We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rooks Moore a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Rooks, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

Yes, I have been able to have an average of $20k (before tax) income per year, for the last 3 years. Prior, I use to work in mostly factory jobs and worked on whatever art I owed on my time off before/after work, and some more time on the weekends if I had the energy, which was pretty often if I didn’t have too many chores in my way.

I thoroughly enjoy my work and the customers I get to work with. Since I work as a freelance artist, each customer is more than welcome to share their ideas with me, as it also becomes a great learning experience.

Years ago, I would focus more in the Furry community exclusively, but at some point I hit a major burnout that lasted about 3 months. During those 3 months I thought over if I should reprioritize my work options, i.e. Sci-fi, Dark Fantasy, learning how the functional details of anatomy and machines work gave me a lot of inspiration, and gave me so much room to experiment with. This also worked well for my freelance job, as now I have all different types of people coming to me to push my limit, in the best way possible.
Of course if there’s something that’s too beyond my skill and/or preferences, I will let them know without any issues.

Socializing on twitter was my best shot to expand my audience, as well as meeting and greeting amazing artists I never thought I would before. I also enjoy talking to non-artists as a lot of them have so many awesome ideas, or recommendations for me to explore.
I really would not be where I am today without everyone to support me the whole way through.

Rooks, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

As far as I can remember, I’ve been interested in art. I’ve been told by my family that I was obsessed with Jurassic Park, and Godzilla when I was as young as 3 or 4 years old. To my parents, they never expected their little girl to be so into such things, but instead of being scared, I would laugh and watch the same movies on VHS dozens of times and never get tired. I’m glad they were both supportive in my hobby. While I’m sure they wanted me to focus on my homework more often, like any kid with ADHD/Autism would, homework was boring and I only cared about drawing.
It’s a funny memory in hindsight, and I don’t regret any of it.

By dumb luck and determination, my skill grew very fast after I graduated high school in 2011, since I had so much free time for a few years. At some point I was interested in going to art college, but it only took me one look at their prices and I said “no thank you, let me get a job first” and I never considered going to college ever since.

My skills really jumped when I got into digital art around 2010, as I didn’t have to worry about wasting materials or space for my art. I had plenty to learn how to use digital art as my choice of medium, and more so to figure out my own style.
I think it wasn’t until 2018 when I really experimented with 5 or 6 different styles. They were so different that you would never have guessed they were all drawn by the same person. Eventually I focused my time on semi-realism paintings, as I figured out Dark Fantasy and real life Oil Paintings became my favorite muse.

My favorite digital program I use for my work, Paint Tool Sai, was my first and only choice to learn digital art with. I got so comfortable and experimenting its limited options, that I didn’t care to try out Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia, etc.
Others have asked if I have other programs to experiment with, but for the most part, I didn’t care to try anything else out because I was proud of the work I was producing with such an old application.
These days I do have CSP to practice short sketchy animation loops, and sooner than later I will be experimenting with Blender and see how that goes. I loved ceramics class so much back in high school that I can see myself getting into 3D sculpting after I update my PC’s hardware.

The most proud work I have done is honestly a hard question to answer. There’s so many paintings that turned out well that I would ramble on forever. But for starters;
-I have worked on a Book Cover for “Hearthstone; Under the Shadow” by John Schreiber, with my old alias “C.W.Life”
-I often get work to help design Homebrewed DnD monsters and characters, and I get some insight on how chaotic the DM’s plan to get with the story ( I love it every time, the players never know what hits them)
-I am currently working on a music art cover too, but that will be discreet until the day it’s released publicly.

I know there are plenty of other projects that brought me great skill improvement and success, but these are the first things that come to mind.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Video games.

A lot of people who don’t play video games might not understand that some titles are truly a work of art in themselves, and inadvertently became my biggest inspirations i.e.;

— “Monster Hunter” had a great sense of the ‘thrill of the hunt’ and it was my first major introduction to monster designs, and how they would function as real living animals.

— “Dark Souls” and “Bloodborne” ‘esque titles was, and still is, an excellent choice for my love of Dark Fantasy and Baroque/Gothic designs and atmosphere.

— “Shadow of the Colossus” and “The Last guardian” had a more minimal story, and allowed me to explore the world without having feel like i missed something important with the plot. those also had amazing monster designs.

— PlayStation 3’s “Journey” is still the best title i would recommend anyone to play, simply for its beautiful experimental art style of golden deserts and flashes of wonder and danger.

— “Death Stranding” was so good that I cried for hours after watching all of the cutscenes in one sitting, getting a bad headache from it all
(it was about 9 hours of cutscenes, and I would do it all over again)

Even some titles I never personally played, I would watch on YouTube and would find myself listening to video essays that explained the lore, nuance, and details that I missed the first time I experienced any of these games.

I feel like their soundtracks are greatly underestimated too, and that is considering all types of genre’s of the games and music that is produced.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I do wish I was more mentally prepared to understand that social norms in the art field are much more open, friendly, and well wishing. Especially when I joined the Monster Art Community after my burnout.
To this day, the artists, customers, and friends I made along the way were of great help, and showed me what its like to work as a community, almost as co-workers, and support each other whenever we all can.

However, I’ve always wondered what it would be like if I had the same mentality 10+ years ago, or if my younger self had the mentality I have today. I know nothing would really have changed since younger me had no idea what I was going to experience, but it is fun to brain storm about it.

If I really had to give some advice to my younger self, I would tell them to look into free therapy videos online. I watch and listen to a lot of free general advices on yt (huge shoutout to DrMick on YouTube).
If I didn’t come across video essays and explanations like this, I would bet real money I would be in a worse mental state, so I am grateful to be where I am at today.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rksk.carrd.co
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rooksmoore/?hl=en
• Twitter: https://www.instagram.com/rooksmoore/?hl=en
• Other: https://www.twitch.tv/rookshocksshack

  https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/rookshocksshack/

Image Credits

All photography and art was created by me, Rooks Moore 5/22/2024