We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Darryl Smith. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Darryl below.

Darryl, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

The most meaningful project I’ve worked on is actually my current project that I’m pursuing. During my journey as an artist, one of my biggest issues was diving deep into myself to create works that best represented my mind, my interests, my aesthetics, & my heart. My works before all felt very superficial and were always inspired by others but didn’t truly feel like me. After graduating from art school I felt extremely lost because not only did I not know what path I wanted to follow, but I graduated knowing I still hadn’t created art that represented who I truly was.

During this hard post graduation era, a friend of mine told me to try getting back into comics (my major) and try creating a story to get the wheels going again. One day I mustered up the strength to tackle this, and took my favorite comics, manga, and fashion magazines into my room to just skim through endlessly to try and see if anything could spark an idea in me. I fell asleep in the midst of that with a Japanese fashion magazine open in my lap to the page of a Host Club advertisement. I came to an hour or so later, and woke up with a story idea that for the first time got me excited to actually write. A story that wasn’t based of someone’s existing story, and was authentic to what I truly loved.

This has been the first project where I could rely on my own mind to create ideas, & not sit dumfounded or have to go to my peers for their opinion or help. Though this comic project is still one in the works, It brings me the most joy because it is a true extension of myself.

Darryl, 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?

For those who are new to me, I go by Darryl-Pyon, & I’m a Comic Artist & Illustrator based here in Atlanta. I’ve been professionally in my field since about 2016 after graduating with my BFA in Sequential Art from SCAD Atlanta. My style is something a bit different from the average artist here, since my main inspiration pulls from a subgenre that some probably haven’t even heard of. I like to pull inspiration from Comic Artists from all over, such as Olivier Coipel, Pepe Larraz, Juanjo Guarnido, Takeshi Obata, Yana Toboso, etc. But a big portion of my aesthetic and style comes from the Japanese music scene, Visual Kei. Since I was young, I’ve always loved the Androgyny, edge, style, and different unorthodox packages that come within the Visual Kei scene. And having that flair added to my style is something I feel helps set me apart from my peers.
So usually when clients approach me for work, they want my unorthodox approach to creating character designs & illustrations. It makes me happy that there is a big clientele of people who genuinely want to commission & purchase original content and not just fan art.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Even though I’m not as big as some, I feel like three things built my Social Media audience. The first one being consistency. The algorithm (at least back then), loves to recommend content to peoples feed from accounts that post often. Whether it was a post, a story, a LIVE. It all is relative to helping more people see your content, which also increases the chances of it being shared.

The second thing, which is probably the most crucial: Networking. Making connections with people is one of the main things that pivoted my presence the most. I would casually make connections with other artist, and sometimes we’d share each others art. This resulted in a whole new audience seeing my content, which also sometimes helped me with making even more new friends or connections. I never made connections with people in hopes that they shared my content, or in hopes of feeding off their numbers. But when it did happen, I could see my numbers increase.

The third factor that helped with my audience is conventions. Conventions/Art shows is the perfect way to interact with your already existing audience, as well as introduce yourself to possible new members. Whenever I’m at cons I always act as my genuine self and try to interact with each & every person that stops at my table. Building a genuine connection with people in the beginning is what helps keep long time followers around.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

One thing society can do to continue supporting artists is continuing hiring artists, continuing promoting/sharing artists and continuing buying from artists. In this current climate, AI is replacing the roles of artists in all types of different companies. Even in artist alleys, there are vendors being spotted selling AI art as their own. Many people argue that AI will not replace artist because they say it can not ‘replicate the emotion and personal touch the human hand brings’. But in these current times, people are not thinking about the ’emotion or human soul’ in the piece. Many are just thinking of the cheapest alternative to be quite honest.
I would like everyone to just consider how the livelihood of artist has been shifted since the terrifying introduction to AI.     

Contact Info:

• Website: https://darrylpyon.bigcartel.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/darrylpyon/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/darrylpyon