Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Andrew Cremeans. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Andrew, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?
That is a really interesting question. Yes, absolutely.
Even though I totally love what I do and wouldn’t trade it for anything, there are times when I fantasize about getting a “normal” job. It’s usually when I’m feeling burned out and it often stems from one of two reasons:
The first would be that ‘stability’ in commercial art can be almost non-existent at times, even if you are with a huge and generally reliable company. I have been extremely fortunate to be able to have the career that I have had but there have been many lean years.
When times of uncertainty, like a 9/11 …or a recession …or a pandemic happens people generally cut their entertainment budgets first. That adds a whole new layer of fear on top of what’s already happening, especially when you have a family to support. You start to think, “You know, if the zombie apocalypse is about to start I doubt someone is going to hire me to make a logo.”
The second would be, after doing commercial art for so long and the pressure of having to be “the most creative you’ve ever been” every single day for 25 years you start to wonder how long the artistic reservoir will stay full enough. There are times when I worry that maybe I’ve given all my best ideas to some project that allowed me to pay the electric bill back in 2016 or something. There’s a romantic idea in the back of my mind that if I took on a different career for a while the reservoir would have a chance to fill all the way back up. Its delicate balance. It’s also why it’s essential to know when it’s time to take a break and recharge the batteries.
I can’t imagine what ‘normal’ type of job I would take though to be honest. I don’t think I know how to separate art from who I am as a person.
Andrew, 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?
My name is Andrew Cremeans and I am a Graphic Designer and Creative Director with over 20 years experience in the video game and commercial art industry.
I have been either Artist or Art Director for over 30 video games, which include games for Disney, Pixar, Lucasfilm, Marvel, Mattel, Nickelodeon and many more.
More recently I have been jumping between Concept Designer, Storyboard Artist and Graphic Artist for companies like Walt Disney Imagineering, Disney Consumer Products, Universal Pictures, Warner Brothers, and Spooky Empire. I have probably gotten the most attention recently for the artwork I have been doing for rock bands, specifically Metallica.
I am currently employed full time as Art Director for GameFam, a company that makes games for the metaverse-style platform Roblox.
Growing up, I was completely obsessed with all things Star Wars. My goal very young was to one day do artwork for something Star Wars related or for Walt Disney, specifically Imagineering. I feel like the projects that have allowed me to be anywhere near the orbit of those things, along with doing anything for my favorite band Metallica, have been an absolute dream come true.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
This is kind of new and kind of raw but I see a big pivot coming within the next 5 to 10 years, unfortunately.
I was pretty excited early on about the Artificial Intelligence programs that were making cool looking art with just a simple text prompt but more recently I have felt a couple of “uh oh” moments. I’ve always tried to embrace new technology and I’ve tried to not get too old and grumpy about the tides changing but some red flags are popping up in this area.
The stuff I am able to create right now -with one of those programs in particular- frightens me a bit. It’s not perfected yet but the leaps and bounds it has made just in the last 18 months leave some of those images completely indistinguishable from an actual digital artist. I’m not naïve enough to think that it won’t start taking a lot of jobs away from artists, especially in the concept art field, in the next 5 years or so.
I know people will say “yeah, but people will always want art made by a real person” but I have had too many clients over the years that have viewed artists as a frustrating means to an end. They just want to get their genius ideas on paper but need an artist to put the lines where they need to go. Those are the people that will embrace this and stop hiring artists. A lot of freelancers are going to feel this soon.
The frustrating issue is, AI needs input to learn from. Without someone feeding previously created art into the technology it has no way to learn, so it is actually using human created content to replace human artists. None of the artists have consented to this, it’s just pulled from the ether. You can even type in a specific artist’s name and get the art generated in their style. Sometimes it’s unbelievably close.
There are also people posting their AI generated art on their websites as their own “art,” as if the cleverness of their text prompt was what it took to make it. People are even really secretive about the language they use in their text prompts because they feel like someone will just use the same text and get something similar. It’s weird.
Everyone has to pivot with the times, I get it, but I feel a ‘Napster’ level event is kind of brewing for digital art. I feel like digital artists are going to have to get extremely specialized very quickly in order to make a living and move away from things that can be finalized with static images. It’s a bit scary, but we’ll make it.
Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)
I know a few artist friends who made a whole lot of money on them very early on but generally speaking I think that they are ridiculous.
You know, to be honest I’m probably the wrong person to ask this question objectively because I was personally affected by the scam of it all. I remember reading an article that was titled something like “NFT’s Are The Bane of Artist’s Existence” and the whole article explained how artists were getting their art snatched up and sold without permission, so I started looking online for bits of my own art that I thought might be ripe for the taking.
Within about 15 minutes I realized that the makers of a very famous movie had done a press conference announcing NFTs for the film and they had been using my artwork on all the press and their website. There were even press shots of the famous director sitting on a stage explaining the NFTs with my artwork projected on a big screen behind him.
I tried contacting the company and was met with zero response. After a few days I took it to Twitter and it blew up quite a bit but I still got no response from the company. Weirdly though, I kept getting messages from random people that were “kind of” affiliated with the company saying “Listen bro, that sucks you got ripped off. Let’s put together a “We Stand for Artists Rights” NFT and you can keep some of the money. Just draw the NFT for us and we’ll partner up.” It was so skeezy. I thought “You stole my art, so you want me to draw you more art and partner with you to make you more money?”
The whole NFT collection for the movie ended up getting scrapped for legal reasons with the movie studio. It sucks because I love the director and the movie and all I really wanted was acknowledgment that it was my artwork, but they just couldn’t publicly admit to stealing it.
I know quite a few artists that woke up one day early on to find out that their art was stolen and sold by someone who just pulled it off the internet. It can be a pretty sleazy scheme. You’re not even buying the copyright to the image, you are just claiming ownership.
It feels a lot like those websites that used to sell you a certificate that you own property on the moon or something. Plus, ultimately its helping destroy the environment for quick monetary gain. Not a fan.
Contact Info:
- Website: andrewcremeans.com
- Instagram: @andrewcremeansart
Image Credits
Photo by Sean Jacobs