Digital Art Empire Interviews  Kyle Lambert Photo Realist

Digital Art Empire tracked down Kyle Lambert to ask about his phenomenal illustrations.

Photo realistic painting is a skill that requires patience and a knowledge that is truly awe inspiring. Having won the UK storyboard competition for the film Watchmen Lambert is a digital artist that deserves attention.

He enjoys painting characters from his favorite films that are often difficult to tell apart from a real photograph. Currently completing a degree in illustration and animation, he is specializing in areas that consist of photorealistic painting, digital illustration, 3d modeling/ Animation, motion graphics and web design.

1. Hi Kyle, thank you for this interview and welcome to Digital Art Empire, please tell us about yourself, your background and your work.

First off let me thank you guys at Digital Art Empire for expressing interest in my work.

As you said my name is Kyle and I live in the UK working as a freelance artist. I have just graduated from University where I studied Illustration with Animation.

My work is a blend of traditional painting and contemporary illustration. I have a background in fine art, painting using oil and watercolor and now use these techniques on a digital platform.

2. You originally began your career as an oil and water color painter, How did you cross over from oil painting to the digital art field? Why did you choose to go digital?

Well I have always been excited about the blend between art and technology.

In secondary school I did a work experience at a graphic design studio where I was introduced to Adobe Photoshop. I colored in a couple of Simpsons characters that I had drawn and became curious about what was possible.

It was almost 3 years later when I had my first serious play with a graphics tablet that I saw the real possibilities of using the computer to produce artwork. After 4 hours of messing around I produced a portrait of Jessica Alba that was as good as what I could do with pencil.

This changed everything for me. Once I got used to mixing color on a screen instead of a wooden pallet I was away.

3. Already being highly skilled in your digital art, what has university brought out in your work, and how did you combining this with your university curriculum?

Doing art at university is very different from at college or school level because the emphasis is no longer on whether you can draw, it is more about developing your own visual language and then discovering an area of interest that you enjoy working with.

I realized quite quickly that I could adapt my style well into narrative based projects and started illustrating short stories.

In doing this I delved into the world of storyboarding where I plan out how each scene of the story will be visualized. This helped me consider more experimental compositions and seek interesting camera angles for my work.

4. Winning the story board competition for Watchmen must have been a highlight for you and a massive boost in motivation. Where do you find inspiration in this specialized field and who do you look up to?

Because I was working on a number of storyboards for my own projects at the time this competition seemed like a prefect opportunity for me. Only thing was I knew nothing about Watchmen and only had a week to complete the storyboard. So I researched the original comic book and read over the script provided and began to gradually get an idea for how I wanted it to look. Ambitiously I then decided it would be more fun to produce an animatic to help visualize the action.

I worked flat out on it, submitted it on the Wednesday and was told that I had won on the Friday. I then found myself talking with Zack Snyder and watching the Watchmen World Premier on the Monday.

In terms of inspiration, I get it from all kinds of sources. I have a fascination with detail and was inspired to paint photo realistically when I saw the early work of portrait painter Chuck Close. I love the style of the comic book artist Alex Ross who again places a lot of emphasis on detail.

I am also a big fan of 3D art and draw inspiration from the photorealistic CGI work seen in movies such as Transformers.

But one of my biggest inspirations is the amazing catalog of work by Pixar. Their movies represent everything I want my work to be, great story, brilliant characters and outstanding visuals. I would love one day to be involved with one of their projects.

5. Digital art being a big part of your life, where do you find all this time and energy? How do you balance your family and work life?

I consider myself very lucky because I thoroughly enjoy what I do. I put in long hours on my work, but believe I have a good balance between work and everything else.

I find it important to stay active by playing football twice per week and running and cycling regularly.

6. What are your tools of the trade and which software do you use?

I do believe that it doesn’t matter what tools you use.

I often begin in a sketchbook with a black pen and scribble everything down. I also now use my iPhone for sketching using the Brushes app.

For my main work I use a Mac Pro running good old OS X and a Wacom Cimtiq 21UX. I paint in Adobe Photoshop.

7. What project are you currently working on? Which project have you found most enjoyable and why ? What would be your dream project?

I am currently in the early stages of storyboarding  a story that I have written which I can’t really talk about too much just yet.

My last project was called Short Story and was really fun to do. Again it was a story that I wrote for the purpose of producing illustrations.

The reason I enjoyed it so much was that it felt like I was producing a movie. I found actors to pose for the scenes, designed costumes and props, and at the end of it did a 3D animation to go with it. I was really happy with the dark visual style and learned a great deal in the process.My dream project would be working on a large scale movie production producing storyboards and concept images.

8. Kyle, thank you for this interview with Digital Art Empire, have you got any advice for up and coming digital creatives?

Yeh, I would say that it is important to get the basics right first. Color mixing, tone, perspective etc.. The rest will all come naturally. Most of all just be passionate about what you do and it should shine through.

Thank you

View the artwork and find out more about Kyle Lambert here:

Folio: http://www.kylelambert.co.uk/ Blog :  http://kyle-lambert.blogspot.com/

DeviantArt : http://kyle-lambert.deviantart.com Twitter : http://www.twitter.com/kylelambert

Interview with Andrew Houle from My Ink Blog

Ben Rama

Ben Rama is a Graphic Designer, CG artist & Cinematographer from London. He is the founder & creative director at Digital Art Empire Find Ben on Twitter