Dig In Magazine Interview with
Artist, Alex Pardee

Alex Pardee is an artist whose imagination and artwork knows no bounds. As a child obsessed with comic books, he doodled and drew comics as a way to escape life's challenges and enter a world of fantasy. Today, his artwork, which began in comics, has landed him work with Warner Bros for the animated series, "CHADAM," the film "Watchmen" that was showcased at the New York Comic Con in 2008, and a movie deal as the artist for director, Zack Snyder's upcoming film, "Sucker Punch." What started as a job creating promotional art for the film, later evolved into prop design, which then snowballed into designing weapons, some big set pieces and then eventually a great deal of marketing and promotional art. Pardee also runs his own art & apparel company, Zerofriends. "Sucker Punch," the movie, opens on March 25th, 2011. [March 16, 2011]

Dig In Magazine: Where were you born and are you currently based?

Alex Pardee: I was born and raised in Antioch, CA, a small suburban town about 50 miles outside of San Francisco. I have lived and worked all around the Bay Area my whole life. I'm currently based in Walnut Creek, CA.

DIM: How did you get into art? When did you first know that you wanted to be an artist?

AP: I have always been into art in general. I was into cartooning a lot when I was little. My sister and I would dive into the recycle bins by the church and collect all of the newspaper comics and redraw them with our own captions. I would try to draw comic books and things like that. But I didn't take art seriously until it became something that helped heal me and make me feel better. When I was 14 I got diagnosed with anxiety disorder and depression and had to spend some time in the mental hospital while we tried to figure out some kind of medications that would work. During that time I felt sick, scared, sad, mad, and confused a lot. But mostly felt sick. I thought my heart was going to stop, I thought I was going to throw up, I would be frightened for no reason and then sad because I felt weak and confused. I tried playing sports, tried reading, tried doing all sorts of things to distract me but nothing worked, until I started scribbling and doodling. That was the one thing that took my mind off of anything else and allowed me not to think about what was happening with my body. So from that point on, whether I was actually good at drawing or not, it didn't matter. I just had to draw. Forever.

DIM: What/who were your biggest influences growing up that helped you develop your artistic style?

AP: When I was younger my parents were cool enough to allow me to look at things like Tales From the Crypt comics and Garbage Pail Kids, and demented skateboard graphics. Prior to getting exposed to those, I had no idea that anything weird, bizarre, or demented could be accepted in the mainstream. So there I was, in 3rd grade, having these grandiose dreams of making fucked up art in the future. Later on my main, most consistent artistic influence was Sam Kieth, a comic book artist who created THE MAXX back in the early 90's. That comic book changed my life. I was into comics at the time, but was only exposed to Superhero comics, which I LOVED, but I thought that THAT is what comics were supposed to be, and you couldn't stray from it. Then I saw The MAXX, which was a mainstream mass marketed comic that LOOKED like it was a superhero comic, but when I read it and looked at it, it was a beautiful expressive mess! There was scratchy lines, coloring with watercolors and ink splashes. Some of the words went out of the bubbles, and the colors were fantastic. And the story wasn't a superhero story. It had all these emotional characters with real problems and had teenage angst and abusive parents and depression and homelessness and abandonment all while there was this imaginative visual world that was coinciding with it. Once again, like when I first saw Garbage Pail Kids, I thought "You can make a living doing THIS!? By actually drawing how you WANT to draw? And how you FEEL?!" So from that point on I was in it for long run.

DIM: How would you describe your artistic style?

AP: It changes. I'm not too into describing my own work because I don't really know how to. I simply draw and paint what I wish I could see in real life.

DIM: What figures in pop culture inspire or influence your artwork?

AP: Anything and everything. I am obsessed with pop culture. I'm not too sure that it shows in a majority of my work, but immersing myself in pop-culture is just an extension of why I like movies. To escape.

DIM: What do you like to paint with and what is your favorite artistic medium?

AP: The one consistent aspect of my work that I don't think I will stray far from is black line work. Whether it's pens, brush, or whatever. I am so fascinated by lines and how expressive you can get with just simple lines, so I incorporate line work in almost everything I create. But the media beneath the lines changes depending on what I feel like. I was doing watercolor and ink washes for a long time, but recently made a small transition into acrylics.

DIM: What artists do you admire?

AP: Anyone who is genuinely happy creating the art they want to create and not compromising themselves, regardless of if I like their art or not.

DIM: What galleries have you shown artwork in?

AP: I have shown mainly on the west coast, at galleries like 5024SF, Gallery 1988, Suru, Copro Nason, and most recently Corey Helford Gallery.

DIM: What artwork did you present at your solo show at Corey Helford Gallery?

AP: I showed a brand new collection of work, titled "VERTIGO" which centered around showcasing different nightmares from around the world and what those nightmares would look like if they were manifested in the real world as actual monsters. I am always looking for ANY excuse to draw new monsters and build new worlds. The original loose concept that I had for the Vertigo show was to base it around the top ten most popular nightmares in America. Dreams of falling, losing teeth, showing up to school naked, and so forth. I asked myself "what would these nightmares LOOK like if they existed in the form of Boogeymen?" I've always been fascinated with the idea of a "Boogeyman" and I love any new take on the idea. Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Victory Crowley, Candyman & The Blair Witch are some original and very iconic spins on the Boogeyman folklore. I liked the idea of creating a new iconic boogeyman, but then I was more interested in creating not just ONE, but TEN! So the original intent was to create ten original new boogeymen that all represented the top ten most popular nightmares in America.

As I was researching nightmares, I became curious as to what other cultures geographically & religiously had nightmares about, because I knew there would most likely be a huge difference in subject matter and emotion from what an anorexic teen in Colorado would have a nightmare about versus a child growing up amongst a war torn village in South Africa, or a Tibetan monk, or a Chilean miner. As I was imagining this more world-wide view of nightmares, I then made the decision that I am going to create all of these different boogeymen based on all different walks of life around the world. Once I had that in mind, I got extremely excited and jumped head first into building this "world of a thousand nightmares".

In addition to my visual artwork, I like to tie in some extra fun narratives to a lot of my gallery shows that I do. I'm a huge fan of how Disneyland presents their rides. The ride itself is the main course, and you can easily be satisfied by just going on the ride, but while standing in line, all of the rides offer all of these extra elements like videos and props and passages that allow the rider, if they choose to, to IMMERSE themselves further in the experience and hopefully jostle their imagination into enjoying the ride that much more. I approach my exhibitions in a similar fashion. I'll create a larger "world" around the artwork, with text, props, videos, etc., that will let the viewer fall deeper into this world if they want to. With that being said, I needed something to tie all of these nightmares and boogeymen from around the world together so that I can have a reason as to how I discovered and created all of these new monsters. That's when the idea of having a game-hunter like Verti Parker came into play, because he serves two purposes. He's both an exorcist, as well as a hunter. Building Verti as the backbone of this universe means that I now had a vehicle to tie in all of these nightmare stories together. A skilled hunter-turned exorcist travels around the world extracting nightmares from victims suffering from them and then he gets to feel the exhilaration of hunting new monsters with every exorcism. The rest of the story evolved from the creation of Verti Parker, nightmare hunter.

DIM: What magazines have you been featured in?

AP: Been in a few really awesome magazines like Juxtapoz, Hi Fructose, Bizarre & Bliss to name a few.

DIM: What groups or collectives are you a part of?

AP: I am a part of the Upper Playground family, as well as Cardboard City, but right now I am focusing a lot of my time with Zerofriends. Zerofriends is the art & apparel company that I started with a couple of close friends in 2006 with the intention of being a more affordable extension of my fine art and illustration. I had my own publishing and apparel company for years, but because it was started on my own with little experience, the company went through a lot of ups and downs and never really had a focus, because I didn't know what I wanted to do. However, during that time, I became close with so many cool artists and learned a ton about the business side of things, and decided in 2006 that it was time to re-vamp everything with a clear direction and focus, and possibly incorporating other artists as well, since we all worked together regularly anyway. In addition to creating apparel and affordable collectible art prints, we also wanted to have an original spin on the apparel market, and since I incorporate a lot of short stories into my art, we continued that with all of the Zerofriends products. For examples, the inside of our shirts contain stories or journal entries revolved around the graphics. We started with just my art, as that is what we had access to, but now we are expanding and collaborating with some of my artistic idols, like Craola, Skinner, Dave Correia, Tara McPherson, Sam Kieth & Robert Bowen to name a few. Because we are all friends, it's basically just a fun collective of artists that have an outlet to sell their art in a more affordable and fashionable way. And we are all storytellers in our own ways, I think that is the most important and unique trait that we all share with each other. As of a year ago, we have been attempting to introduce Zerofriends into the retail world by traveling around the country and setting up temporary pop-up shops for a few months at a time to introduce our brand to different cities, meet some people, direct them to our website, and move to another city like gypsies! In an economy climate like our current one, that seems to make the best sense, short term leases, different markets, and so forth. Plus we get to travel around and make new friends.

DIM: Where do you get the ideas for your monsters that you illustrate/paint/create?

AP: Maybe it's from some subconscious thing, but I am not sure. I just draw things that I wish were real.

DIM: I understand that you have put out a number of comic books: How did you get into writing and creating comic books?

AP: My comic books were more like zines. Charater based books with monologues and random thoughts and scribbles. I wanted to actually do "real" comics but got rejected by a few companies at the time for jobs so I simply just decided to put them out myself. It's easy to publish anything, you just print it out and sell it for a quarter and POOF, you're a publisher. I initially got into writing because I wanted to MAKE comics, but comics have words and stories, and even though I didn't have any of those at the time, I simply wanted to make comics, so I needed to figure out some stories to go with them. To my surprise, I actually liked the writing aspect. A lot. So I continued to pursue it.

DIM: How many comic books have you come out with?

AP: Probably about 12 or 13.

DIM: What are the general themes of your various comic books?

AP: They are mostly humor based, aggressive, random nonsense, more like personal therapy outlets for me. Somewhat similar to journals, touching on parodying pop-culture and getting out some angst at the time.

DIM: And how did you come up with the ideas for them?

AP: I never really planned out ideas ahead of time, especially in those days. I would just simply draw to draw. When I had enough drawings and stories, I would compile them into a book. As far as the writings I guess some of them were a mixture of my personal experiences and emotions at the time coupled with some fantastic imaginary nonsense that I thought was funny.

DIM: What other products have you come out with?

AP: I have been lucky enough to be able to experiment with putting out plush toys, vinyl toys, calendars, books, comics, album art, t-shirts, shoes, hats, etc.

DIM: What are your working on now?

AP: I am currently focusing on expanding the Zerofriends brand and also working on some new paintings for an upcoming show at Gallery 1988 in October.

DIM: I understand that you contributed your artwork for Zack Snyder's movie, "Sucker Punch", how did you get involved with this film project and what work did you do for the film?

AP: Early last year I finished up production on an animated series for Warner Bros called "CHADAM" that I created, wrote, and art directed. During that time I had met Zack Snyder ("Sucker Punch" director) while he was working on "Watchmen", which I LOVED! I did a "watchmen" painting for the New York Comic Con in 2008 (I think) and Zack had seen it and loved it and now owns the original piece. That jumpstarted our friendship/reationship. Right after "CHADAM" in 2009 I jumped into some design work on Zack Snyder's movie, "SUCKER PUNCH" which is released on March 25th. Working on that film was insanely surreal. It was the biggest project that I have ever worked on. I was involved in a few different aspects of the film. I was initially hired to create some promotional art for the film in the very early production process. Zack and I worked really well together and that sort of transitioned into dabbling in some small prop design for the film which then snowballed into designing weapons, some big set pieces and then eventually a lot of the marketing and promotional art. Working alongside Zack and his crew of creators was so inspirational and crazy. I loved it.

DIM: Do you want to do more film work?

AP: Of course! I love working in film, it's a bigger extension of working on paper.

DIM: I hear you launched an iPhone app. Is this part of your first step in expanding your presence on the web? What kind of app is it?

AP: Right now the first app that I have available is basically a user-friendly fun portfolio of all of my artwork. It's like a mobile website really, with RSS feeds from my blog and links to videos and stuff. Its fun! And yes, this is my first step. I would love to do more game-based apps.

DIM: What is in the future for you in terms of art, film, web and beyond?

AP: To make my own theme park based on my art and the different artists' worlds that I love.