Interview with Gaming Artist Pavel Dolgov

I first stumbled across Pavel Dolgov and his gaming art back in June. The second I laid eyes on his work (especially his Halo series), I was hooked. My birthday was that month and I treated myself to a custom painted faceplate. The entire process was a pleasure to be a part of and the finished product was phenomenal. I have closely followed his work since my own order and have had a blast seeing his newest creations. He recently (as in 2 days ago) surprised me with a digital image based off of a picture of me where I colored my hair blue for Halo 3′s midnight release. I am sure you have seen the image by now; it is on my side bar. If you click the picture, it will take you to his deviantART gallery where you can view the image in a larger size and check out some other work of his as well. It has been a while since he has agreed to an interview (I believe over a year) so I am honored to present an exclusive interview with the professional artist who does amazing gaming art, Pavel Dolgov.

Let’s start with a short basic bio. What is the condensed version of the last couple decades of your life?

My name is Pavel, I believe it’s an ancient Roman name. I grew up in Toronto, Canada. My father has been a professional artist all of his life, so I picked up my first tips from him. I discovered a passion for art and went to college to study visual art, then I decided that being an artist was not enough to make living. So I took an Interior Design program and worked in the office for a few years and of course kept painting in the off-work time. After I started getting enough commissions, I left my job and started my own art business.

And now it is enough to make a living and fund a gaming habit! When did you start gaming and what was the first game you ever played?

I became a ‘junior’ gamer in 1992. The first game that popped-up on my screen was Space Invaders followed by Contra, Bomber-man, Mario etc. However I haven’t followed the gaming scene up until 2005, when my friend introduced me to Doom 3. Captivated by the level of graphics, I got myself a new PC and played a few major titles I had missed during my gaming off-time. My online game of choice was SWAT4 (underrated tactic FPS with many innovations). After I couldn’t keep up with all the hardware upgrades, I got an Xbox 360 and am loving it! The appreciation of today’s technology made me start painting gaming art. (btw haven’t picked up Halo 3 yet, hope it doesn’t void this interview:))

I considered cutting it short, but Doom 3 is one of my favorite games so I’ll let it slide this time. Since you aren’t playing Halo 3, what is your favorite game right now? Your favorite game overall? I have seen pictures of you playing Guitar Hero! I imagine you must be quite the rock star.

Those pics were taken from the Gamerscore Blog North American tour event by the guys from Microsoft (John Porcaro, Chris Paladino, Tony Hynes). I do enjoy rock music. I don’t have GH II right now, but once I pick up GH III or Rock Band I will rock out! My favorite game is still Gears of War; I play it with my friends from mastersfew.com. I lost my head a few times watching the art and textures incorporated within the figures and map design, very artistic!

Gears of War is definitely a beautiful game. How much time do you actually get to game? What are some other things you enjoy doing in your spare time?

Good question! Even though I’m pretty comfortable staying in my own cave, I try to live the life, go to gym, smell the roses* (*get inspiration). I’m engaged to a beautiful girl, she’s a Rhythmic Gymnastics professional and occasional model and movie talent. We spent our summer vacation in Las Vegas. Visiting such glamorous places gives me a motivational ‘boost’! I’m easily addicted to online gaming, so if I feel I’m running late on projects I just put the console back in a box and focus on my job. This rule of thumb works well for me.

I am impressed with your discipline. I could use more of that. At your eBay store, you say the quantity of your custom painted faceplates is limited. Have you decided how many specifically you will do? Should people hurry if they are thinking about getting one?

Currently I’ve done 24 hand painted ones, and now I have expanded my services from hand paining to digital art. This works great for gaming clans. I charge one fee of $96 for specially designed hi-resolution artwork and it can be distributed among all clan members infinitively. Example: the work I’ve done for 8-bit Brigade. I found two places to print skins from submitted images, one is decalgirl.com – they don’t accept any form of fan art and second is videogame-skins.com – they claim to print any material. In other words a hand painted service won’t be there for long!

Oh no! If anybody is considering getting a hand painted faceplate (which I strongly recommend), now is the time to do it! Speaking of faceplates, have you painted any full consoles?

Usually the price is the barrier, however with the right mix of digital art and real brush retouching I could make affordable killer cases and skins.

I already find your prices extremely affordable considering you are providing a custom service. Can you tell me about the process of painting a faceplate including how long it usually takes you to complete it?

You’d be surprised how many people think of it as an easy job and offered me $10-20 for the service after watching my YouTube video! First I talk to a client and develop the rough concept on computer. Then I sand, tape and base coat a stock faceplate. The actual painting part may take one or two 8-hour days, I set the basic outline and start free hand painting by looking at reference sketch. After that I wait for approval from a client, make necessary changes, put the gloss on, wait for it to dry and ship. Think of it as an old watchmaker in Switzerland working on custom Rolex watch but with a cool twist.

Cool twist indeed. Along with faceplates, you also do some awesome and extremely affordable gaming art prints. I actually plan on purchasing some to decorate my family aka gaming room. Do you have any more of these in the works?

Yes, I plan on painting and marketing quality gaming art! It’s been a while since I updated my prints gallery, I’ve been busy doing my other job (such as painting pet portraits and landscapes for my permanent customers).

I look forward to seeing some new pieces, although I doubt we will see any more GoW inspired work. Earlier this year there was a bit of an incident with Epic about a Gears of War canvas painting you did. Whatever happened with that?

One of my goals is to work in the industry as a conceptual artist, so this incident was more of reality check. It raised a number of threads at the art community message boards and there was no clear right or wrong answer. Now I have a bright picture of what I should be doing to be successful and that is creating more of original art and less fan art.

Do you have any future projects in the works in regards to gaming art? Anything more for the 360 or possibly other consoles?

I have tons of ideas which I kept under the hood. I’ve been in transition from traditional art to digital, and now with great tools such as dual-monitor, Wacom tablet, Photoshop CS3, Painter X, I have much more creative freedom! My inspirations are Craig Mullins (original Halo artist), Ryan Church and many other artists behind games and movies.

Back to your faceplate collection, the power button placement on #1 in your faceplate series is quite catchy. I am assuming that was intentional. Did the customer request that or were they pleasantly surprised when they discovered that little detail?

Here’s the story. I come from an artist’s family, so my father and I sometimes work in the same studio. I was designing the sketch for this faceplate and my dad looked and said, “Move it right there, they’ll like it” and they did! It gave me my first exposure on Gawker Media’s blog kotaku.com and pleased the customer!

Talk about getting turned on! (Get it? Like turning the console on? … Nevermind.) Can you give us any background on some of the other faceplates? #3 and #4, #6, and #10 all look like they may have some interesting stories to go along with them.

The best part of doing custom work is you never know what people can come up with, it’s always something new. Let’s see..#3 and #4 were commissioned by another artist, those are his own characters, I assume he works for animation company. #6 was done for a couple, they just finished their home bar construction and wanted the faceplate design to resemble a Jack Daniels’s bottle with their names on it. #10 is romantic too, it was a gift from husband to wife after their honeymoon. He only gave me guides, no picture: the character had to look intelligent yet sexy with such hair color etc. The end result pleased them both!

All of the faceplates are amazing in their own way. What was your initial reaction to the image I submitted for my faceplate, and answer truthfully!

I said let the fun begin! It was very positive experience, taking a serious warrior character into a girly environment is not something you see everyday! Kudos to Andrew for providing the inspirational image.

And kudos to you for creating such amazing pieces that are original and mean something significant to each person that purchases one. Is there anything else you would like to share?

Thank you for the interview. I love to contribute to gaming community and I hope to share more of my new work with your readers soon!

Pavel Dolgov’s Xbox 360 Custom Painted Faceplates
Pavel Dolgov’s Gaming Art Prints
Pavel Dolgov’s eBay Store
Pavel Dolgov’s Blog

*A special thank you to Pavel Dolgov for not only doing this interview that has been months in the making (!!) but also for the amazing Cortana image as well.