SVS Artist Interview with Viktor Nassli - Nasvikdraws

[KathrynAdebayo]

Hello, everyone! Here is the second of what will hopefully be a series of interviews with artists on this forum. There is so much to learn and share within this community, and it seems that going deeper into people's stories draws out a lot of insights.

Today's words of inspiration and wisdom come from forum member @Nasvikdraws, who caught the attention of many with his humorous and relatable Inktober series, "The Adventures of Dad-dad".

Could you tell us a bit about yourself?

I am Viktor Nassli, originally from Hungary, working as an architect in New York. I am married, in my thirties and my son just turned two. He is the most amazing thing that happened to me ( ...but next year is last season of Game of Thrones so this is subject to change….:)

In a few words, what would you say led you into art?

I was alway eager to create. I remember as a kid I was drawing all the time, making clay figurines, building lego skyscrapers, planning out hand-made Christmas gifts in August, reading DIY books for kids, I even embroidered. I was a single child so I learnt to occupy myself. Always something.
Then I went to architecture school because in Hungary the choices were very limited. (I almost became a lawyer…whew) After graduation I had brief experience in many different fields. I did graphic design as a freelancer, I worked at an advertising agency, an editing studio, an animation studio, a game developer and of course at architect offices. A little bit of each. These different experiences helped a lot in finding my way.

Could you share three pieces that you feel are your best to this point? Or that you learned something new from while creating?

I really like working on Adventures of Dad-Dad and as that is my most recent work I may be biased.
Therefore, I would like to present the following 3. Not sure if these are the best but I feel that these were all challenging in different ways. Also they show an array.

’QubeSix’: I attended a short concept art course at School of Visual Art in New York and did this dystopian piece as my personal project. I spent a lot of hours on it and I developed a full story which I will share later. I haven’t yet published this anywhere but here. Looking at it with a fresh eye I could have composed it better but this piece means a lot to me.

‘#nofilter’: This one was done for a competition and it was exhibited at the ARC Billboard Exhibition 2018 in Hungary. I wanted to depict the falsity of social media. It was so much fun to study the technique of line engraving and reproduce it digitally.

‘Bullied’: I really like working in black and white. My recent pieces have a similar style as this piece.

• ‘Flash Intro’ : https://vimeo.com/284847465 This is a bonus one as this is an animation, made for a TV program at a Hungarian music channel. This one is fairly old but I still remember this as a great experience. Except for the music I did the entire thing by myself from concept to final.

What are your goals as a "visual storyteller", and what point would you say you're at in that journey?

My main goal is to create art for a living. Most likely for children as they are the most important audience and they are exposed to so much low-quality content with no curation. Therefore, I would like to create children’s books but first I need to do a lot of color pieces as I am not confident with colors yet. On the long run, with my art, storytelling and accompanying activities I would like to help children to be raised more mindfully and more aware.
As a short term goal I am continuing the Dad-dad strips. I still have a lot to tell. I also have an animation short to finish that I am pushing for a few years now. I would like to have more experience in traditional and digital sculpting. I have so many goals that I will not be bored in the next 200 years.
I started thinking consciously about my art only a few years ago. I have a long journey ahead. My artworks may look developed to some but I think I try to disguise my inexperience with lot of thinking and OCD. If I don’t like something I polish it until I am confident to share. I know it is against the ‘finish not perfect rule’. Therefore, one of my goals is to do art more intuitively and less methodically.

Your comics, based off of this year's Inktober prompts, called "The Adventures of Dad-dad" had me laughing all October long. What has been your inspiration for the characters and their personalities? Do you have plans for publishing the comic?

Thank you. I am happy that you liked my comics. The positive feedback I got from the community helped a lot to carry on.
The biggest inspirations for the characters were my relationship with my son and my role as a father. As a parent you are often trying to be perfect in your role. I just want to show that you don’t have to do that. Be honest instead.
I was inspired by Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean too. He is infantile, playful, observant, egoistic and a little mean. Like a child. He is a misfit in the adult society but as he doesn’t care, he is free. I would like the Dad-dad strips to have the same ideology. Also, I read a lot of Garfield and Calvin & Hobbes when I was a kid and their way of storytelling had a big influence on me. I learnt a lot about comics from Scott MCloud’s books. They are awesome. Furthermore, I am a movie-buff so I think a lot of the movies I watched seep through too.
As for the style, Genndy Tartakovsky’s expressive and graphic style has always been very inspiring to me. I wanted to create a carefully laid out, simplified style enriched with nuance details. So many webstrips have rough, dumbed-down visuals that just don’t add anything to the written story/dialogue. I want the visuals and the written text to organically tell the stories hand in hand. I guess the SVS influence surfaced too. Hahaha.
I would like to self-publish the Inktober strips to have a finished product. I am also planning to continue creating more strips and would like to reach out to publishing companies about a year from now when I have enough material for a real book.

There are many parents on this forum trying to juggle illustration and caring for young children. What has been your biggest learning concerning this subject? What workflow do you use to accomplish your art in addition to other responsibilities?

Before my son was born I wasn’t that conscious about my art time. I wasted so many hours of my life with Netflix marathons and reading about stupid politics. After he was born we had to get used to a new schedule with much less “me-time” and I realized that in order to develop my art I needed to dedicate almost all of my personal time to art. I am much more focused now but it is challenging. You can’t take time away from your day job and you don’t want to cut down family time so you cut back sleep. Eg. I have been doing the Dad-dad comics from 10pm to 3am usually then off to work in the morning. That is why I couldn’t keep up with daily posting. I also draw on the subway and in lunchtime. Anytime when I have 5 minutes.
Also an extra challenge for me is that we are living in a super small apartment so I don’t have a personal workspace. I often have to draw on the cooktop, or the bathroom floor or under our desk covered with a blanket so I don’t disturb the rest of my family. I guess the harder the time the better the memory

Is there anything you need that the SVS Learn community could provide?

SVS Learn community is the best. It is vibrant, resourceful, supportive. I try to be as active as I can to participate (I need to share more WIP work for instance). As I didn’t go to art school I don’t have a network of art friends. Here at SVS I am developing relationship with artists at different levels while learning a lot from others. I am not a misfit anymore :).
I subscribed to SVS Learn too and I need to continue the education after I am done with Inktober (god! it’s mid November…..Lol) I am looking forward to @will-terry ‘s Composition Class 2.0.

Thank you Kathryn for the opportunity.

Thank you, Viktor, for taking the time for this!

Check out more of Viktor's art at the links below. If you haven't already, definitely give those Dad-dad comics some attention. And Viktor, let us know when we can buy the collection.

Full Portfolio:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/d9fp4htxshgn4mx/viktor nassli_portfolio_2018_small.pdf?dl=0
Illustration Portfolio:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rootugkccgsno2z/viktor nassli_portfolio_illustration_2018_small.pdf?dl=0
Adventures of Dad-dad:
https://forum.svslearn.com/topic/6505/nasvikdraws-inktober-2018-the-adventures-of-dad-dad
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/nasvikdraws/

[NessIllustration]

So awesome!! Thank you for continuing this interview series, it's so interesting!

[Nathan]

Loving these interviews. Keep it up!

[Eli]

Just another "I love the interviews!" comment! What a cool idea and I am really enjoying these.

[Nyrryl Cadiz]

@kathrynadebayo reading this was very fun. I now know a little bit more about @nasvikdraws. Thank you Kathryn.

[KathrynAdebayo]

@nasvikdraws I keep picturing you working at the cooktop or in the bathroom, and it's helped me put my ample workspace(s) into perspective. Thanks again for taking the time for these questions.

[Sarah LuAnn]

I loved all the Adventures of dad-dad comics. And the idea to do interviews is awesome, it’s a chance to get to know other forum members in a way we wouldn’t otherwise. Thank you!

[nasvikdraws]

@kathrynadebayo Lol. Not good on the long run as my back hurts crazy. Thank you again for the opportunity. Looking forward to the next interview...

[robgale]

@nasvikdraws Working from 10pm - 3am on the cooktop or the bathroom floor! The tenacity is inspirational. Also, I really love the other pieces you did, it's cool to see that you can work in other styles.
@KathrynAdebayo Thank you for doing these! It's so super helpful to hear about other people's stories.

[Whitney Simms]

And working under the table under the table cloth. That’s really inspirational. Crazy, but inspiring. Thanks for sharing your story and your work with all of us!

[nasvikdraws]

@Sarah-LuAnn Happy that you loved the comics.
@robgale Thanks for the kind words. I needed to take a break and catch up with sleeping. When I finished the Inktober drawings I realized how tired I am. But that is the thing. If you are passionate about a goal you don't really realize the lack of sleep because the endorphin in your body fuels you.
@Whitney-Simms Thank you. It was more adventurous than painful. I might draw an illustration of it.

[irina]

@kathrynadebayo said in SVS Artist Interview with Viktor Nassli - Nasvikdraws:

Then I went to architecture school because in Hungary the choices were very limited.

Haha, so true. Same here, although i really wanted to become an architect at 18 i think. (i'm also an architect, from Romania)

How do you manage to juggle working in architecture with doing illustration commisions? Also do you ever feel sort of like our architect drawing style stiffles us in approaching other art styles?

Do you plan to continue with architecture?

I'm a little bit disenchanted with the profession and would ideally love to just focus on children's illustration however i am also moving to london and will probably have to work in architecture to make enough money..

[nasvikdraws]

@irina
Hahaha. Hello, Neighbor! I am happy to find another soul lost in architecture

Architecture is my day job and at the moment I am not getting paid for my illustrations. I gave myself one year from now (due to other matters) to practice illustration. Then I would like to gradually transition from architecture. I was never passionate about architecture. It is as good as it gets. It helped me to get where I am but I feel that time to move on.

As per your question I assume that you are also suffering from the schizophrenic duality of the rigid modularity of architecture and the lyrical fluency of illustration. I couldn't yet loosen myself from architecture so I try to build it into my style. Whenever I try a more organic, loose style I get anxious and would like to finesse until it gets rigid

However, I think architecture really helps with an artistic thinking, composition, design which can be adapted to illustration. For example, there is a Hungarian animation director who started as an architect and became very successful with a very distinctive art in animation. Marcell Jankovics. His work might have seeped through to Romania.

So I understand you being disenchanted with architecture. If you don't like it try to give a little time for yourself in London and see if you find something closer to illustration and think about architecture as an option B. The thing about architecture as a profession is that it selfishly wants to be your #1 and doesn't really let you work on other things on the side.
Keep me posted about your transition to London. Good luck. I am interested in how it turns out. If I can help let me know as I guess we have a couple things in common. Lol.