AngelCrusher

01 - How long have you been on DeviantArt?
Coming up to 10 years now! Wow! Didn't realize it was that long! Over a third of my life! Damn that makes me feel reeeeeeally old.

02 - What does your username mean?
I was a big 'Tenacious D' fan in school back in around 2001 / 2002. That's when the internet was becoming more accessible in school and at home. I needed a username for a site me and my friends would visit during our lunch hours, a fantasy role playing site called 'The Keep'. It was the first incarnation of AngelCrusher, an appropriately named fantasy character whose name I plucked from a Tenacious D track, 'Explosivo'. I then went on to use the name for my email accounts and a role playing wrestling website, an 'efed', called 'Cyber Wrestling Revolution'. That's when AC become fully fleshed out as a wrestling character and became my online handle for whatever site I would join up.

03 - Describe yourself in three words.
Handsome, Legendary and humble.

ok, ok, you got me.
Maybe Quiet, Ambitious and Competitive.
I've always been a bit of a wall-flower, but I like to observe and listen to others. That's not to say I can't handle conversation, I'm perfectly polite and capable and prefer one on one encounters. In a group I prefer to sit back and not compete in a crowd of voices.
I say 'ambitious', just because I have so many ideas I want to do. I don't want to just settle taking orders and being a cog in a wheel. I achieved a dream by animating for a living. It may not have been Disney, and I may never work on anything Marvel related, but I'm realistic. I have my own ideas I want to develop and make a living on being my own boss. 
Everyone who knows me knows I am competitive. I also have a very good amount of luck and happen to win most games or contests involving family and friends. I guess a non competitive people wouldn't keep coming up with all different sorts of contests and competitions on dA. I may not be able to compete in them myself, but my competitive nature tells me no one can do a fighting tournament better than me anyway.

04 - Are you left or right handed?
Right handed. Although people do get confused since I wear my watch on my right wrist and use a fork with my right hand. Supposedly this isn't the normal thing to do for right handed people, but it just makes sense to me. I was always quite envious of left handers growing up. You would repeatedly hear who they were naturally more creative, and all artists seemed to be left handed. The other kids in the class, the better drawers, were all left handed, so I felt it was an unfair advantage! lol It just pushed me harder to try and be better.

05 - What was your first deviation?
Postman Bat

A piece for a project in my first year degree in animation. We had to create a character and make a maquette out of plasticine and wire. I joined up dA because I heard about it by a lot of students a year above me, the likes of I'd never even heard of dA before, or considered going online to look at and publish artwork, so it was definitely a turning point for me.

06 - What is your favourite type of art to create?
Tricky. I do like drawing, or trying to draw superhero type characters, but I probably have more fun drawing cartoon version of things. It's quicker and easier! While I enjoy animating, and nothing can beat seeing your work moving on screen, on tv, it is a lot of work, while just being able to sit and sketch something fun and cartoony, that is probably my favourite thing to do.

07 - If you could instantly master a different art style, what would it be?
I would love to use 3D, to sculpt and to animate in that medium. The ability to animate and use an 'undo' button, or to 'tween' and let the computer and plugins do some of the work for you...yes! Other than that, I wish I could paint digitally, speed painting, but looks like a painting. I just don't get how the brushes work. :s

08 - What was your first favourite?

I think the first thing I did when I signed up was to look up Spider-Man artwork. I love spidey, and wanted it on my page, and this piece is badass.

09 - What type of art do you tend to favourite the most?
I tend to favourite fanart, mostly digital, and mostly of comic book characters. Nowadays I am a little more diverse, and look for styles and designs, and to use my favourites for things that I also have difficulty drawing, like pin-ups or muscles. I think it's a good way to catalogue reference and see how others tackle the same topic.

10 - Who is your all-time favourite deviant artist?

Seriously, this guy doesn't draw a bad thing. He is incredible. His anatomy, his perspectives, his colouring, his traditional sketches, his style, his ability to change styles, it's just awe-inspiring. I could read any comic he makes because it is page to page of awesomeness. How Marvel or DC have not signed him up is a crime.

11 - If you could meet anyone on DeviantArt in person, who would it be?
Tricky one this, I have gotten to know a lot of people on this site really well, and have known them a really long time. And it's not just them being great people, but also great artists too. I don't think I could whittle it down to just one person, and to then name a handful would do a disservice to the many people I know, as I just know I will have forgotten many important people on the list. 



For all the others I failed to mention, how about a big meet up at AFLcon?

12 - How has a fellow deviant impacted your life?
Wow, a little heavy!
Again, I'll go back to , for different reasons entirely. When I first came to dA all those years ago, he used to host weekly or monthly art jams which were always fun and interesting, and was the only guy doing this sort of thing that I knew. Suddenly he stopped doing it, so I kept doing it myself with my own watchers. This eventually led to a month of a OC fighting tournament, AFL (AngelCrusher's Fighting League), which now I am probably more known for than my actual art. 
With over a thousand pieces of art created for my tournament, and the little community we have created, and maybe even inspired, friends that have been made through it, this has been the biggest thing to impact my life through dA, and it all started with Chamba and his art jams.

13 - What are your preferred tools to create art?
Col-Erase pencil, fineline pen (0.3-0.8), photoshop cs2
Sometimes I draw straight onto my cintiq 12wx which I have had for maybe 6 years now. That's been a life saver, as I really do hate graphics tablets. I find them so unnatural to draw with!

14 - What is the most inspirational place for you to create art?
Little pretentious? What sort of answers is expected? 'In the mountains of Tibet, the sound of the wind whispering in my ear playing the soundtrack of mother nature as a nearby waterfall trickles the fresh elixir of life,the sun basking down on my sketchpad as I sit, naked, pencil in hand...'

I just draw in my office/study, which has all my books, toys/action figures/statues, surrounded by posters, and of course, it has my computer with cintiq in it!!! Not so much inspirational as functional! As long as I have quiet, no distractions, then I'm good. Maybe throw on my itunes playlist which hasn't been updated since I left university, but that's all I need.

15 - What is your favourite DeviantArt memory?
I've got a lot of good memories, so this one will be difficult.
I have been lucky enough to get on my hero's commission list, and have had numerous commissions from him. The excitement of receiving artwork of your own characters from your hero is really hard to measure, but it's up there.


I've even received gift art from many people, and getting surprise gift art, it really does warm the heart. Now imagine someone posted you the original drawing of that gift art! Very cool!


I've been lucky enough to received Daily Deviations. When I first started on dA, pageviews and Daily Deviations were the pinnacle. I've received 3 deviations and have been in a collaboration for a 4th.

They may not have made me famous like I naively thought, but seeing that someone cared enough to even nominate me for Daily Deviations meant a huge deal to me! The fact that my animated films, work that took months, that were unbelievably hard work, was picked, really meant the world to me. And it's a great feeling to give back too. I have been lucky to nominate a fellow deviant to get a Daily Deviation, as well as my fighting tournament, AFL, also getting Daily Deviations for some of the artwork that was submitted by the participants! That filled me with pride, that my friends, through my tournament, were being rewarded like this.

Of course, dA has helped me with recognition as well. I've received commission requests, my artwork has gone viral, been published in magazines and has even been ripped off and sold on eBay. While annoying as it is, it meant my artwork was being seen. 


Like I said, when I first got on here, pageviews were evrything, and it would be so exciting to just reach 1,000 views, and keep going for every thousand! Then it became every 10,000, then 100,000! As my 'popularity' grew, I even appeared on the front page on a couple of occasions. Ok, maybe not one the top of the front page, but within the first 60-120. That's not too bad, right? ^_^
I don't think I have celebrated pageviews on years now, but I am near the half a million mark, so who knows, may be time to celebrate with something once again!



Recently, I've had a bit of a hiatus from dA. I was inactive for around 2 years. I was on and off, but wasn't posting as much as I used to. I was non existent in 2014. Then my first post in over a year/year and a half, was to let everyone know that I had cancer.
I had been away for so long, I wasn't sure people would care, would respond, would notice. I had watched artist's develop and continue to create art, but I just wasn't doing anything myself, so I thought I may have lost these friends and fans. But I had such an overwhelming response from a lot of good people, ones who I consider friends. When I told then the night before my surgery, I just had to let my thoughts and emotions out, but then to read them while I was recovering, that was a great memory!

But my favourite memory...?

Going back to my fighting tournament, AFL, the first event was an art jam, and it was good fun. Was it a fluke? After people asking for it, I delivered and hosted yet another one. This is where I knew this was a special event. This wasn't just an art jam any more. These just weren't random artists, followers, strangers. This was a community, of family and friends. We built something special here with the spirit we had. The first one wasn't a fluke, there was something special here! We had 64 different artists taking part! They were involved in 296 different fights! There were 488 original pieces of art produced! All within just over a month!


This was mind blowing. 

And everyone enjoyed it so much, that it had a life outside of dA. And this is where my favourite memory comes in. Not only was this just a small deviantArt 'thing', but this was real to people. They formed friendships, exchanged pieces of artwork...and created t-shirts.

Actual. T-shirts.



It was unreal. This was just a little art jam that I did because my hero wasn't doing art jams any more. Now these people are enjoying participating in these events I do, and have their own memes, own mythology, own jokes, character development, and now t-shirts! 

But that's not all.

I got my own t-shirt.

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designed this for me, and sent it through the post. I have my very own AFL t-shirt, the big boss man, AngelCrusher. I am so proud and happy, not just with the t-shirt and the kind gesture, but what it represents to me.

Over the course of hosting these events, so far 6 in total, we have produced probably in the region of around 3000 pieces of art. And this t-shirt that I have represents all those pieces of art, all those people who have entered, all the friends that I have made a long the way.

I think that's a pretty awesome memory to have.
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