I have returned with another Artist post.
Today I want to introduce to you all the talented (Belgian) duo of Floor 4 Productions who are multitalented and produce great art that can be comical, weird and graphical.
You might have caught their work in the Oerth Journal nr 31 and 32.
I invite you to get to know them and check out their art.
Some of my readers might not have heard of you, can you introduce yourself briefly?
We are Annelies and Dirk, a creative couple from Ghent (Belgium) and together we are Floor 4 Productions. During our creative process, our cat Mojo always keeps a watchful eye and orders us around.
We are known for our variety of designs. We make illustrations, logo’s, art prints, campaigns, postcards … that make you happy or have a humorous twist.
Annelies is the expert in lay-out, typography and design, while Dirk is the one who makes most of the drawings. We find inspiration in our daily life, comics, books, roleplay, tattoos, board games, travels … In short, all the things in life that fascinate us.
When did you start drawing and did you manage to make a career out of it?
Dirk: I’ve always loved to make drawings. My earliest memory was trying to draw Donald Duck, from the magazines I received weekly. Years later I reached that goal and moved on to the next challenge, drawing the superheroes from my favorite comic books. My passion for drawing made me go to art school. But that didn’t work out in the end. So I’ve never started a career in that direction... until now.
Annelies: I started drawing when I was in high school, but these drawings were mainly exercises from books such as: draw a camel or a geometric background in 5 steps. So no actual creative process. To improve my drawing skills, I collected a lot of inspirational books over the years but haven’t had the tenacity to draw regularly. I now enrolled in an online course “Drawing for beginners level -1”, a level I feel comfortable with :-). I hope to gain some basic skills and, more importantly, rediscover the fun of drawing. I already have a lot of ideas, but translating them into an actual design is not an easy process at the moment.
Tell us the story behind floor4productions and what your goal is in the near future.
Floor 4 Productions was born on a London citytrip in 2019. We were renting a hotel room that was situated on the 4th floor and Annelies brought up the idea of combining our creativity and skills and start a “business”.
In January 2020, it finally happened and Floor 4 Productions was born.
We’ve already managed to gather a small fan base that consists of our friends, family and colleagues. Our postcards have been sold in 2 local stores. But in the near future we would like to expand our clientele and then... conquer the world ;-)
How was the transition from physically drawing an image to going fully digital?
Dirk: I've had some experience with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop during my school days, so the digital world was not entirely new to me. A huge step forward was the purchase of a drawing tablet. It gave me the same feel as sketching on paper. So nowadays, I make my designs mostly digitally and finish them in Illustrator. I still draw physically in a real sketchbook when making quick sketches of ideas that pop up in my mind so I don’t forget them.
Annelies: I like both methods, although I feel a lot more like an artist when I’m drawing digitally, because the artwork is more smooth than my scribbly pencil lines :-)
You are working on two new comic projects. How did they start out and where is it evolving towards?
Our 2 comic projects are side projects which we make when there is enough time left between all the other designs and ideas we want to create.
The first comic, “Stuupid Humaans”, is a fictional look behind the scenes of Floor 4 Productions. The main characters in these short funny stories are ourselves and our cat. We get inspired by the things that happen around us and how we deal with them.
Our second comic, “Weird Wizard William”, is our way of telling fantasy stories. We got that idea from roleplay and fantasy novels/movies/comics that we both love. But we didn’t want to create the perfect hero, he had to be a little off. Just like the characters in a Monty Python movie or in a Terry Pratchett novel. We try a more absurd style of humour in these gags and Weird William is the perfect vessel.
In a distant future it would be nice to collect all our short stories and get published. But we still need to make much more material.
What do you hope to accomplish in 2021?
We started working on a children’s book. We hope to finish this new challenge and find a publisher for the story we created.
We would like to create a set of postcards for a variety of occasions (birthdays, saying thank you, moving, new job, Christmas, Halloween) in a nice box and a calendar with our designs.
Last but not least, it would be very nice to expand our fan base (and customers of course) by selling our products in more local shops and via print-on-demand sites such as Redbubble.
How can people commission you and for what?
People can contact us when they are looking for illustrations for a magazine, logo’s, art prints, postcards. We also make artwork on demand. So if somebody’s looking for a unique gift, we can create a portrait, an invitation, a campaign in our own frisky style.
Our latest project was pimping an old still life painting that pictured some sardines, onions and a cooking pot by adding some funny monsters.
Comments