We recently connected with Clifton Stommel and Brigitte Roka and have shared our conversation below.
Clifton and Brigitte, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
We were friends for a long time before we fell in love with each other’s art (and each other). When we finally got around to meeting up for coffee to discuss creative endeavors, we discovered we were on very parallel paths.
From passion projects in game development, world building, and even music and filmmaking, we found a lot of common ground upon which we would later build our studio, StarSieve.
Brigitte has been doing artwork for games, including Wizards of the Coast’s Magic: The Gathering as well as being an extremely talented musician, and Clifton is an award-winning cinematographer and entrepreneur.
Between the two of us, we realized we have all of the skills and resources we need to get the ball rolling on pretty much whatever projects we want, along with the know-how to get said projects in front of people.
Since then, we’ve been building StarSieve, taking on more Magic: The Gathering art work (now as a collaborative team), and slowly teasing our own personal world building for our extended passion project: The Lofty Coastline.
All of this while also working on our first EP release.
Clifton and Brigitte, 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 creative professionals we all strive to do two things: make meaningful work that we are proud to showcase and create a meaningful experience for fans and collectors.
Collectively, as StarSieve, we believe in making work that captures the heart of that which inspires us and we believe in presenting that work in a way that allows our fans and collectors to own a precious and meaningful thing; be that an original painting, rare collectible, or even playmats and tokens for their favorite tabletop game.
We aim to make beautiful and meaningful things from our own world and creative inspirations, while never neglecting those who might not have the resources to go out and collect original artwork and direct artist commissions.
The same applies to films and music and game development.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is when someone lets you know they like your work.
It seems pretty obvious when stated so plainly, but it’s true.
Struggling with thing like sense of purpose, imposter syndrome, and self-actualization aren’t concepts unique to being an artist; we all struggle with these things from time to time. For the artist, even a little encouragement from a stranger goes a long way.
There is nothing more rewarding than seeing collectors and fans return to see you again from one event or convention to the next. And seeing names you recognize in comment sections sharing your work is the most heartwarming and humbling feeling.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
Engage with the human artists and original artwork. As we see increasingly dense feeds clogged with AI-generated images, we will continue seeing more and more iterations of stuff that all starts to look sort of ‘the same’ (part of the reason for this is that machine-learning via image training can only replicate and regurgitate pieces of works it has seen before… and without even getting into the copyright issues of AI-driven image generation, it’s easy to see why AI images so quickly become bland, similar, and underwhelming the more we look at them).
If you want to support artists, it’s as easy as stopping by to have a chat or bringing a friend to the booth at a convention; or when online, engage with us in the comments section, and share our work with others.
Artists, musicians, actors, and filmmakers, are all people too, and we (for the most part) love to talk about our work. We love to hear what you think, and if a particular piece is meaningful to you, it’s nice to hear about how and why it matters to you.
And if you happen upon a piece that you find striking, buy a print/poster, a sticker/t-shirt, a CD, a playmat. The more society supports original artwork made by human beings, the more original artwork human artists can create.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://starsieve.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/starsieve/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@starsieve/
- Other: Online Store: https://www.starsieve.com/store
Image Credits
Austin Kwok, Phillip Latham, Clifton Stommel, Brigitte Roka