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Name and location?
Petra Stefankova, London, UK
What do you do to relax?
Browsing the internet, reading books, dancing, traveling and drawing.
What prompted you down the creative / design path?
I've been drawing all my life thanks to my mother's influence, it was quite natural to choose drawing as the best way which I'd like to express through. At my teenage age I started to use computers focusing mainly on commercial graphics, graphic design within various media. But I wanted more than that and started to play with various artist tools just for fun. I took a course of animation and film graphics in Prague and my experiments were very well received. Again when I showed my other work to the international art community, the response was unbelievable. I realized that I am able to compete on this market if I get the focus, so I pushed myself into new areas of digital art exploration.
Which living designer/artist do you most and admire, and why?
Well, there are so many! I like old Czech masters Adolf Born and Jan Svankmajer, British designers Neville Brody and Adrian Shaughnessy, Aardman animations and so on. In fact I admire all artists in the world as there is usually a long way and really hard work behind their stuff.
What would you consider your ideal project?
Animated music video or film where I could involve some of my surrealist 3D expressions, it would be exciting to put all the elements - motion, colours, shapes, forms, time and sound - together and make them work.
What do you consider you greatest achievement?
The most recent greatest achievement was the 4Talent Award given by the Channel 4 and other media representatives in the UK, which promised me a shining career path within the creative industry in the UK! :D
What are your plans for the future?
To complete my animated film and the children's books I am working on. And then move on and work on other exciting projects of any kind. I love travelling so I am happy to accept invitations from universities or event's organisers to give talks and lectures as well.
Tell us about this piece of work, how would you describe it?
My 3D work mostly is based on the surrealist method of automatic drawing. My goal is to collect the fragments of life and situations, which are difficult to catch in material – it’s a drawing of crying after a bad day, drawing of travelling at a London’s train on my morning way to work when people are stressed and sleepy in that particular moment, drawing of happiness etc. The most important part of the process is to draw in exactly that and the only intense and fragile moment, which is full of tension and emotion, whatever the condition is.
Is this piece of work commissioned or experimental?
"The Fish Market" was an experimental piece, but I was asked to provide it for publication some time later.
Talk us through some of the processes involved in producing the work, and have you used similar techniques before?
I have played with the automatism in drawing since 1999 and produced hundreds of sketches. In 2006 I got the idea to get them to another dimension and started to explore the 3D technique.
What have you learnt during producing this piece of work?
Basic 3D modelling, making a project specific lighting rig and I advanced my compositing skills as well - actually my colleague, London based 3D artist and genius lighter, Roman Vrbovsky introduced this lighting method to me and helped me a lot with my first steps within Softimage XSI.
How would you best describe your style?
It's a contemporary mixture of surrealism, cubism and constructivism produced with a huge help of state-of-art technology.
Thanks for being a part of expose. Anything else you'd like to add?
Check out my web site for updates if you'd like. Thanks.