23 Aug 15Creatives15Days X CCF Spotlight: Justin Duvall
1. What do you do and where do you do it?
Hailing from Baltimore, Maryland.
My official title is Graphic Designer & Animator at Integrated Designs, Inc. though I consider myself an illustrator first and foremost. Therefore, much of my design and animation work is illustration based. I enjoy the hand drawn look of shapes and tend to go the extra step and draw my own ornamental design elements and typography rather than pulling from stock. When I’m not doing commissioned or agency work, I spend my free time illustrating a free weekly comic strip at lookysquares.com, which is a lot of fun for me…. and is occasionally NSFW (you’ve been warned, haha.)
2. Who/What are your biggest influences?
This is a loaded question. Feels like I’m inspired and influenced by something/someone new each day, but I do have some classic staples — icons that I find myself revisiting drawing inspiration from. So let’s say at this very moment, aside from my peers, my influences are: Chuck Jones, Bill Waterson, Jhonen Vasquez, Chris Bachalo, John Kricfalusi, Frank Soto, and Norman Rockwell. I feel like if you could throw all of their styles into a blender, the result is essentially the look that I generally go for or at least try to channel. I also have to mention my old college mates at MICA: Zack Gardner and Eduardo Lino Costa. Those fellas surely played a hand in my development into the artist that I am today. We used to swap sketchbooks during or after class, scribble a comic or doodle, then swap them back. The three of us seemed to share a sense of humor, so the sketch exchanges were often chuckle inducing. I still flip through my old sketchbooks for some creative stimulation… and sometimes for a good laugh.
3. What does the term Creative Control mean to you?
To me it means tapping into that sweet spot in the gray matter and letting it rip — that spot where everything clicks and all of the randomness comes together in a perfect storm of creativity. Having total carte blanche creative control means having freedom from restraint. Freedom to explore and hone in on that sweet spot. I think that’s when we all do our best work. When I’m finished with a project and I step back, look at my work and think to myself, “Holy shit, where did THAT come from?” — when I think to myself, “This work is a sum of everything I’ve ever experienced up until now,” — that’s when I know I’ve hit that sweet spot. I love that spot. It’s like a drug. Find it and never let go.
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