We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Zia Zhu. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Zia below.
Zia, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.
The principles of most of the visual art media are somewhat interconnected. I often get inspiration from things other than digital drawing. When I work, I like to have some video/audio playing in the background as white noise. A lot of the times I find movie synapses videos on Youtube very effective. In those videos, there are a lot of the times beautiful/iconic scenes from the movie. Those scenes are crafted by really good directors, and they could be inspiring for ideas for my work.
I find it very helpful to stop focusing on my own work, and try to get different ideas from different things, such as movies, games, and natural sceneries.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I work as an independent digital illustrator. I sell my art at conventions, and take commissioned works.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The most important thing is to try to achieve as high professional skill level as one can. It is always easier to succeed if you are better at the craft than your competitors. Then it is good to work smarter. A lot of the times it takes more than one aspect of skills to succeed. One of the observations I got from selling art at conventions is that: The shop that sells the best is the ones that has the most popular commodities, but not the ones with the best commodities. So as an artist, it is not just my drawing skills, but also my abilities to learn my target audience and what they like.
Last but not least, it is always good to get advice/help from others. It saved me so much effort and time from just talking with others about my problems. A lot of the times people were able to give me suggestions that I did not even know existed. And even if they don’t give any suggestions, just by talking through the issue, I was able to get some insights that helps with the problem.
How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?
I am a person who gets motivated from positive feedbacks. As an artist, the most objective feedback I can have is the likes/views on social media when I post my work. However, it is not as objective, because the performance of the post is greatly affected by the algorithm. The challenge I am facing is that it is too easy for me to correlate the quality of my work to the social media performance. It is easy for me to get really upset when a post does not do well.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ziazillustration.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ziya_illust/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ziya_illust
