If you come across Rebelle, you definitely must have seen his fantastic and humorous art creations. His original approach to art blows us every time away. What’s more, we are especially proud that this talented mind comes from our homeland - Slovakia. Let us introduce you Martin Hanschild!
Greetings Martin! Tell our readers something about you. What do you do for a living? Do you remember the moment when you knew art was something you wanted to keep?
I come from a small town in the east of Slovakia and since my childhood, I’ve loved drawing and painting. As a kid I always attended various art classes - I definitely drew more than playing football. According to this, I chose a college and graduated from art education. For a few years, I also taught at a secondary art school. After some time my wife got a job offer in the Czech Republic, near Prague, and I thought it would be exciting to try something else. This is how I stumbled upon the film and advertising where I’ve still been working as a character designer and art director.
Obelix gained his strength when he fell into the magic potion as a child. As you are one of the most creative people we’ve ever meet, can you share with us where is a source of your inspiration? Did any lucky coincidence happen to you when you were little? :)
In my childhood, I used to drink a broth from the unicorn’s horn every odd Sunday. I can definitely recommend that! But otherwise, the books, video games, listening to music, watching things, the world around me and the people I meet is what inspires me every day. Well, but still the best inspiration for me is to just sit back and start drawing. I enjoy it the most - doodling without any specific purpose - something always appears. A character or idea comes out that I then develop further. An excellent creativity boost is various artistic challenges on social networks, such as Inktober, etc. I like to stick to the themes and think about them. I travel for about an hour to work, so I have plenty of time for this activity. At work, I’m used to customizing art styles based on client requirements. This also translates into my own creative stuff, so my works are always a mix of styles and techniques.
Anyway, I do not feel like I’m somewhat creative, I do not think about it at all. I’m mainly trying not to get bored. :)
You’ve come a long way with Rebelle. How do you enjoy this journey?
I think I caught the first mention of Rebelle on CgChannel.com back in 2015. And because I like to try all new graphics programs, Rebelle was no exception. Well, I usually do not last long for testing; I just try the program, scribble something and compare it to what I’m already familiar with. Well with Rebelle I was literally fascinated by how cool the watercolor simulation works and how intuitively I can work with it. So in fact, I completely lost track of the time for a couple of hours. It was the fun and pure joy of painting. Since its first version, Rebelle has improved a lot, expanded with new features, but for me, it’s still a program which is an incredible joy to work with.
As I animate from time to time, I personally would be delighted to be able to animate in Rebelle. Recently, we created an animated spot for which we needed a watercolor look for frame-by-frame animation. We made rewinding watercolors in Rebelle and handled the animation in other software, but some animation modules would be great. I could imagine it in the form of some extended version, as I understand that it’s not something that everyone uses.
Thanks for your suggestion – let’s see what we can do with that.
If you suddenly were unable to practice your craft, what would you choose to do in its place?
I have no idea, maybe I‘ll finally start playing football????. But I hope it will not happen soon.
Hopefully not! We were fascinated to see an image of Paper Theater that you did for your children. Except for such DIY projects, what do you do in your free time?
Oh, theater! I must admit that the original idea was to make plastic puppets - marionettes, but then I considered my time options and craft skills and the result was a paper theater. If anyone is interested, the theater can be downloaded from >> here <<. Go ahead and play it with your children! It’s a fairly simple concept. Just print the characters on harder paper, cut it out and fix it on the wooden skewer.
I spend my free time with my family, and in the evenings when everyone is asleep, I have time for myself and work on my things such as these DIY projects. Or I just relax with books, comics or video games.
Who are your favorite artists that you’d suggest to us to follow?
I follow many artists on social networks, and I do not even have the preferred art style. But here are few chosen illustrators who are active on Instagram and whose work I really enjoy:
Zivko Kondic (@zhillustrator), Ko Byung Jun (@bj00100), Fintan Taite (@fintantaite), Zuzana Cupova (@suwi.illustration), Mattias Adolfsson (@mattiasink), Teemu Juhani (@teemujuhani), Elly Smallwood (@ellysmallwood)
Martin, thank you for your time! It was a pleasure!
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Visit Martin’s portfolio website: https://www.hanschild.com/ and follow his recent works on his Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matohanschild/
