For the last Designer Appreciation article of 2020 I got the chance to interview a wonderful person and designer; Bones. He is a real hard-working, creative and helpful designer and person and therefore definitely needs to be appreciated for his hard work and talent. Make sure to show Bones some love and appreciation in the comments below!
- Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? (age, where you're from, hobbies besides designing, any fun facts about you that you want to share) You can call me Bones or Avien! I'm a 22-year-old nonbinary guy residing in Finland. I live with my two cats and foster a third one and I spend my time on woodworking, art, obsessing over video games and watching youtube videos.
- Why/How did you start designing for VP? Dressup games and Dollzmania have always had a place in my heart ever since I started playing them around age 6. I've always been an artistic person as well and love making character designs and my own stories for them, so combining those two passions into designing feel pretty natural!
- How long have you been designing for vp and when did you become a badged designer? I made my first design attempts back in 2016/2017 with a drawing tablet I didn't know how to use and an art program I didn't understand. I gave up after my first set was added to the game I took a break from VP for over a year and when I came back around March of 2020, I started designing right away, tapping into some previously untouched creative energy and designed a ton of sets in a short amount of time. The designer team applications opened just as I was getting into the groove of things. I always wanted to be a badged designer so I could upload my own sets and fix and label items myself, and that happened in September!
- How long do you approximately spend on designing one set? I'm a pretty chaotic worker and I tend to have several unfinished works in process at once. Whenever I feel uninspired to keep working on one, I find another one I can continue (or just start a whole new project..). At one point I could count fourteen different unfinished sets. I don't recommend this way of working. If I worked in a more linear fashion, I don't think it would take me more than 8 hours to finish a set.
- How long do you spend on designing on a weekly/monthly basis? I have my art program open whenever I feel inspired enough to work on things so probably 40-50 hours a week, tho most of that time is spent on being distracted instead of actually working on anything
- What program do you use for designing? And do you use a mouse or a drawing tablet? I use a Wacom Cintiq 13HD display tablet and Clip Studio Paint Pro :]
- Do you have a set that means something special to you or that had a special story behind it when you created it? Can you tell us why / what that story is? Probably the first set I made when I returned to vp.... I got really inspired while making it, it taught me a lot and my friend Encrede gave me some invaluable tips on how to make everything look better (they're also a big inspiration of mine n motivate me to be a better designer<3) !! It also shows how much I've developed as a designer in a short time :] this set:
- Where do you get your inspiration? I can find inspiration for art in pretty much anything, a color combo I enjoy, household items, flowers, how the sunset looks or art made by others! My style is mostly influenced by my childhood cartoons and comics such as Winx, W.I.T.C.H. and plenty of manga and anime I've consumed. Character concepts always inspire me as well! I love anything supernatural or spooky so a lot of my characters end up being vampires, witches, ghouls and demons. All of these combined with fashion are what inspire me to design, with the desire to see something I like in game as the motivator!
- Show us your first design and your latest design!