The Art of Nate Simpson

Posted By yonghow on October 5th, 2010

The Art of Nate Simpson

One of the exciting rewards of running an animation/illustration art blog is the chance to interact with talented artists; through comments, messages and pingbacks left on various articles and posts on my blog I’ve been lucky indeed to get acquainted with such amazing artists like Enrico Casarosa, Louie Del Carmen, Yoko Tanji, Todd Akita, Jackson Sze, Tessar Lo, and more. Game art designer/comic artist Nate Simpson from Seattle is the latest artist I’ve had the fortune of “meeting”, below’s a Q & A as he tells us more about his work and influences.

Q : Please tell us a little more about the yourself, your background, what work/project you’re presently on, and what projects that are lined up.

A : I got my first game job in 1993 at a company my father helped start, called the Dreamer’s Guild. I did concept and game art there during the summers while I studied Paleontology at the University of Chicago. After a couple of years, I realized I liked drawing dinosaurs way more than I liked digging for them, so I switched to the Art Institute of Chicago and got a degree in painting and drawing.
After school ended in 1999, I drifted back to Southern California and immediately got another game job, this time at Taldren. There, I did concepts and built models for the Starfleet Command series of PC games, as well as for a few titles that never made it to production. After that, I followed my boss to Korea, where I was a producer and art director for GoPets, and online social pet-collecting game. I did that for a couple of years, then taught English for a year, then bounced back to the States to work at Gas Powered Games, where I led the art team for Demigod. I left GPG in early 2009.
Presently, I’m taking some time off to work on a comic called Nonplayer. The first issue should be hitting the stands in late February of 2011. I don’t have any plans to do anything other than develop the comic, though the sustainability of this course depends on how well the comic sells!

Q : What are some of the films/animation/artists that influence you the most / that you like ?

A : My biggest influences, in order, are Moebius, Geof Darrow, William Stout, and Arthur Rackham. I watched a lot of anime as a kid — Macross, Nausicaa, and Akira all had big impacts on my style. Appleseed probably affected the way I think about drawing tech, as well. These days, I’m excited by the cultural cross-pollination that seems to be happening in comics and animation. Tekkonkinkreet and FLCL are probably my favorite recent-ish anime projects. Comics wise, I’m really enjoying Yotsuba and 20th Century Boys, as well as some of the new Western artists like Brandon Graham, Sara Pichelli, and Benoit Springer. With the internet, there’s just too much awesomeness — I can’t keep track, anymore. I’m sure I’m forgetting somebody really rad. Bengal. I like that guy’s stuff a lot.

Q : What made you decide to depart from your games job to do comics ?

A : I think this happens to just about everybody who does art for games for more than a few years. At some point, you get a little worn down by the deadlines and the constant compromise (and you’ve managed to squirrel away some savings), and you want to take a stab at something a little purer. This is probably just one stage in an ongoing cycle of making games/saving some money/going freelance/going back to games. I guess we’ll see if Nonplayer opens up some new doors.

For jobs/project queries contact Nate via his website. All artwork shown property of Nate Simpson.

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7 Responses to “The Art of Nate Simpson”

j. smalls

Nice article, looking forward to more interviews.

Hina

Nice interview! I’m also wanted to be a paleontologist… until I realized how hard it must be digging for them as well as various other difficulties. But I still love drawing them! Because of their varied shapes I often find myself drawing a dinosaur’s frame, and then adding the parts (wings, extra limbs, horns, etc.) of the creature I initially wanted to draw.

Hina

Oh and, the comic strip show, is that Nonplayer? Looks very pretty. I especially love the wildlife designs.

FAUNA

Nice. Yes, definite Moebius/Nausicaa influence, which is awesome..

yonghow

j.smalls – Thank you ! I’ll try to do this again ! :]

FAUNA – Much agreed !

Buttoneer

Great interview, the art is also incredible!

Great blog as well!!

Tiago Pinto

Since you and i are into mech and cyber stuff, Otomo, Moebius and Darrow do have a hyper detailed style to them, there is a personal recommendation i would like to make as this book blew my mind, it’s from Deathburger, he is a spanish illustrator that made a few pieces for Cyberpunk 2077 and William Gibson’s Neuromancer book series cover illustrations, his website and merch here: https://citadel9.com/

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