Animation Best Of Graphic Design Illustration Interviews Solo artist video

Interview :: Andrew Khosravani

posted by Lo Parkin April 8, 2014

Andrew Khosravani is a London based Illustrator / Animator and recent graduate of the London College of Communication. Envisioning strange worlds and surreal landscapes through hand-rendered techniques, Andrew’s incredible illustrations draw influence from dead civilisations, science fiction and revered Gods and Deities. I was lucky enough to catch up with the up and coming illustrator to find out more about his work…

Please can you tell us a little about your process, how do you go about approaching a project and what methods / materials are included in your process?

I always start by researching the theme or background of what I’m trying to illustrate. Then I just sketch loads of loads of little doodles and see if any of my ideas are any good. If I get something that looks cool and simultaneously makes sense I can crack on with it. I almost always work on paper with either pen or colouring pencils (or both sometimes)

I love the tactile hand-made feel to your imagery, is this an important part of your process and how do you feel this is visually effective?

I have always been pretty analogue when it comes to producing work and even though it probably takes longer, for me I always prefer working on paper. It has a completely different feel to computer rendered work and better suits what I want to communicate.

What do you love most about working with pen / pencil & paper?

I love (and hate) the fact that if you fuck up, that’s it. You can’t ctrl+z it and reverse your mistake, which is really frustrating, but also rewarding if you get it right.

Your illustrations hold a surreal sense of narrative, is this something you are conscious of doing when you make an image or do you find it comes organically?

I always try to include a narrative in the images I make, sometimes its clear and other times only I know what it is but I think its important, as an illustrator, to try and communicate on multiple levels. I’m a huge fan of Hieronymus Bosch and his paintings which fuse so many different ideas and narratives within one painting. His work has definitely been a big influence on the way I like to work.

How do you render your inspirations in science fiction / Gods & Deities into an image?

I’m just really interested in that sort of stuff so it kind of comes naturally. Im constantly reading about black holes and space so it ends up coming into my work a lot. There is also something so visually stimulating about all those ancient civilisations I can’t help but translate some of it into my own stuff. I usually read up on something and find it so interesting I have to do something with it somehow.

I love your ‘Nothing in particular’ animation, can you tell us a little more about this and your inspirations behind the project

This project was super fun, and since doing it I have been experimenting a lot with after effects and animation. It’s a play on words as everything made in that clip was done with a plug in called Trapcode Particular (a really good particle generator) and it’s just a load of tests and experiments I made whist playing with it. I watched shit loads of youtube tutorials and made some awful stuff, just to get the hang of it but in the end managed to get a few nice bits, which was a bonus.

If you had to describe your style in 3 words what would they be?

Ahh this is a hard one… Bizarre, Trippy, Colourful?

I love the murals you’ve made for Squint Limited and MTV, can we expect to see more of this and do you enjoy working in a larger scale?

It is always interesting to work on massive scales because you have to compromise on your usual way of working and find a way of translating it. It can be quite daunting too but once you get going its pretty fun. At the moment I haven’t got any murals coming up but I would be more than happy to get back on the horse!

What would be a dream project for you to work on?

Art Direct the Oasis Reunion tour.

What can we expect to see from you in the future?

At the moment I’m working pretty much exclusively on some animation projects so I’m pretty much chained to my computer/ chair/ Lightbox for the foreseeable future haha. Apart from that I also did some skateboard graphics for London skate shop Slam City Skates which come out really soon. I’m super excited about skating those!