Outer Alliance Spotlight #38: M. S. Corley June 11, 2010
Posted by juliarios in : interviews , trackbackWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #38. Each Friday, the Spotlight features an ally who writes, reviews, publishes, or is in some other way involved with LGBTQI speculative fiction. Our guest this week is M. S. Corley, cover and interior artist for The Aether Age: Helios.
M. S. Corley is a straight ally who has been creating visual art since he was a small child. Back in the day, he spent a lot of time drawing pictures of characters from Mega Man, but more recently he created a bit of an internet splash with his series of retro Harry Potter book covers. Now he’s teamed up with Brandon Bell to work on Aether Age: Helios.
M. S. is a full time freelance artist, who enjoys reading–favorite authors include H. P. Lovecraft and William Hope Hodgson–and playing video games. He is currently working on some illustrations for Dungeons & Dragons Adventure books (among other things). He lives with his wife in Kirkland, Washington. He shares his artwork on his blog, Flickr, and deviantART.
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OA: Aether Age: Helios is due out this summer, and you’re responsible for all the artwork in that. Were there any illustrations that were especially fun or exciting to create? What about troublesome ones? Or ones that you are particularly happy with?
MSC: Specifically I’m only responsible for the cover art and 5 of the interior illustrations, the rest of the illustrations were graciously created by Brandon H. Bell and William Wood.
The whole project for me was a lot of fun to do, it’s in a different genre than I’m used to drawing so it was good practice as well as a nice way to expand my current skill set.
Working out the ships for the aether universe was particularly troublesome; the stories all described them differently. Partly due to the fact that not all of the stories took place in the same time period. I had a lot of sketching I had to do to come up with the initial ship designs, and then I had to go back and compare to the descriptions, and then draw more then reread. It went on like that for a couple days till I found something I was satisfied with. I am particularly happy with how the ship turned out in the “Flight of the Ibis” illustration. I’m sure it is not what the author saw in his head when he wrote it, but it’s partly what I pictured and partly what I saw being described.
OA: You’re passionate about antique and vintage art, which is one of the things that inspired you to create old school Penguin style covers for popular fantasy books. What are some of your favorite pieces in of vintage art and what do you love about them?
MSC: Well all of the classic Penguin covers are a huge inspiration for me, there is something about their simplicity and color use that really butters my toast. One of my favorite antique artists is Alphonse Mucha whom most people don’t know by name, but probably know some of his work as it’s popped on calendars and posters in bookstores in the past couple of years.
His illustrations of people, and his composition of a whole piece and the colors he uses are very inspiring.
OA: Though you believe in the Bible’s messages, you’re hesitant to label yourself a Christian because of the connotations that has. What does Christianity mean to you, personally? What do you wish would change in the mainstream perceptions of it?
MSC: When I say I don’t want to be labeled as a Christian it’s because of all the assumptions people instantly make when you claim that label. Instantly I’m aggressively anti-gay, pro-life, republican, and quite possibly one of those who preach the turn or burn message.
It seems like mainstream Christianity propagated in the media is all about pushing their agendas in which they use God or the Bible like a bully standing behind them backing up their speech to help them win the fight they plan on starting.
When from my reading, that’s not what Christ is about. Jesus did not mix his spirituality with politics.
I can’t recall a moment that Jesus preached about any of the ‘major issues’ that Christians nowadays hold so strongly to. His message was based around loving God and loving people with all your heart, soul and mind. He spent most of his time with outcasts and those groups of people often disliked by society, so it seems odd that being a Christian can label you as someone who hates certain groups.
How many people have you met who claimed they turned to God because they were told their life and what they did was morally corrupt, or from someone who yelled at them on a street corner saying that they are going to burn in hell because of this or that? All of us are sinners, that street corner guy is no better than anyone else, except for in his own eyes. I think problem with the mainstream is that more people would believe in God if they actually found out who Jesus is and stopped picturing who he is by comparing him to how certain Christians act.
It boils down for me to the fact that I should show people what God is like by demonstrating love, all the rest of that stuff shouldn’t be my main focus.
OA: How did you decide to transition from corporate to freelance work, and what was that transition like for you? Do you have any pointers for others who would like to make that transition?
MSC: I’ve always wanted to be a freelance artist, the only problem was I had bills I had to pay so I had to get a job. I started as a background designer for a small company that made TV plug and play games which was fine but the days went by painfully slow. I soon realized that was not what I wanted to do, so when I got a call to move over to a merchandising company I immediately took it.
I stayed there for around 4 years working as a product designer for video games accessories for Nintendo and Sony and other licenses, while going home at night and working on personal or freelance illustration jobs. Illustration is where it’s at for me, I am able to do graphic design decently and I can work through product designs but actually illustrating is really fulfilling.
For my last year at work I had been getting more and more freelance work, so I would work on that each night and then go back to work the next day, it was really draining. Eventually my wife and I talked and decided that since I’m young and marginally ambitious I should at least try doing freelance once.
We had saved up enough money to cover at least three months in case I couldn’t find any work, and then I would drag my feet back to a corporate job. But luckily it has worked out splendidly. Granted some months are slower than others, but that’s the nature of the business.
If anyone is planning on making the same transition I would suggest that they have some money saved to pay bills in case they don’t get any work. But it is also good to have lots of contacts and a steady flow of freelance work coming in before you try it out.
Had I done it hoping that I would get freelance work and never actually having done any freelance jobs before that moment. Well that would have been quite foolish on my end.
OA: You’re working on some Dungeons & Dragons manuals right now. What’s the coolest part about that? Are you allowed to tell us anything about the sorts of things you’re drawing, or will we have to wait until the books hit stores? What other work can we look forward to seeing from you?
MSC: The Dungeons & Dragons work is great, I’ve never really drawn any of their fantasy source material before so it has been a bit of a challenge at times but overall I’ve really been enjoying it. The coolest thing for me is to say, “I’m working on stuff for Dungeons & Dragons” because while sounding geeky, that’s a pretty big accomplishment in my book.
The art pertains to the story that I am illustrating for, I’ve spent most of my time drawing Kobolds (which is a new species to me) as they are a large part in the story. As well as thieves and assassins and other things you would expect, like dragons. Though I haven’t drawn any dungeons yet.
Some recent work I’ve completed are some ‘superhero dad’ illustrations for a Father’s day campaign for Microsoft. Those are up now through Father’s day at the Microsoft stores, so if you happen to live in one of the locations of their stores you can see my work on these huge monitors on both side walls.
Also a friend and I have recently started our own video game based web comic called “Double XP”. We’re just in the initial weeks of it posting game related jokes, but we’re planning out a story line to have it be an ongoing plotted comic pertaining to certain characters interacting with certain video game worlds. Other than vagueness, I can say we’re both pretty excited about where it’s headed.
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Thanks, M. S.! Join us next Friday for another Spotlight, and in the meantime, check out M. S. Corley’s art, and Aether Age: Helios.
Comments»
Lovely interview. I do love your work, which I found out about because of those wonderful Penguin-esque covers you did.