with a story or message behind it. Sometimes you already have a story before painting, sometimes you develop the story while you paint and sometimes something strikes into your mind and you just draw without too much thinking. :)

GFXartist: For the readers who really need to know. Which software do you use to paint? Do you use more than one piece of software while creating a painting?

Title: Wind of Magic A character based on a real person in a manga setting. Leonid starts to explore the world of manga character design

Leonid: I mainly use Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. Both are great and I can't switch to one of them. PS is good for precise painting due to its brushes and I also found its layers and file management much better than Painter's. But Painter is good for texturing, color blending and for creating traditional feel paintings. So I usually use them both. Recently I tended to use Maya Fusion (a composition software) for special effects like flare, motion/depth blur etc. But you must be careful with all those effects since they can easily destroy your painting and you may become dependent on them. So keep in mind - software is just a tool and YOU are the creator.

GFXartist: You've been drawing quite some manga lately. Was it hard to change styles? Manga is so much more than nakes girl and tech-savvy freaks, which elements of manga got you hooked.

Leonid: Can't say that I changed style, it's just a new area, new horizon to explore. I'm new here and knew almost nothing how to draw manga but I found it very interesting and appealing. For me it's quite hard to draw characters in manga style, I'm tending to use more realistic rendering. Fooled by this fact people usually finds zillion of flaws in my manga' work. Oh I still need a lot of practice then! :) In manga I was blown away by its amazing character design. For example take a look at artwork for Magna Carta or War of Genesis III done by Hyung-Tae Kim. Of course there are many other great samples from games and anime, so it's hard to stay calm. :) Another thing is mecha or mechanical design. Been a technical freak (sort of), I'm collecting blueprints, photos and infos of various planes, ships, cars etc. so that technical stuff from manga are hooked me too. Manga is a very interesting direction to move in.

GFXartist likes to thank Leonid Kozienko for taking the time to answers these questions. Visit leoarts.irk.ru for the full size of the artworks shown above and more information about Leonid and his paintings. The artwork that accompanies this interview is created by and Copyright 2002 Leonid Kozienko. All rights reserved.