Interview with Kerem Beyit
Q. Hi could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background in CG and are you self taught or taken some training?
 I’m a guy who’s been drawing since his childhood but I started doing this professionally in 2004. Before that, I was a graphic designer, because at the age 18 I wasn’t planning a career on illustration so I went ahead and studied graphic design and once the school was finished I started working as a graphic designer but then I realized that was not the thing for me and I started drawing again. After a long period of practicing I came up with my first digital tries, these first tries looked horrible but I knew I would comeover the problems by practicing more. I mean, I guess I can refer myself as a self-taught artist.
Q. So, you are a freelancer, please tell us what difficulties a freelancer have to face in getting the work and why you chosen to become a freelancer?
The difficulties a freelancer faces aren’t that many, on the contrary a freelance career provides you with the opportunities like a relaxed working environment in the comfort of your house and the chance to work on very different areas unlike in-house workers. On the other hand, it does have the handicap of the unstable income, though this can be overcome by reaching an established level and a certain number of clients, therefore, people who are thinking about a freelance career must venture to face difficulties in the first couple years. Besides this, if you try and get to know your clients very well and fully comprehend the task they ask from you and do your best on each project with respect to deadlines you will build your reputation and reach more clients. I worked in-house positions before but it didn’t take long before I decided it wasn’t for me. A freelance career is the best thing that could happen to a self indulgent guy like me.
Q. What software program(s) do you use for your illustrations and why?
I would use Photoshop 3.0 in my graphic designer days and when I started doing illustrations it felt comfortable to start with a familiar program so I went on with Photoshop. Now, I’m using CS2, I’ve tried the CS3 as well but it lost me time to learn all the new features so I am continuing on with CS2.
Other than this, I use Vue 6 xStream when I want to use an environment for the background, it’s really quality stuff and quite useful for saving time.
Q. How much you enjoy creating an illustration for the book covers, comics and magazines? Which type of instructions you receive from the client?
I’ve always liked doing book covers but lately I haven’t had the chance to make time for book covers because I’m working on a comic book project.
The jobs I take usually involves illustrations for web sites, and character design and promotional illustrations for video and online games. Instructions depend on the clients, some of them give very exact descriptions while most leave it up to me but if we’re talking about book covers they usually ask me to follow up a certain scene and composition and I try my best to visualize it. When it comes to character design basically it’s enough for me to know what kind of feeling the characters are supposed to have to them, of course I get very precise requests as well, there are many clients who decribe everything from armour to weapon of choice. They even send some reference pictures for me to look at. This is not problematic for me at all because no matter what, I create the character in my own style and add those requested features harmoniously with that style.
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