The concept artist that I hold in highest regards, Feng Zhu talks a little about his design influences and where he draws inspiration from when producing his own work. What most people don't realize is that it is easy to make drawings look unbelievable and fantastical. It's much more difficult to make the audience believe what they're seeing could be real. In order to achieve this believability, you have to refer to resource materials with images meant to inform. Using these visual libraries, one can pick and choose elements from these direct sources to manipulate and combine in ways that are creative, innovative, and yet, familiar to the eye.
What fascinates me the most is his ending statements about becoming a better artist. The more you do something, the better you'll get at that something. In an age of convenience and speed, people look for shortcuts or tricks to become better as an artist. Yet, a fundamental element remains the same: time and practice are the only means to getting to a high level of expertise. Feng Zhu states this bluntly, yet beautifully.
