Oh, it's both of those, but it was born out of necessity. My son was born and I had been trying to figure out what was the best work that I had done since he was born, and I realized the best painting that I had done, the painting that had the most merit, was a picture I had painted of his teddy bear. Now, there's not a lot of market or even interest in teddy bears painted by anybody so, I realized that there was something I really needed to say here. I was re-discovering things as he was discovering them for the first time, so there had to be a way to talk about this. That's what this strip was born from. The artwork runs counterpoint to the dialogue. It's been a great time and I've just been asked to continue it indefinitely and we have another child on the way, so, I'm literally growing the material.
"Honey, we got renewed. We need more kids."
[laughs] That's right.
Cliff Nielsen
Where an Illustrator's Brush Converges With a Father's Heart – Vol. III, Issue 1
Cliff Nielsen and I first met a little over a year ago at the San Diego ComicCon, the comics industry’s largest convention. We were introduced and, since I recognized his name from the X-Files cards sets he had done with Thom Ang, I knew he was an artist of considerable talent. We got to talking and I soon learned that he had been raised in St. Anthony, Idaho which is about 20 miles away from where my family and I had recently relocated. Since Idaho is not exactly known for producing artists who understood the beauty of art made in a darker vein, I was utterly astonished when I first got a look at his portfolio. There before me, was page after page of images that embodied every aesthetic Carpe Noctem was trying to get across. The work was sensitive and powerful, yet still possessed a dark quality that made it all the more beautiful. Since that day, I’ve gotten to know Cliff better and I’ve seen even more of his work. I knew that, sooner or later, Cliff and I would talk within the pages of this magazine. I’m glad we did.
~*~
Out of the gate, let me ask you about you as a kid. I know you grew up in Idaho and there’s not a lot to do up here, so what kind of kid were you? What did you do to keep yourself amused here in the wilds of God’s Country?
I was a good kid, actually.
I don’t believe that for a second. [laughs]
No, you know what? I was. There were a core group of six of us and we were the only kids in our school, South Fremont High School in St. Anthony, who even knew what heavy metal was. At the time, we were listening to Judas Priest and Iron Maiden and everybody thought we were freaks because we were listening to that kind of stuff. They were listening to Kenny Rogers and ridiculous stuff, so they never quite understood us. It was a good group of kids. We never got in too much trouble.
Now, growing up out here, how did that affect you as an artist and did it have any effect on your art itself?
Well, I really liked music when I was growing up and I always liked bands who were, I call it “pretentious” now, like Rush and all of those guys who studied and mastered their music and instrument. I think we had ideas why we thought they were so good and I think it was, as opposed to some of the southern bands, they spent so much time indoors practicing that they just had to be good at their instruments after so many hours, just the mileage will do it. I put myself in the same situation with my art. I mean, there was some stuff to do [in Idaho], but you spent a lot of indoor hours when it’s twenty below zero. There were some things you can do, but... [laughs] Anyway, I spent a lot of time drawing and I think that helped me. I was real pretentious about being able to render something correctly. I was really concerned about being able to make something look very realistic. So, it was a good starting point for me. Plus I had all those twisted ideas in my head from all that...
...rock and roll music
...rock and roll, man.
See, I look at your art and I look around at the artwork I see around Idaho and somehow the two don’t jibe. Is that solely because of the influence of the music you were listening to and the head space that would promote? I don’t see you doing many wildlife scenes or pheasants or bird-dawgs.
I really didn’t even take [art] seriously in high school. It was just a goof. I could draw pictures. I wasn’t any better than, really, anybody else, but I went to college. I went to Ricks College in Rexburg and I had a guy, Leon Parson, there who was a wildlife illustrator, incredible guy and an incredible painter. I was trying all sorts of different things. I was in computer classes trying to learn how to make a living out in this world. I really didn’t have any role models as artists to look at firsthand where I could [see] any examples right away until I got to college and I saw this guy. I [thought], "Wow, this guy is amazing. He’s really made it." He really became my mentor and he still is my mentor in a lot of ways. He’s an encouraging kind of guy. I’m always nervous to show him my artwork because I know he’s going to critique it really harshly, not just the subject matter, he can look at the composition or the color and analyze it. He’s still one of my harshest critics.
That’s good though.
Oh yeah! I absolutely respect him so much. I think I always will because he was the first example to me of an artist who [proved] you could really do this for a living. I thought people just drew pictures for fun unless you are a Fine Artist... I don’t think I even knew who Andy Warhol was when I was in high school.
Did you leave Ricks with a degree or did you just say, "I’m done. I’m outta here!"?
No, I got my Associates there. They encouraged me to go to Art Center, which I did.
Was that a tough decision to make?
Yeah, because when I left Idaho I was dirt poor. True story... I had like two hundred dollars in my pocket and I had no job, no connections down in Los Angeles, I had nothing and I had a car that was four years older than me. The car barely made it to Los Angeles anyway. I kicked around there and, actually, within the first week that I was there, I found a job, but I didn’t have a studio to do the painting in. It was some product rendering for this guy who was so merciful to me. So, I’m dirt freaking poor, man. I can’t even tell you how poor I was. [laughs] In Los Angeles at the time, you need first and last month’s rent and a security deposit. So, even in an awful apartment which was like four hundred bucks a month, I was way short. [laughs] So, I had a couple of people who I knew who had gone to Ricks College and were going to Art Center and they let me stay in their garage. Man, I’m telling you... I had some people who just went out on limbs for me. I don’t know why either. Actually, the next day, I found an apartment and the guy says, "Yeah, I’ll let you move in." It was the last week in January and he let us move in for a week and we didn’t have to pay him. We moved in there and he said, "By the end of the week, I’m going to need some money." He waived the security deposit. I guess he took mercy on my poverty.
It was that home scrubbed Idahoan look.
I guess. This fresh face. [laughs]
That fresh faced innocence. [laughs]
So, I had a case of tomato soup and that’s what I lived on for months. After I’d finished that first job, I said that I was going to start looking around for work. I went to Disney and showed them some stuff. I had an Associates and it was a traditional painting background. So, I showed them some head studies and nothing they could really use. It was all very academic and very much a student portfolio, not anybody who was focused in. "Hey, I’d like to animate or I’d like to design." I actually had an interview with the Imagineering Group who designs the theme parks.
The whole Pirates of the Caribbean thing.
Right. They just sent me away. They spanked me and sent me away. I was so bummed out. I was like, "I’m going to die. I’m going to die out here." But, that was the biggest blessing that ever could have been showered down upon my head because it made me look around and try to think about what I would like to do. I ended up sculpting some miniatures, like for Dungeons and Dragons. You know those little pewter things? So, I hooked up with a couple of people, a real shady lot, casting these little pewter characters. I remember going
to Idaho Falls [when I was a kid] and there was this hobby shop there I used to go there when I was twelve or thirteen years old. They had the trains and stuff like that. They also had the Dungeon and Dragons stuff. I was like, "Oh, cool!" So, I thought I was pretty cool when I was sculpting those. Man, I was so poor, dude. I had just enough gas to drive the sculptures into their office and sometimes they’d have changes. We were sculpting them out of wax and they were no bigger than an inch. We were trying to do these beautiful, buxom Amazon type girls. I swear the heads were an eighth of an inch tall. So, you had to make this beautiful face and it was really a difficult thing to do, but we got pretty good at it. So, sometimes they would have you change the position of an arm or something. I’d just take the Bunsen burner and the dental tools and went back out to the car because I didn’t have enough gas to make it home and I had to get paid. So, I’d go out to the car, make the changes, and bring it back in and get a couple of bucks to put some gas in the car and drive back home.
So, then you went to Art Center and how was that?
That was awesome.
Everyone I’ve talked to that has attended Art Center has said that it was manna from Heaven.
Yeah, it was hard to get in there, and once you’re in, it’s even hard when you’re in there. It’s an artist’s boot camp.
Is it hard because of the competition around you is so tough or because academically it’s a bear?
Well, every teacher expects you to give your one hundred and ten per cent. You got five of the A term or whatever. It’s a very intense experience and you have to work hard. I’m a maniac. I was playing in a band at the time.
I didn’t know that. What did you play?
I played bass guitar. You know, simpleton. [laughs] I tried to pick the simplest thing to play.
I’m laughing because I’ve been there.
But, I really had a good time at school. So, I’d go to school during the day. I was working as an art director for a magazine at the time and doing various illustrations. I continued to work through school. I put about twenty hours a week in of work and I had a full load of school and then I’d have band practice. Sometimes I wouldn’t get home until two in the morning and then I had two hours of homework to do...at least. So, I don’t know how the hell I did it. And, I did it totally chemical free which I’m proud of. It was serious. I really did well in school. I graduated as Valedictorian of my class which surprised me because there were some animal, awesome artists.
Now, how is that awarded? Is it purely on your art’s merit or does it also pull in your scholastic load?
It’s your cumulative G.P.A. I had taken care of most of my academic stuff at Ricks College and some of it transferred, some of it didn’t, but I had some Art History classes and a couple of academic things I had to take. They were few and far between. I was able to waive most of them because I tried to do good in school. I got good grades at Ricks so a lot of those transferred over. The majority of my classes were either editorial, traditional painting, computer classes, design classes, and color classes. It was like the Navy S.E.A.L.S for artists. [laughs]
G.I. Cliff.
Some Navy guy is probably going to pop me in the mouth when he hears that.
So, once you graduated you pretty much backed the truck up and they loaded it with money, right? [laughs]
No...no. I wish that were true. I didn’t solicit any work for the first six months. My last three terms of school, I really had focused my brain in the direction that I wanted to go. So, I produced a lot of work that supported that direction. A week after I graduated, I bought a ticket to New York for mid-October for two weeks. It was another one of those trips to Los Angeles. "I got no contacts. I got nothing, but I’m going to put myself in the situation and fly by the seat of my pants and hope that something good happens." For that first six months if somebody called me up and asked me to do some work then I would do it, but I didn’t solicit any [new] work. I built a portfolio, shot all my transparencies and tried to prepare myself to go. When the day came, I went to New York and hit the streets. I hit ‘em hard. I mean, I was there for two and a half weeks and I sprained both my ankles while I was there. I was hardcore. I’d made some digital promos that I could leave behind. I’d made this little disc promo which I would give to art directors in a jewel box that you you’d get a CD in, but it was a floppy disc. It was like a little music thing. The paper you’d fold out, I’d hand cut all of them printed front and back. They were fiery prints which are medium quality color prints that look like a Canon color copy machine except from a computer. I just pasted them back to back, that was part of the six months, cutting those things and making them all look like they were professionally printed, but they were just schlockily done by hand. I never told anybody, but they really went over well. Each case cost all of about five bucks and I could show people like twenty pieces. It was a cheap way to get twenty pieces under somebody’s nose. And they kept them, too. I’ll still go to New York and visit people and there’s that promo up on their shelf. So, that’s pretty cool that they kept it, not necessarily because they liked the work, but the presentation was the key.
How long ago was this?
Three and a half years ago.
See, even that short of a time ago, people weren’t doing a multi-media kind of thing.
I could have gone the full route and gone multi-media, but I just used Kai’s Power Tools Viewer so it was real simple, just a slide show. It ran itself and you didn’t have to decompress anything. I really thought about it a lot. I didn’t want to do whatever. I thought, "How can I make this easy for them?" I tried to make a package which would sell me and do it easily.
So, you’re in New York and I’m assuming things went well.
I got all kinds of responses. I had people send me away with a spanking and some people said, "Wow, you’re awesome!" Marvel Comics was hilarious. I went in there and I’d gotten some editor’s name out of a comic book. I called him up and said, "Yeah, I’ve got some work and I’ve come two thousand miles. I know I don’t have an appointment. I know it’s really inappropriate. If I can just drop off a promo for you or even take five minutes of your time to show you my portfolio and I’ll get out of your hair. I promise you that your time won’t be wasted." He was really put out and I can’t even remember who it is now, but he said all right. So, I’m out in the lobby and I’m waiting. He made me wait in the lobby for twenty minutes. It was very degrading. [laughs] I was desperate. I was saying, "I’ll sit here. I don’t care!"
"I’m standing in the offices of Marvel Comics!"
Yeah, I’m freaking out! "It’s New York! It’s Marvel! Check it out!" So, I go in there and the guy’s office was horrible. There was old sandwiches piled up on the table, papers... Oh, man, it was worse than my studios ever looked. The guy was really annoyed that I was there, actually and he said, "Look, I don’t have five minutes and I don’t have any place where you can show your portfolio." Now, I’d built a portfolio in those six months in my garage that had a built in light box. They were eight by ten transparencies that I was showing on this light box. He says, "I don’t even have desk space for you to show me stuff." I said, "That’s ok!" and I put it right on the floor. I said, "You give me two minutes and I’ll make those two minutes worth your while." I just turned the light on the light box, started flipping through the stuff and three or four images into it, he goes, "Wait a minute..." He stops me and digs around underneath all these papers on this desk. He pulls this phone out from under this big pile of stuff and he calls some other editors saying. "I wasn’t kidding. I really don’t have time, but I love your work and I have to call some of the other editors in here." So, I ended up spending the whole rest of the day there. They were so nice, everybody there was really super cool. I was really lucky… again. A total shot in the dark, but, I guess, it’s going to happen, whether you plan or not, once in a while you’re going to have some luck. I had almost the same experience at Topps. It wasn’t hard to get in there. They were real
accommodating. They were real nice. I ended up spending four hours in their office talking to different art directors. It was then that they were starting to eye me for the X-Files gig. They had just assigned and received the first art for the X-Files comic book that Miran Kim did. It was absolutely a gorgeous piece and it smelled so good. They showed it to me. They said, "Oh, too bad you weren’t here earlier because we could have considered for the X-Files gig and here’s our first cover for it." I’m looking at it thinking, "Oh, I would have loved to get in on that." My bones were aching, but it was such a beautiful piece. I can’t tell you how much I love the smell of fresh Crystal Clear. [laughs] And it just reeked of Crystal Clear.
So, from there you ultimately got the X-Files card set gig?
Yeah, a couple of months later they called up and said that they'd love me to do some trading cards for X-Files. So, I said, "Well, let me think about it... Yeah!"
Now how did splitting them up work out with Thom Ang? Was that a good process?
It was great.
Thom is so cool.
It really went well. Originally they were going to have Thom do the whole set, but the deadline was so tight. He would have to do three or four a week...something crazy. So, he said, "We’re going to have to extend the deadline." They said that they had this other guy who they’d like to include. They thought that my work would work well with his. Actually, Thom and I had met at Art Center one time before. He had graduated before I was there and he’d come back to do some paintings for himself off some live models there in Richard Bunkall’s class who is a really awesome painter. I was in there painting and we just kind of met each other and I liked what he was doing. We just got to talking. So, I remembered his name and when they said I was going to be doing it with Thom Ang I said, "Yeah, I know that guy." Thom was really cool about it. We just totally worked it out. It was like, "Here’s the ones that inspire me and I would like, which ones do you want?" It was just like trading trading cards as a kid. It really worked out good. "That was a really good one, but I’ll trade you this one for that one."
Carpe Noctem Interviews, Vol 3 Page 16
