We were lucky to catch up with Christopher Burdett recently and have shared our conversation below.

Christopher, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

While I didn’t know it then, but my entire career has led me to write and illustrate the first novel in my Grand Bazaar series. I have designed monsters and built words for television, movies, and games, but it was all practice and learning that allowed me to tell my stories and make my world. The Grand Bazaar of Ethra VanDalia first breathed life while I was in college with the creation of the titular character and the first images of the world they come from. I then needed to spend over two decades learning how to make my world real. While I am very proud of many of the projects I have worked on over the years and hold up the art I did for them with pride, nothing will beat the feeling when I look at my novel and the joy I experience when I get to share it with people.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I began my career in 1999 while working on my first monster movie. It was shot in Tallahassee, FL which happened to be where I was attending college at the time. I did everything I could to involve myself with the production and spent a fantastic summer working on a vampire movie all night and attending classes all day. When I graduated, I moved to LA and continued to work for the shop that had provided the makeup effects for the vampire movie. I designed monsters and makeup, built miniatures, applied makeup, went to set, and occasionally ended up in front of the camera either in makeup or puppeteering. I was fortunate enough to work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly, as well as many other monster-related movies and shows.

In 2005 I left LA and transitioned into the tabletop gaming industry, where I designed and illustrated monsters for miniature, cards, and books. I have worked on Dungeons & Dragons, Magic the Gathering, and many Star Wars projects, to name a few. It has been the work done for games that have allowed me to sharpen my skill sets and become a better artist. I have worked with some of the best art directors in the industry on some of the premiere projects.

The one constant in all my work is the exploration of the self-portrait through monsters. Every piece I have done in my career has been in some way a self-portrait. Through this work, I have been able to address topics and issues that are important to me, which has led unltimately to the creation of the first book in The Grand Bazaar of Ethra VanDalia series.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I often wonder what I could have accomplished if I had known in 1999 what I know now. It is a flight of fancy because I needed to go on this journey to get to this destination. Work and time are what are most important. That said, I genuinely wish I had learned how to see much earlier in my career. What I mean is that during my career, I very much had to learn how to look at things, use reference, and to be able to look at my art as objectively as possible. The skill of looking at something and understanding what it is you are looking at and then to be able to translate it into an image you are making, is something people don’t naturally have. Being able to look at the art you made, as if with the eyes of a stranger is something that has taken years to perfect. But now that I have this skill it allows me to see what is and is not working in a particular piece and how best to improve what I am working on.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One of my biggest battles and something that held me back for many years was the fallacy that “real” artists work from their imagination solely and that using any type of reference was cheating. As with most things, the reality is the exact opposite. Real artists use reference for EVERYTHING. I have drawn hundreds of hands, I still shoot hand reference for nearly all projects. The more reference I use, the more I learn to look at that reference, the more I produce better art from using and looking at reference, the better my art is – when using and not using reference. It does not hold you back or make you reliant on the reference, it results in better work and improves your overall skill set. Every great artist uses reference and the sooner you start the sooner your work improves. It does take time and work to learn how to look at and understand the reference, but that is the fun of all this.

Contact Info:

• Website: christopherburdett.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/christopherburdett
• Facebook: facebook.com/christopherburdettmonsters
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/christopherburdett
• Twitter: twitter.com/chrisburdett
• Youtube: youtube.com/user/zungar
• Other: christopher-burdett.myshopify.com

Image Credits
Christopher Burdett