We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Daniel Mendez. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Daniel below.
Hi Daniel, thanks for joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
After art school, I had to work odd jobs and bit by bit; I felt my passion for worldbuilding begin to fade until I started to take art classes online again. I found a new source of inspiration for art that wasn’t based on escaping the little midwestern town I lived in and pushed me further. After those classes, I began participating in art challenges like pleinairplril and working on animated short films with friends. Working alongside many peers was like being on a sports team, with everyone helping and cheering each other on. Looking back, I wish I could have started working collaboratively earlier. It is a great way to learn and grow, providing encouragement and feedback to help me improve and stay motivated. I also wish I had skipped the traditional art school and instead took more online classes because they allowed me to focus more precisely on the skills I wanted to develop, have more in common with my peers, and form a stronger community.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I took the scenic route to honing my craft in art. Initially, art served as an escape from the isolation and violence I experienced after emigrating from Mexico to a small town in Ohio. I found solace in pouring over illustrated history and travel books, sketching buildings and landscapes from around the world, and immersing myself in music from different places. My love for drawing stemmed from a desire to create my world, which ultimately led me to pursue a career in the entertainment industry. While my early skills rapidly developed, I later found that my passion for exploration and creation began to diminish as I entered school. Keeping my interests separate from my assignments and training was challenging, and art school often drained me. I wish I could have honed my skills one at a time and avoided the need to write papers between animation keys or concept art pieces. Currently, I am working with [Insert] Media Studio on a short film called Kamino, which is the story of a pair of Chicano siblings navigating challenging circumstances in childhood. I am thrilled to have found a project that blends my love of exploring a place but also touches on the experience of the Mexican diaspora
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
I am hoping to create some complete works of world-building, weather it be a TTRPG setting, pitch bible or graphic novel. I want to go very into detail about everything from magic systems to sanitation systems and incorporate elements of indigenous nonwestern culture and technology to explore what fantasy looks like outside of Western Europe and Japan.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
I learned as an artist that there is no shame in taking elements from other sources and using reference, I always thought that i had to come up with something completely original but i found that my imagination actually yielded pretty generic results because similar to ai it was just recycling the most common thing i’d seen. I found that seeking out underrepresented sources of inspiration actually yielded the most interesting results. Picasso i think is the most famous example of this, where his painting really became unique when he began to study African masks.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dannymendezdesign.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danmax.art/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-mendez-a34615222/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/danmaxatax?lang=en
Image Credits
Danny Mendez