News Interview for somethingwelike.com

Your Full Name
Oscar “Odd” Diodoro

Tell us about you.
I was born in Italy and I’ve studied graphic design at “International school of graphic design” in Venice, Italy. Then I’ve worked in a communication agency for two years. Since 2004 I’m a freelancer.

What are the most important things to you about being a digital artist? Is it the pay, feelings of self-worth, etc.?
I’m an artist and illustrator, I use computer only as a part of the creative process. But I must confess I’m a vector addicted. Quite everything I do on paper is retraced in Illustrator. The advantage is that I can play with colors and I can print at whatever size I need.

Where are you located?
I live in Bolzano, northern Italy.

What efforts have you made at “networking” to advance your career?
Great, I would say. I think the web is the best place to showcase your work. Now that I have my own site, the time I spend on social networks is to promote it, because I don’t have time anymore to keep all of them updated.

Where do you get inspirations from?
From everything. I’m curious by nature and a great observer. But particularly, there is a deep influence of music and movies in my artworks.

Do you promote/ sell/ showcase your work? If so, how?
As I said before, I’ve a personal site where I put all my artworks, but I promote it through different social networks like deviantart, flickr and facebook. You can reach a wide audience thanks to these platforms.

Where do you see your profession going in the next five to ten years?
I hope to be working for interesting projects, enjoying what I do. Maybe I’m going to open my own store, selling my artworks, toys and design objects…

What types of assignment/ project are you attracted the most? Why so?
I love working for the music environment. It’s so stimulating when you catch the deep feeling of a song or of a band. I’m a bass player and I have a band, everything in my life is surrounded by music. I enjoy specially creating posters for gigs.

Who do you consider to be your professional role model? Why do you consider this person to be so special?
I’ve been really impressed by the work of Shepard Fairy (Obey Giant), I think he is so talented in transforming everyday life into an icon. But he is only one of the great artists I love: Haring, Warhol, Picasso (… most of them are dead)

Please explain the worst work experience you had in the past five years?
I hate when you’ve been commissioned a work, you do it fine, you’re satisfied with it and then the client starts with “little” corrections, and again and again… ’till the end result is something awful such as you don’t even want to use it in your portfolio. This happened to me once, then I learned to say “No.”.

What do you think about the Internet and how it is affecting our lifestyle?
Internet is a wide and handy resource, you just have to filter out the mess. It’s also the widest place to showcase your work, but you have to promote it wisely because on the other hand it’s easy to remain unknown. But I don’t like the way people abuse it, sometimes it’s better to turn off the computer and enjoy real life to get inspiration.

Where do you see the industry going?
I think there will be new approaches to art, interactions between artists will be easier and we’ll be receiving stimulating impulses from everywhere with a click of mouse.

What are you doing to stay on top of these changes and how do you keep your work fresh?
I keep refining my style and in every work I do, I try to take a step forward. I love my job and I keep myself up to date because the world changes continuously and you should be able to change with it.

Name 3 of your favorite (art) books/ magazines.
Everything about music, everything about art, everything about movies. In particular: High Fidelity (Hornby), Pop Art (Osterworld), The Golden Age of Advertising – The 70s (Taschen 25)

What type of incentive programs have you found to work best?
Perseverance. Is it an incentive program? Anyway, it works.

In what kind of a work environment do you do your best work?
On my desk with two monitors, music in background, a scanner, a printer and a cup of coffee.

Name 3 softwares that you use the most, and tell us the function of each them.
Illustrator – for vector illustrations
Photoshop – for textures and photo manipulation
Indesign – for impagination

If you have online portfolio, what is the URL?
Http://www.odd-house.com