This A-Profiler we bring you illustrator and comic book artist, Benton Jew. Find out how Jew took his interest in drawing and turned it into a professional career, how his art is influenced by Bruce Lee, and what advice he has for aspiring artists out there.

Your site URLs:
bentonjewart.blogspot.com

You are a professional illustrator and comic book artist. When did you first start having an interest in drawing and how did your interest evolve into a professional career?
Both my twin brother and I have been drawing since we were very young. We would write and draw our own little homemade comics and create our own characters.. When we were in the 7th grade, we got a super-8 camera and started making our own little films. When Star Wars came out, it was a revelation. We started playing with animation and special effects with our own little fantasy/sci-fi epics. While I was in art school, I had shown some comics work I had done for Oakland A's Magazine to veteran storyboard artist Stan Fleming (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) after he had given a talk to the illustration students. A year later, ILM was doing a simulator ride for Epcot Center that Stan was too busy to board, and he recommended me. That was my first job out of art school, and I stayed there for 13 years.

You've worked for ILM in the past doing art for various films. What have been the highlights of your career so far? What has been your proudest moment so far?
In general, working at ILM was a highlight. Especially during the time I arrived, CG was just starting to come into it's own. I was able to work on a lot of projects that were groundbreaking at the time. I helped create the M&M Mars Martians that were among the first CG characters to be realistically integrated into a live-action TV commercial. I was the Visual Effects Art Director on The Mask, which pushed the boundaries of what CG could do at the time even further. I also had a hand in creating the "Edgar-bug" in Men In Black as well as the original Scorpion King in The Mummy Returns. Another highlight was being selected to storyboard Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. The anticipation and hype at the time was tremendous, and it seems like everybody in the business had submitted their portfolio. It was an honor to be selected, and ILM was nice enough to loan me to Lucasfilms for a year. I like to think my passion for Hong Kong martial arts films helped make the final battle with Darth Maul that I boarded, a better sequence.

It was also a kick to be able to do some comics work for Marvel. It was something I'd always wanted to do as a kid. It was a blast seeing the work I did on Savage She Hulk and Agents of Atlas in the comic stores.

When you look back at your drawings from childhood, do you tend to critique them or do you look upon them fondly as capturing a moment in time when you were still developing your skills? Is your preference nowadays to work in digital or analog?
A little bit of both. You don't know where you're going until you know where you've been. Sometimes I'll look at my old artwork and it will remind me about something I learned in my younger days that I'd forgotten about. I often find myself competing with my old work. I always want the drawing I'm working on now to be better than the last one. I don't want to go backwards, I want to keep progressing to become a better artist.

In terms of analog vs. digital, it's a little bit of both. I find it faster to sketch and doodle with a pencil than sketching purely digitally. If I'm doing comics, I'll usually rough things in in pencil then scan it in and then ink it digitally with on my Cintiq. I like to switch it up sometimes, though. Sometimes I will do a drawing completely digitally and sometimes it's nice to ink with real india ink and brush.

In terms of painting, that's a different story. I'm completely digital now. If I never open another tube of paint, I won't weep. I've always been too much of a slob to do real paint. I used to make such a mess when I would paint in acrylics. I like the latitude digital offers in terms of being able to change things and experiment.

If I'm painting something, digital is definitely the way to go.

Some of your work can be seen in the Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology. How did you get involved in that project? What projects are you currently working on?
I found out about it on AngryAsianMan.com. I read about the call for entries a couple of days before the deadline and worked up a quick story proposal and sketch. The story took place during the building of the transcontinental railroad. The editors rejected the story line, but liked the art. I had noticed that the editor, Jeff Yang, had a proposal for another story during that same era and so I volunteered to illustrate his story Driving Steel. I felt it was important to get involved with the project, especially given the controversies surrounding films like 21, Dragonball, and The Last Airbender. It's important that an Asian-American point of view is represented in the culture at large, be it movies, comics, literature, music. We have a unique experience that rarely has a chance to be accurately seen. Secret Identities not only gave readers the opportunity to see characters with Asian faces, but for Asian-American creators to create characters that looked like themselves.

I am currently storyboarding on a Captain Nemo project at Disney.

Your twin brother also is an artist as well. When growing up, or even today, is there a friendly competition between you two? Have you ever collaborated on any projects together?
Being a twin is a unique experience. We both showed ability since we were 5 and so we always lived with each other's greatest competition growing up. I think this actually made us better artists. There may have been competition, but it was friendly. However, I don't think we could ever directly collaborate. Although we have a lot of the same influences and tastes, each of us has developed our own unique ways of seeing things. I could see us working the way the Hernandez Brothers work, where there are two unique visions that share a book. I could not see us doing what the Brothers Hildebrandt used to do, that is, two guys working on the same painting.

What artists have been most influential on you?
Alex Toth and oddly, an artist of a completely different sort, Bruce Lee. As different as those two sound, their philosophies were actually quite similar: know what it is your are trying to achieve and strip it down to the bare essentials, discarding anything that is non-essential. Other illustrators and cartoonists who have influenced me are Anson Jew, Jordi Bernet, R. Crumb, Los Bros. Hernandez, Iain McCaig, Craig Mullens, John Buscema, Alberto Breccia, Noel Sickles, Alex Raymond, Jean Giraud, Milton Caniff, Joe Kubert, Frank Robbins, Paul Pope. I could go on and on.

When not drawing or illustrating or just being an artist, what do you enjoy? Any guilty pleasures?
Most of my interests seem to be either art or film related. Can't seem to avoid it, it's pretty much who I am. I like watching movies, collecting original art, buying rare art books. Outside that world, I like trying out different restaurants, keeping up with politics, martial arts, listening to old traditional blues.

What advice do you have for other aspiring artists out there?
A few things:

Love what you do enough that you will always improve. You should be able to be your own worst critic and honestly evaluate where you are strong and where you can improve. If you are your own worst critic, nothing anyone else says will be able to discourage you.

Don't be afraid to ask questions. If you don't know something about art, or the business, it never hurts to ask someone who knows.

Learn how to draw. And especially, draw from life! Too many young artists I've met get hung up on style and what other artists are drawing. Having artistic heroes is fine, but in terms of learning how to draw it's really overrated. It's better to have a sound command of the fundamentals of drawing and objective observation. You need to draw the figure accurately and have a basic command of perspective. Don't worry about how other artists draw things, use your own eyes. Your own style will emerge organically if you do these things.

And finally, don't give up. There will be plenty of setbacks in this business, even if you are very talented. Just dust yourself off and get back to the drawing board!

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This issue of A-Profiler is brought to you by Nelson Wong.
Special thanks to Benton Jew.

Photo copyright retained by original copyright holder(s).