IndieFolio interviews Graphic Designer Danny Jose about art, life and everything in between.

Tell us about your work

I am 26 and I’ve been living in Bangalore since 2014. I currently work as Lead Artist for Rolling Dice Studios, an animation studio that primarily produces animated advertisements. I handle all of the preproduction work like storyboarding, set and character design.

I also do freelance work in my spare time. I am currently working with an organization called GLM- the Great Legalisation Movement, which is fighting for the legalization of Marijuana (a highly misunderstood plant) in India. I’m doing some artwork for their campaigns. It’s almost done and will be up on the site soon.

Do you have a favourite project?

I’ve uploaded a lot of artworks. My favorite one though, is the ad film we did for Swiggy. I had a lot of fun sketching out the concept and design.

Swiggy is an app that you can use to order food from select restaurants around the city. It was familiar to me because I had already used the app before they approached us. I came up with an abstract set, and a few sketches and concept art. The client liked the whole idea of it because it was much more than what they had in mind. The ad features a super cool delivery guy, who goes around delivering food in an abstract space.  Much of the concept became reality, thanks to my director and mentor, Mr. Jeff Merkel. The ad attracted a lot of attention and the client was super happy.  WIN-WIN.

Which artists’ work do you especially admire?

Some of my favorite artists are Goro Fujita (visual artist for – The Madagascar series and the Penguins of Madagascar). Feng Zhu (of Feng Zhu Design School) and Patrick Brown. A lot of what I know is from their tutorial videos.

I still use Goro’s brushes for most of my artwork. His work has really inspired me. Much of what I know about, composition and lighting is from Feng Zhu’s tutorials. He has more than a 100 videos explaining his work process.

I like Patrick Brown’s works for the sheer dynamics in them. There’s so much motion in them and all of them look like they are screenshots of a paused video.

How did you develop your unique style of illustrations (The dark humor is very fascinating)?

Thanks. I draw a lot of inspiration from movies. Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese are my favorite filmmakers. Their movies glorify violence. They build up characters, make them very likeable, make them go through a lot of struggles and kill them for no real reason. They make life and death seem really funny. That’s very much like real life, because we take in so much pain, struggle to win a race, a race that God-knows-who is organizing, only to end up dying. I find concepts like money, war, patriotism, death, extremely hilarious.

I’ve not been to any art school. Everything I know about digital art and the software used for the same, is from the internet.

If you could claim that any one artwork in the world was yours, what would it be?

Marvel Villains by Patrick Brown.

What’s the best project that you’ve seen on the website?

The Colored Inception by Kriti Garg.

Pray for Paris by Sachin Kamath

Where do you see yourself in the future?

Well. I already am where I want to be. I’m already living my dream life.

Have you ever stepped out of your zone and tried out a completely new art style?

I did. I sat down one night and explored women, men, transgenders , sexuality  and similar concepts, and I ended up with more than 60 sketches over the week. That’s something I had never done before. They are on paper right now, and I can’t wait to paint them digitally.

Now that you’re getting a firm foothold in the creative world, what would you like to say to ‘all the haters’?

I don’t think I had any haters. I just had a dozen teachers repeatedly tell me that I would amount to nothing. That’s a cruel thing to say to a child. Maybe I’m cocky, but I always thought I didn’t need school.

Quick Questions

Favourite font

Titillium

Favourite movie

    Inglorious Bastards, The Departed

A book everybody should read

I read comics. Tintin has been my favorite.

A piece of advice to all clients

I have come across a lot of stories of my artist friends who have had very bad experience when it comes to payment. Please show some integrity. Please pay up if the work is done.

Your quick tip to all illustrators

Here’s how you respond to clients

Client: Hey, can you draw me?

You: Hey, can you pay me?

Client: Nope, but we can give you exposure.

You: I can’t have exposure for lunch.