Aziza Espina Daksla by Khail Santia

Aziza and Khail

For our feature this week, we have another digital artist. It is possible to practice both digital and traditional media in the visual arts.

KS: Despite the financial challenges and the demands of a course alien to your talent, you never neglected your art.

AED: If I did, my life would lose its meaning.

Aziza  grew up in humble circumstances and had been gently steered away from art to take a more "practical" path. She persevered in her passion, eventually becoming one of Dumaguete's most admired digital artists with a growing roster of local and international clients to her name.

KS:  In the pre-interview, you told me you were born inside your home in Vallehermoso. How was it like for you growing up?

AED: My mother was an elementary school teacher and my father worked as a driver in Saudi Arabia. During my kindergarten years, we were mostly alone with mother.

KS: Part of what I love about your story is you showed that we can have a dignified livelihood without leaving our families behind by taking advantage of digital technology and the internet. But bring us back to the beginning, why did you choose to pursue art?

T-shirt design

AED: I think I was born to make art. From childhood onwards, I feel happy every time I get to color or draw something new; or when I get recognized for my artsy efforts. This might be trite but nonetheless true, doing art gives me a profound sense of fulfillment.

KS:  You don’t remember struggling to acquire drawing skills?

AED: I started on coloring books. Then copied the characters on “text” cards we played with in school. I also copied manga. I was just having fun with drawing.

            In high school, I got fascinated with Photoshop - the ancient version with the feathers logo. We couldn’t afford a computer. So I would download photoshop tutorials on a diskette through a dial-up connection somewhere, then go to a cousin’s house to try them out. Men, it was a hard life.

           

"Pogi" acrylic on canvas

KS: When did you first receive validation for your art?

AED: I remember two teachers in elementary school. The first, Ma’am Duran, praised me to the whole class for the lettering work I did on our bulletin board. The second, Ma’am Sinco, really liked an artwork I made of a pig.

KS: After high school, you went to Marawi City. How did that come about?

AED: There were two of us in the family who needed to go to college by that time. We went to Mindanao State University in Marawi because the tuition in Dumaguete was too expensive. In MSU, we only had to pay 100 pesos each per semester. We stayed with relatives on our father’s side.

"Tingin" acrylic on canvas

KS:  You said you had no choice in MSU but to take up software engineering, a course heavy in programming, when you are very visual by nature. How did you keep yourself together?

AED: I did not waver in nurturing my art. I accepted small commissions. I joined art contests. And I was active in the school’s art club.

            

I was lucky to have a best friend who was gung ho about our studies. She was our magna cum laude. Under her influence, I finished cum laude but barely. It was pure hard work for me.

KS: After college, how were you able to build a career as a digital artist?

Poster design

AED: I wasn’t really aware that you could have a serious career as a digital artist until I began job hunting in Cebu and saw many openings for graphic arts and web design. I tidied my portfolio then put it up in DeviantArt.com. The work just came in from there. I got accepted as a Senior Web Developer and  Graphic Artist in Cebu. After that, I returned to Dumaguete to put up a t-shirt business.

At present, I am a virtual staffer for a web design company based in New Zealand. Local commissions continue to come in. I did the graphics work for the Belltower Project. The same and some stage set painting for Ampalaya the Musical.

KS: Please describe your creative process.

AED: I start with a free sketch. Then things would begin to flow. When I run out of ideas, I look at existing art. I always listen to music when I work.

Arkitektura T-shirt design

KS: What fuels your work?

AED: Knowing that I still have a long way to go keeps me motivated to work and improve everyday.

KS: Tell us about a project you’re currently working on.

AED: I am currently doing the art for Belltower Kwatro. I am still stuck at the moment and it is a struggle. What I like about Belltower is they leave it up to me to dream up the art for the project. And of course, I like to help in promoting local music.

KS:  What can you say to aspiring digital artists who want to follow in your footsteps?

AED: Don’t stop drawing. Don’t be afraid to put your work out there.

See more of Aziza’s art at:

behance.net/zingzang

Khail C. Santia by Ramon del Prado

For this week's Artist by Artist, let's hear from Khail Campos Santia, a self taught game programmer, that will introduce us to the mysterious world of how strings of code work together with visuals in bringing us the virtual realities we play with through our gadgets and consoles.

Khail and his Rancho Ranch

RdP: Please give us a background of yourself, I understand you were supposed to be a baker, but now you are making waves in Dumaguete and beyond through game development! How has this journey been so far?

KCS: It took six years and ten games before I got officially published. Being a baker was my day job for a while. I self-studied my way into becoming a game developer in between risings of bread dough. It has not been easy. But to make games is a childhood dream. If I regret anything at all, it is that I haven’t started sooner!

RdP: Please describe your art to us.

KCS: Game development is a collaborative art form. It’s like film with one crucial addition – interactivity. In games, your audience is also your protagonist. A protagonist who makes their own decisions. This to me is the major challenge of game-making: How do you create a world where people can laugh, cry or fall in love and at the same time take into account the unpredictability of player choices?

RdP: What satisfies you in your art?

KCS: I grew up in in Bukidnon, smack in the middle of Mindanao. I was always obsessed with wanting to build fantastic stuff – from games to telescopes to robots. But mostly, all I could do was dream feverishly as I did not have access to high technology. All these changed when I learned to program computers. It gave me a sense of unlimited possibilities. A computer is a magician’s top hat and programs are spells that when uttered right allow you to pull out the strangest creatures. For me, some of the hardest, most intricate and delicious spells are the ones which allow you to pull out these creatures called games.

Character animation 

RdP: Please describe to the public how game development is also considered an art.

KCS: Leo Tolstoy wrote, “art is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.” The game designer of Super Mario, Shigeru Miyamoto, said almost the exact thing: ”I want the players to experience kyokan – to feel about the game what the developers felt themselves.” We usually think of games as conveying fun, but games can also evoke regret (“Pretentious Game”), guilt (“The Company of Myself”), mystery (“Monument Valley”), and so on. But perhaps the most striking qualification games have in terms of emotive expression is the one mentioned previously: In games you do not say, “My character won!” You say, “I won!” In other words, games allow you to go beyond empathizing with the main character to becoming the main character.

Character studies

RdP: What drives/inspires you?

KCS: Games opened my eyes to the possibility of a world where human beings study and work not out of coercion but out of a genuine love for what they do. What is the core action of game playing? Boring stuff like repeatedly moving pieces of wood or pressing buttons.  But game design is able to turn these experiences into something we all love. If game design can do that, it can surely do the same to our classrooms and workplaces. I am enamored with the inherent challenges and expressive power of game development. Game development is a passion but applying game development to transform the way we study and work has become a calling for me.

RdP: Are you able to support yourself through your art? How?

Indie Prize, Tel Aviv

KCS: I just came back from a year’s break from game development with a new studio, Moocho Brain, which I cofounded with Aji Prasongko, Algernon van Peel and Eru Petrasanta. We are off to a good start with our game “Rancho Ranch” being published by an American publisher. But we are still in the start-up phase and are currently building up cash flow through web sponsorship, profit-sharing with publishers, as well as self-publication.

RdP: How do you deal with setbacks?

Moocho brain logos

KCS: Lots of sleep and pastry.

I wade through a lot of duds before I can come up with something that’s different. When stuck in an impasse, I forget the work for a bit. Meanwhile, the problem usually solves itself or becomes more manageable when I come back. As Irving Stone wrote of Michelangelo, “In a love fight, he who flees is the winner.”

RdP: What can you say about the future of yourself and game development in Dumaguete?

KCS: The demand for games is tremendous and growing, with global revenues exceeding those of music and film. True, the competition is equally tremendous. The trick is to stand out.

Ramon and Khail

Dumaguete has a culture that celebrates creativity. The required skills are here – top-notch visual artists, musicians, writers, and information technologists. And for some time now, there has been an intensifying interest in game development around the city. The pieces are starting to come together. Dumaguete may very well be the next game development hot spot.

You can see more of Khail’s works at: 

http://khailcs.tumblr.com/

http://www.kongregate.com/games/khailcs

http://kikill.newgrounds.com/games/

http://www.gamesauce.biz/author/khail-santia/

YOUTUBE:

On Puzzle Design:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNoQHz7W-sM

Ludemic Transformations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WU33OUxadU

Babbu Wenceslao by Yvette Malahay-Kim

Antonio “Babbu” Alunan Wenceslao and I went to the same art school in college. Since then we’ve done group exhibitions, concerts, conferences, workshops, outdoor events and teach art.

YMK: After graduating from art school in UP, how did your art practice evolve?

BW: Art and art practice to me have definitions of their own, including their own progressions. Its always a challenge to check on their footprints. But early on, I was always drawn to teaching, even before finishing art school, we conducted the Summer Art workshop which was hosted by Lab-as Restaurant and the generous patronage of the late Vicente Fuentes. We ran the workshop for about twenty summers since there was no formal training in the arts in Dumaguete back then. We 

taught creativity for kids and basic drawing and painting for adults. Immediately after art school, I joined Silliman University (because you took your MA in UP Diliman) teaching FA 51 - Art Appreciation which I did for a couple of years. So my engagement with art you could say still leans heavily in the practice of teaching its craft.      

1989. College days at the basement where the
University of the Philippines Cebu Fine Arts was located

YMK: What is the usual subject matter that you give attention too? Why?

BW: My works I believe are a bit simple, but they revolve around several contemporary issues and multiple subjects from the environment to aesthetics. But then again primarily, my initiatives are always drawn with the intent, and in the circumstance and objective of amplifying collective visual consciousness. This I believe is a fundamental principle and purpose of art. 

Why? As a people, our icons are drawn in the faint and blurred outlines of collective doubt, shrouded in the shadows of our colonial position and the effective mechanisms of a western dominated media. It is in the realm of art where as a culture we can possibly re-trace and reinforce, create and elevate the very shape and form of own images. Art allows us the ability to visually refine and define our aspirations, and differentiate ourselves as a culture in the context of contemporary life.       

             

YMK: What compelled you to create a fine arts program in college and eventually open up in Foundation University?

1995, Guy Hall, Silliman U

BW: I grew up surrounded by a lot of creative people, mostly writers and a couple of painters, colleagues and students of my mother whose conversations always drift into how Dumaguete as a place, is always seen and felt as familiar and personal geography, a haven nurturing to the creative mind and warm to the artistic spirit. Somehow I kept this thought of the city as an ideal place to study the arts.

When I joined Silliman University in 1996 (?), there was an ongoing initiative to open a painting program under the School of Music, so I wrote and finished the BFA curriculum proposal, it was approved by the Silliman Academic Council under Dean Susan but was eventually deferred from implementation by a departmental change in administration. 

           

On an early morning mountain bike trail ride to Valencia, I disclosed the prospect to Architect Dean Sinco who was opening an Architecture program. I wrote a new curriculum proposal, and the first Fine Arts school in the province was opened that very year, 2006. Now we have two art schools in a small city. Architect Gerard Uymatiao would say, "be careful with what you ask for because you might get it." 

             

YMK: How do you mix music and poetry in your visual arts practice? Or rather, how is it intertwined?

BW: They are all quite confusingly intertwined. Music is very important to me. I listen to a lot of genres. I've read mostly my mother's poems and those that she feeds me, and they are all inspiring but I personally do not do poetry. I've never formally trained in music but I think I can write a song and play a few chords in the guitar, but the lyrics however are more prose than poetry. Music and the visual arts are all equal creative pursuits, part and parcel of the entire package, or should I say baggage? 

YMK: How do you achieve balance in the many things you are involved in? from teaching, managing tours, managing a restaurant, producing art, and last but not the least, caring for your family...

BW: Balance as a principle even in art is an ideal. Real life is always a circus act, a tightrope walk, every step is a leap of faith and a constant correction, a recovery from the imbalance that was created by the very act of movement.

I do happen to have a slack-line, that my wife ironically gave me as a birthday gift. What I learned from trying it out is that there is no specific technique, everyone has to intuitively find his own style to walk and stay on the swinging flat webbing, except, for the common shared experience, that every now and then you will fall and then when you get back and get to successfully cross the line, it was because you were looking ahead, every step of the way.        

YMK: Among the different media (i.e. pencil, paint, wood, clay etc) that you have worked with, what is your favorite and why?

BW: Every creative material is an artistic tool, I personally do not have a ranking till this question. So that would be clay and wood. Clay and wood as creative materials were the foremost mediums that were used by our pre-colonial ancestors. Negros island has a lot of anthropological earthen and wooden artifacts. The earliest objects and images that our ancestors created were shaped and formed using clay, wood or bamboo. Paint and pigment as a dominant medium of representation is largely colonial influence.  

YMK: How do you think is the study of studio arts relevant in an age that is driven by computers, smart phones and tablets?

BW: It has never been as important. Art to a large extent is derivative, globally we have never experienced this as we are now. Originality is a patent. But the demand for image, its utility and access has grown exponentially. We partially think and speak english as a colonized culture, but in the virtual world, imagery has become the terminology, the new language of global psycholinguistics.

Human cognition and understanding is a visual process, this has not changed since our earliest ancestors. In this information age, our visual faculty has become even more important. A culture's ability to visualize and envision will determine its capacity to cope, anticipate, and eventually overcome. Which is why we need leaders with a keen sense of vision, and a critical eye for finding visual solutions. 

1995, Planning stage of the Fine Arts Curriculum in Dumaguete. With Silliman University
School of Music and Fine Arts Director Susan V. Zamar, Leonel de Jesus, Jutsze Pamate,
curator Bobi Valenzuela, JB Bernadas, Babbu Wenceslao, Bianca Espinos and Yvette Malahay.

The studio arts as a discipline in aesthetics and imagery trains the eye and the mind in the creation and purpose of imagery. It is significant in the sense that it provides our culture the ability to illustrate and visually configure its own aspirations and provide the capacity to participate in the continuous development and understanding of human culture. (end of interview)     

Babbu continues to joggle his roles as a teacher at Foundation University, manager at El Amigo and Cafe Memento, tour guide for Island Life Adventure tours, father to three kids, and husband to the love of his life, June Cleo.