Interview with illustrator Josh Bruce
Josh Bruce is an awesome Brisbane illustrator. If you haven’t heard about this ABC Geek Culture Project – then you’ve gotta check it out!! For all you geeks out there – me included! – Josh is endeavouring to create the ultimate adults version of the children’s ABC chart.
And this will be no ordinary chart! He’s allowing people to vote for the character that deserves to be on each letter, based on his shortlist of illustrations. He also has single prints of the characters he’s creating along the way – just in case you can’t wait!
The characters featured in this article are just a snippet of the huge effort of illustrating that’s gone into this project. Other favourites that you’ll have to see on the Facebook page include Inspector Gadget, Harry Potter, Ewok and Captain Jack Sparrow! Get involved – “like” his Facebook page to be able to vote for each letter, see the latest characters as Josh makes his way through the alphabet, and there’s giveaway comps too!
His website also has some cool timelapses of him illustrating characters – check it out!
How have you got to where you are today?
I never really saw art as anything more than something to keep me distracted during meetings at work. I think it was the first time someone was crazy enough to exchange real money for my artwork that kicked things off. A good friend of mine saw some of my work floating around and asked if I could draw him up a picture, and from there it just snowballed.
Before long, I had crazy idea to display my work at a Brisbane convention, which I went in hoping that at least one person would take interest. It was a lot more successful however, and the flood of nice comments and responses at that point is really what pushed me into doing this wholeheartedly now. Now I’m so busy in my spare time, I just tend to nap during the same work meetings.
In a few words, describe yourself…
Shy at first, but if you get to know me you’ll be wishing I would shut up. I enjoy movies which were “to-good-for-cinema” (“straight-to-dvd”) and spend way to much time playing video games. As a break from all the “tech”, I play Ice-Hockey which I find feeds that macho alter-ego and tend to be too fast for me to think about the consequences of what I’m doing.
What are you spending your time on at the moment?
Currently, I’m spending the majority of my time on the ABC of Geek Culture project, which is pretty much a ABC wall chart with different pop/geek culture icons representing each letter (Ash from Pokemon for A, Batman for B etc).
To break things up, I’m pumping out a few sketch cards of various characters (head and shoulder shots) which I’m selling as limited run one off prints. All of this really is just preparation for an upcoming convention.
Do you have a ritual for getting into the creative mindset? Or a creative process?
Always starts with coffee, no matter the time of day. I find that if I keep the addictions in check, the rest of the body can do what it has to do without too much complaining.
What or who inspires you?
Having a ridiculous sized comic book collection (which gets bigger each week), means that there are almost too many people too name.
The three majors that come to mind however are Jamie Smart, Scott Johnson and Otis Frampton. Their work is my digital caffeine.
I’m a huge Batman fan, way bigger than is healthy, so people like Grant Morrison, Jim Lee and Tony Daniel also come to mind. And of course my wife, who even if what I produce is utter garbage, she will still say she likes it.
What are you most proud of?
I’m my own worse critic. So I’m always most proud of my next piece of work. It’s a never ending cycle.
When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Fighter pilot, without a doubt. I use to love reading about fighter planes, and memorizing all the technical specifications of their engines.
I think even one day I sat down and drew the entire engine of one of the planes, right down to every last cable. In hindsight, I should of probably gone and kicked a ball or something.
