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Interview with Doug Smith

At MetroCon of 2004, I had the opportunity to catch up with Mr. Doug Smih late Sunday after many guests and con-goers had already gone home. In a nice, quiet hall of the hotel, we got to sit and chat... And now that conversation is here for you to read!

Was there a turning point in your life when you realized that art was something you wanted to make into a career, or did you always know you were destined to be an artist?

I wasn’t sure because it was more of an influence, because…I started drawing when I was in grade school. I saw an old an old friend, a classmate of mine, drawing and I saw him using this pencil…I thought it was a regular pencil, because I was used to using number two pencils. He said, “Here!”. He gave me one, he had a whole box full of them, and I realized, “Hey, this pencil’s different from other pencils. It’s darker, and the lead is a lot smoother and it gives you this really dark line.” The lead smeared as it hit the paper and created these really cool textures and my friend was using his finger to smear it, and I’m like, “Wow, that’s really awesome”. And from that moment on I never let go of the pencil, it just kept going and as the years went on I started getting better and better and better. Then I started getting comic books and started drawing off comic books. And then the whole anime thing, being at the anime conventions and all, I just grew up on the giant robot cartoons. When I would get a copy of them, I would copy them on my t.v. and use the vcr to record the shows. I would freeze frame the vcr, and pause the frame with the robot, then I would draw that robot and go to class the next day and say, “ Did you see the new robot show, this is a cool robot!”. And the whole class was like, “Ooooh, draw me one, I want one”. So, it just stroked my ego from there and it kept growing and growing.

You certainly started doing commissions young. You already mentioned the number one pencil, but what other art media do you prefer to work in?

Mostly pencil, then from there I just branch off to inks and most recently, markers. I like colored pencils too, but it takes forever to cover an area. So, I’m trying to work fast, that way I can cover more fans. Because the first thing they ask is “how long is it going to take?”. I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of artists out there who can’t develop the speed to actually jump right in, start going right away and finish a piece of work and have the confidence…or, feel comfortable I should say, not confidence, but the feeling of “I don’t know if this is going to look good or not”. That’s the worry most artists have, “I don’t think it’s my best work”. You know, a lot of artists just starting out are worried about how the piece is going to look. But I think deep down inside an artist will know what they’re happy with. For me, I like my work, but I’m never really satisfied with it because I’m always telling myself I could do better and I’m always striving to go to the next level.

Computer graphics are still a relatively young medium and not many artists as skilled with it as more classic forms of art. You, however, are an extraordinary CG artist. What programs do you use for your CG?

I’m using Photoshop and any graphics program…I use Illustrator. I’m still playing around with the actual 3D modeling programs, but I’m very interested in learning those as well. There’s a lot of low-end 3D graphic programs I could use, but right now I’m just trying to concentrate on just learning as much as I can and go from there.

How long have you been working with CG?

I’ve been working on it since I went to the art institute. I graduated from the art institute in ’94 and I was introduced to Photoshop, I took graphics design and ended up later working for ADV where I learned a lot more tricks with Photoshop, Illustrator, all the other design programs and was able to learn new things and marry all those things I’ve learned to create the pieces I have. I no longer work for ADV, but I still do the voice acting for ADV. I’ve taken my art to a fulltime thing. I never really had time to do my own art while working for a company because it takes a lot of time. But creating new pieces and going to shows constantly back to back doesn’t really give me enough time to show fans what the latest things I’ve done in art.

Speaking of the voice acting for ADV, I find it interesting that an artist crossed over into voice acting. How did that come about?

Well, being the graphic designer that I was at ADV, the director that did the directing for the dubbing at that time, Matt Greenfield, his office is right across from the art department. So, I was part of the art department and every now and then when I was waiting form my file to save, I’d just get up, walk around, stretch my legs… and there was this dry erase board in the hallway, so I took the dry erase marker and started drawing. I’d start making some funny sounds and Matt would look out the door and just look at me funny like, “Who’s making that noise out there?” and I’d say, “Oh, it’s just me”, and he just shook his head and went back inside. One day, just out of nowhere, Matt comes in the door and says, “I need some people for scream and die sessions”. Scream and die sessions are funny, they’re called “walla”, but he called ‘em scream and die sessions. So basically, we all just piled in the recording booth. He took everybody in the art department, people in the shipping department…people who weren’t really doing anything of real importance, I guess you might say, and just grabbed them for a couple of minutes and threw them into a big booth…well, not a big booth, but a pretty good sized booth where you could fit a lot of people in, and just start having a bunch of people scream, yell like they’re falling down and dying. So that’s why we called them the scream and die sessions. From there, it’s just getting more and more parts then those little screams turn into one line, two lines, three lines and eventually I was presented with the script for Golden Boy and that’s how the voice acting started.

Which do you think is the more challenging job, the art or the voice acting?

I think the voice acting is more challenging because you have to compete against other actors. Artwork, you can see it pretty much everywhere. Voice acting, depending however you look at it, for me, I think the voice acting is lot harder ‘cause you have to go to certain places to audition, get out there and you have compete against a lot of other talented people. Actually they’re both tied…about half and half…well, yeah…there about the same. I’m changing my answers already, it’s crazy. I’m more comfortable with the art, let me put it that way and I feel more secure with the art. I enjoy my art. I love the voice acting thing too, but I find it more difficult because you’re left hanging. You don’t know if you’re going to get it or not and then there’s the fact of driving to and from the location.

Do you prefer to draw original characters or do commissioned characters?

I like to draw original characters and then when I go to conventions, that’s when I draw descriptive characters from fans and I really enjoy seeing what they have to write down, because I’ve created some really amazing pieces of artwork from their descriptions and the reaction that I get from the fans is very rewarding for me. ‘Cause when I finish a piece of artwork and they see it finished or they see it being developed before them, they’re just amazed at how it comes into vision for them. For me it’s just as exciting because I really like it, like, “I’ve got to give this to you now, I don’t want to give it away…you paid for it, but I have to give it…” it’s kind of like they’re my babies, you know…”I don’t get to see you again…” they’re gone. So, I add my website address on there in hopes that they’ll scan it in and send me a good resolution copy of my work that I’d done for them. And fans are more than welcome to use the artwork that I do for them, for their websites and whatever they need to do with it as long as they give proper credit and title to me and my website, and what I do. Eventually, at some point I would love to get a book together and, I don’t know, maybe give it a name like “CONmissions” and just have a big book of all the commissions I’ve done at previous conventions and just give recognition, a little shout out to all the people I’ve drawn them for.

Wow, it’s amazing that you use that wording. This is exactly how it’s written on my question sheet; “I know that, for most artists, their creations are like their children”. Do you have a favorite child?

Oh gee, there’s several, but I can’t remember them. There are so many pictures that are memorable and there are some that want to forget. But for the fans that I drew them for, they all seem to love ‘em. So, I’m happy in that respect, but the artist in me says, “Oh, I could have done so much better”. And when they come back the next year and they bring the old piece of artwork because they remember what I said about I’d never see my art pieces again, they say, “Remember this? You drew this for me last year” and I look like, “Oh, I could do so much better now”. I look at like, “you still like that?”, so it’s all in the eye of the beholder.

Do you have any current or future projects either with your art or your voice work you’d like to tell the fans about?

Yeah, yeah! The artwork, like I was saying, I want to do some kind of books of some of my stuff, I want to get some larger prints, I want to do a lot of things. I have a comic book I’m doing with a friend of mine, he’s a writer and co-creator of a little comic book company he’s starting called Starship Comics and he’s doing a book called, “When the Dead Go Bowling” and it’s basically like a bunch of short stories, it’s going to be like a horror comic, a spinoff kind of like Tales From the Crypt, Creap Show-esque kind of book. And it’s getting a lot of interesting responses. Just hearing you guys laugh at the title is already grabbing people by the ears like, “Ooo…sounds like pouring honey in their ears”, like “when’s it going to be out?”, but it’s hard to get the time to work on it because there’s so much going on at conventions and by the time I get back, I’m so burned out or still playing catch-up from the commissions that I did not finish. Luckily, nine times out of ten, I do finish all the commissions that I do at the conventions and a lot of the fans are happy to see that because most people are worried that they’ll never see the artwork that I was supposed to get them was never given to them because they paid for it, but I try to get every single piece out.

As far as the voice acting goes, I would like to do more projects with ADV. In fact, I missed out on an opportunity to do some work in a show called “Get Backers” in Austin and Greg Ayers wanted to be in that show so bad. I haven’t told him yet, but the fact that I missed out on that is a bummer, but I’m not knocking that too much because there could be other opportunities. I just recently recorded an episode of “Case Closed” with Funamtion. It was different working for a different company other than ADV…a different process, a whole new situation. I enjoyed recording. It went really fast, really smooth and I really like it. An earlier project I finished up this year is “Steam Detectives”, I played two characters, Doria and Pasta. They looked like the Blues Brothers…I call them the Blues Brothers because they look like the Blues Brothers. One’s tall, skinny, sunglasses, hat, suit, you know…everything. The other one’s short, fat, you know, round-type character and he had the deep voice. The other guy’s pretty high and had a little whiney voice. So, that was an interesting character to do, but it was all fun, I enjoyed it. I really want to try out for it, because ADV picked up The Gatchaman series, the old one. It’s all over the message boards and the news streams and I so want to try out for the character Joe. He’s a popular character, I hear, and the rebel of the whole Gatchaman series and I sooo want to play that character. But I gotta keep my fingers crossed, there’s probably a lot of other people out there who are just as talented or even better, but it never hurts to give it a shot.

We wish you the best of luck with that, I know you’d make a great Joe. Thank you very much for the interview…

Well, thank you, thank you very much…I mean I’m glad to have answered any questions you have given me today and I hope to see you again at other conventions…and have a good time.

We look forward to seeing you too.

If you'd like to see Doug's website mentioned in the interview, you can find it DougSmithArt.com.

~Ashley Clark (Anna May Belle)