An Interview With Emily Weber
I first noticed deviantART's zimeta08 because of her fun, uniquely stylized pictures of General Grievous and other Star Wars characters, more than one of which has been my desktop background for a while.



I asked her to illustrate a story I wrote so I could present it at G-Arts. She produced a beautiful image of Mr. H Bear riding a whale.



And of course she recently made surely one of the greatest artworks in the galaxy with The Most Dangerous Sith, featured below in Bear Wars.



So, here is an interview with the young artist.
First, the details- who are you, and all that, and what tools and media do you use?

I'm Emily Weber, of course! :giggle:
I'm mostly German, you can tell by my last name, Weber which means weaver in German. So, I can only assume my ancestors were weavers :o
For art, I usually draw with a mechanical pencil, and color in Adobe Photoshop ^^

How did you get into art?

I don't know for sure. I've been drawing since I can remember... it runs in the family ;)

Where do you want to go with it? Any plans or just day at a time, having fun?

I've been thinking of entering "The Rising Star of Manga" contest by making a poem I wrote into a short 20-page comic. If I do do that, I'm hoping that maybe it'll get me somewhere.

What are you studying in university?

Right now I'm studying Fifth-Year-Japanese at ASU. I took a drawing class once, but the teacher sucked all the fun outta it so I never took another one again.

How do you say bear in Japanese:

You say Bear: "Kuma"

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I'm studying Japanese so that I can go to Japan and apply at Nintendo. Hopefully I can be a game designer, or at least a concept artist ^^

So, where did you get your screen name?

Zim= My alter ego, Zim the toad
Meta= Metal, because I love robots
08= My favorite number

What do you do to get into the creative groove?

Usually watch TV, or play video games. Because, certain games or cartoon shows have really interesting visuals, or character designs.

What do you do to get out of a creative funk?

I usually just keep drawing until it turns out good. There's really not else I can do!

Any words of wisdom you live by?

Watch for falling rocks. :nod: It could save your life someday. [Editor's note: Especially in my line of work!]

Who do you think would win in a fight between General Grievous and the Sith Bear?

Well, I really like them both ... but I think I'd rather see the Sith Bear win because it's such an interesting idea. (And, I really like warrior bears. Ever since reading The Golden Compass.)

Thanks Zimmy!

Ursulast!

Bog Unicorn
Are your Digger pages ready months in advance or are you up late on a Wednesday night cursing the tuesday/thursday schedule? Do you write the Book of the Gear entries and put them up, or were they already written long time ago? (Will there be more????)

*grin* They're ready about two weeks in advance. I'm never up hammering them out the night before--I may occasionally curse the neccessity of hammering them out during a busy week, but I'm under contract to Graphic Smash, so I have a set schedule--Tuesdays and Thursdays, the first order of art business is to get Digger roughed in, Wednesday and Friday I'll take a few minutes to polish the roughs, over the weekend, I pop in the text. As long as I break it into small chunks, it's not an overwhelming task.

The Book of the Gear is different--I write it when I'm inspired. So I might write four or five entries in an hour or two, and then nothing for a week or so. It'll definitely be back, never fear, but the holidays tend to frazzle me a bit. It's one of those things where I really do have to be inspired to get it to come out, so it's kind've erratic at times...

Okay, I think that is plenty. Thanks again, Ursula. Ooh- one last question- I am trying to talk my wife into naming a future daughter Ursula (because it means bear!!!!!!!! Yay!!!!) and she is not convinced. What is the best thing about being named after the mightiest of all mammals?

Well, the best thing for me is that people are usually going "What an unusual name!" and you tend not to get confused with a bunch of other Ursulas in the same room. *grin* On the downside, people are always trying to spell it with an E.

Peace!
Ursula

To see more of Ursula Vernon's art, or to buy prints, go to Metal and Magic.

Ursula Some More! (part 3 of an exclusive interview with Ursula Vernon)


Sir Bunny vs the Wockwurm
Do you have a day job or are you able to just create whatever you feel like? What does your typical day look like?

I no longer have a day job! Woo! For many years, like a lot of artists, I did work a Real Job, but these days, art's where it's at.

A typical day for me would be to get up, bleary-eyed, at around 8:30, when my husband has made breakfast and coffee. Then I sort of sprawl at the computer, randomly hitting keys, for about an hour until the coffee does its work. Then I check my e-mail and reply to it all, and set up the art for the day. Around noon, I kick off for lunch, then I work a bit more--I may go out for coffee with a friend, or I may take a nap. (Working at home is so decadent!) Then I get back up and get back to work until mid-evening. If I'm really cooking on a painting, I've been known to work until 1 AM, but usually I kick off around six-thirty or seven, play some computer games, have dinner, etc.

As a newlywed, I'm personally interested in knowing how you balance that creative side with your spouse (Here I went into some personal detail to explain what I meant, but it is a little awkward for this blog . . . )

*laugh!* My spouse is really quite wonderful about this sort of thing. His mother was an artist, so possibly he was just raised to understand this sort of thing, but he never complains about having me call in the middle of the day and say "Come home for lunch! I need the car! I'm having an art supply CRISIS!" I suspect I'm lucky in that regard, in that he takes my art very seriously (even when it's small animals with party hats!) and treats my occasionally erratic art-related behavior as just kinda the way it goes. So to that extent I can't really offer any advice--I was lucky!--except that if your spouse has some overriding hobby or interest that they really love, to be equally supportive, and perhaps you can trade off that sort of thing and come to a kind of mutual understanding.

Be sure to check out her brand new illustrated short story, Little Creature (or Dream Deer)

More Ursula!


Zebra Egg
You have a very whimsical style, very fun and playful, which I think would reflect on your personality. How do you cultivate that quality in your life? How do you protect it?

Heh! Actually, I think that may be the thing--I'm a sort of snide, dour individual in real life. If you've ever seen Spongebob Squarepants, I'm basically a vertebrate Squidward. I am full of fascinating and often noxious facts. (Well, actually, that may tie into the sense of wonder. I find great wonder in, for example, the idea that vampire bats live on an entirely liquid diet, and since weight is a major concern, with flight, they have to urinate nearly the entire time they're feeding. Knowing this disgusting little tidbit strikes me as deeply wonderful. I've never figured out how to work it gracefully into a painting, though.) A few other people I know who do very cute stuff have a similiar tendency to be kinda cynical and snarky in real life, and then all the cute comes out in the work. Actually a lot of things are probably like that--I have a buddy who writes these billowy, sentimental romance novels who's got a wonderfully black sense of humor. Perhaps the art winds up as an outlet for these tendencies.

Then again, I dunno, I'll "AWWWW!" over a baby hedgehog as much as anybody, so take my armchair psychology with a grain of salt. *grin*

Anyway, because of that, I don't really worry about protecting my sense of whimsy--it seems pretty durable, and since people really like the whimsical art, it gets a lot of positive reinforcement. If I lived in the middle of a warzone, or something, it'd be different, I'm sure, but for now, not really a problem.

What kind of things do you do to recharge your creative juices? What books and music do you absorb?

Well, I read a lot. Mostly fantasy, with a broad and indiscriminate appetite, the occasional mystery, horror, or thriller. Music, not so much--I know a lot of artists are very musically inclined and really require music to work, but probably because I'm tone deaf, I tend to stick to NPR. Of course, occasionally they get off on three days of senate hearings or something, so I have to dig out music--my tastes are pretty eclectic, and range between heavy metal and folk, with very few stops in between.

And I take walks, and I feed the birds out in my backyard, and occasionally I go to the zoo. Animals are really delightful, so I enjoy watching them. (Animal Planet's usually on in the evenings.) The internet's also a neverending source of inspiration, too.

An Interview with Ursula Vernon (part 1)

Frog Tribe
Here is a special treat for you- an exclusive interview with Ursula Vernon, the crazy genius who makes art such as you see above, as well as single-handedly produces Digger twice a week. More to come in the next few days.

I saw on your Metal and Magic page that you really didn't start drawing seriously till you were 17. Did you have other artistic or creative interests as a child? Or did you have more of a creative "awakening" as an adult?

Actually, for a long time I wanted to be a writer. So I wrote a great deal as a kid, much of it mercifully lost to posterity. As an adult, I still like writing, but art turned into my main field.

Did your parents or teachers help you keep that sense of wonder that is so easily lost when we grow up? How can teachers (and parents) help cultivate creativity? What's the artists' role in that? Do you get invited into schools and stuff ever?

Well, my mother's an artist, and I imagine that helped! I don't know if I had any teachers that worked specifically to address a sense of wonder--I may simply have been lucky on that count!

"Wonder"'s a pretty nebulous quality, so I'm hard pressed to say what, specifically, an artist's role is in cultivating it. I think it may be hard to do intentionally. Kinda like attracting butterflies. You can make butterfly gardens, you can provide a spot for butterflies to show up, but you can't put teeny weeny little shackles on them and keep them chained around the house.

Of course, now I'm just thinking of people with vicious guard butterflies on chains, so hell, maybe you could...*grin*

I don't get invited to many schools, I think because most of my fan base is through the internet, and I'm not terribly active in the local art scene, so the schools in the area don't neccessarily know I exist. It's probably for the best. I'm awkward around children, and however well developed a sense of childlike wonder I have, I also have a tendency to swear under stress, which is not what you want in your guest speaker. *grin*