Story & Lesson Highlights with Tannen Fair of Muncie

We’re looking forward to introducing you to Tannen Fair. Check out our conversation below.

Good morning Tannen, it’s such a great way to kick off the day – I think our readers will love hearing your stories, experiences and about how you think about life and work. Let’s jump right in? What is a normal day like for you right now?
Normally I wake up and will do some small creative task, usually just messing around on photoshop with a sketch or graphic design work. I’ll usually do that and sip on caffeine until I feel awake enough and then hit the gym/walk for a few hours. After that it’s just getting home and putting pen to paper as long as my attention span will allow.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My name is Tannen Fair but I’m mostly know as “Moribund” for my artwork and scribbles. I started posting my art back in 2022 on my instagram and it pretty quickly took off, in 2024 I took the leap to make art full time and have been doing that ever since.

I can remember as far back as kindergarten drawing things. I was very obsessed with Godzilla and monster movies as a kid so I’d always draw things related to that. As I got older I got very much into video games so I would spend a lot of time in school drawing my own concepts and “screenshots” instead of doing actual schoolwork.

Drawing has always been a part of my life that I never took seriously and mainly was an escape for me. Back around Covid/lockdown some of my musician friends started to get eyes on my work and would push me to do something with it and I never really listened. Around 2022 I started posting my work and quickly got attention from bands in the Death Metal scene and everything just kind of took off steadily since.

I guess what I would say makes my work unique is a couple of things, I take a lot of influence from Video games and movies, I pay attention to a lot of the small details and try to flesh those things out in my work. Example would be like having the safety selector and rivets/dimples on an AK in a drawing in the right place, or a slide on a pistol ejecting the round and cycling in the next one. I also just try to stay open and not stay in one lane. My bread and butter will always be the edgy gross Death Metal style work but I like to challenge myself in other ways. Here lately I’ve really been trying to get better with Graphic Design and photo manipulation just to expand my horizons a bit. I really just love to learn and grow and I think that’s the most rewarding part of this

Okay, so here’s a deep one: What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world?
This is a heavy one, I can think of a few instances but for the sake of brevity I will say taking the leap and doing art full time was massive. I’ve always been a nose to the grind wheel/work hard kind of person. Any job I’ve had I’ve always been that idiot that works extra hours or does more even though I make the same pay as everyone else. I never understood why people would hang back or do the minimum until I went solo.

The thing is those places don’t care what all you do , and usually the more you do the more they’ll ask. I always lived under this “If I don’t work hard I’ll get fired and be screwed” so I almost did it out of fear in a way.
I would kill myself doing trucks just for more to come the next day and didn’t spend any of my time on myself.

When I took that leap I found all of that effort I could put into myself and my work and that made me really see just how meaningless the stuff that goes on at these jobs really is and what I was truly capable of. It’s made me see the world completely different and actually see and experience the beauty life has to offer when I didn’t see it before.

What did suffering teach you that success never could?
How to survive honestly ,and to see silver lining in situations , if it hadn’t been for struggling growing up I wouldn’t know or see how far I’ve come and know how to get through the harder times.

We didn’t have money when I was younger and it was a constant struggle to find how we’d get bills and food covered. I feel like that translates into current me pretty well too. It’s helped me to check myself when I find myself complaining about small things these days, and It’s taught me to be very grateful for a lot of things in my life.

I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. What’s a belief or project you’re committed to, no matter how long it takes?
Sounds cliché but literally just trusting the process is huge. I’ve always just held the belief that if you want something bad enough, it’ll happen even if subconsciously you’re working towards it. That’s always worked for me in some way and so I’ve always held onto that. There’s always been these weird situations where I have some obligation or something , an example would be my old job. I would have to either bail on something like a show or going somewhere because I had to work the next day. I found that every time I would say screw it and go something insane would happen, I’d meet someone or get a job that I would have completely missed out on if I had just went back to work. Most of that has gotten me to where I am now so I’ve always trusted it when things risky like that come up.

Before we go, we’d love to hear your thoughts on some longer-run, legacy type questions. Are you tap dancing to work? Have you been that level of excited at any point in your career? If so, please tell us about those days. 
Ah man , there’s a few examples that come to mind with that. I remember early on being at my warehouse job feeling miserable and would look at my phone and see messages from bands I dreamed of working with hitting me up for art. It would instantly light me up inside. Sometimes I would even leave work early if it was something I just couldn’t wait to work on or even call in sometimes. I would feel so complete sitting down and working on projects like that, I still do.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moribund_art/
• Other: [email protected]