Interview

Dominic Carter talks to the visual artist about creating his own comic and why sketchbooks are great for creative experiments

CELSIUS PRIME “A drawing from the world of Celsius Prime. This is a clan of mechanics living in the underbelly of a megastructure.”

When Jan Wessbecher realised that his illustrations were small windows into a brand new world, he knew that he would have to start gearing them towards comics. We caught up with the talented artist, who tells us all about how he’s created his own graphic novel series, why concept art was a natural fit for him, and how he experiments with digital sketches.

Can you tell us a little about your background as an artist? How did you get started and what has your career been like so far?

I was always interested in art for as long as I can remember, but I think I started taking an interest specifically in fantasy illustration when I was a teenager and one day bought a set of the Dungeons & Dragons rule books. Until then I’d been doodling in class a lot and had been gifted some paints that I was experimenting with as well, but once I delved into that different world and saw all the illustrations in those books, it kind of supercharged my imagination.

After that, I started attending an art course with a local artist, and that kept my interest strong until I discovered internet art forums. That’s when I got more serious about a future in the creative field. I also got into gaming pretty hard with the release of World of Warcraft. All of the artwork and the possibility to explore a different world fitted right into what I saw online, so that’s what I pursued back then.

Once I had a graphics tablet, things really took off and I started investing a lot more time into my drawing and painting. I’m not even sure anymore what exactly got me to the point of deciding on a career in concept art, but I just wasn’t passionate about anything else. I kind of went all in.

LEADING ROLE “An early sketch of the main character of my comic. The sketchbook it’s in still isn’t filled years later!”

"I just wasn’t passionate about anything else. I went all in"

Once I graduated from school, I applied to an internship with a local game developer called exDream using all the stuff I’d worked on in the previous years as a portfolio. Looking back now, I think my life could have taken a very different route had they not accepted me back then, but they did, which was very fortunate!