Meet Greg Westphal

Today we’d like to introduce you to Greg Westphal.

Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
My mom received a call while working at Wright Patterson Air Force Base that she would have to leave to come pick me up from DayCare. I was fighting with the other kids and talking back to the guardians. Exasperated, my mom asked what on earth would upset a normally lethargic three-year-old as to raise such hell.

I had found Zelda and was apparently occupying myself protesting the preschool’s tyrannical rule of 20 minutes of gaming per child at a time. It didn’t take long to realize that this was not going to be a stand-alone incident. I had caught a bug and it was going to take me all around the world and across a multitude of disciplines to exorcise it.

20 years later I had dabbled in music, programming and animation in University and was sitting on a half-finished Film Degree with a newly launched student indie game. The game itself was pretty fun if basic but its launch became a very sore spot for me. It had proved that I wasn’t ready to get into the industry with myself contributing very little to the project partially due to ineptitude and otherwise because of the largest greatest personal tragedy of my life. My brother had died.

We had been insanely close for siblings with most of the past six years prior being spent gaming online at least six hours a day with weekends seeing us spending as much as 30 hours together. Honestly, we were like twins but four years apart.

With him gone it seemed like everything I did was emptier. I stopped playing games and I struggled to slide over the finish line at University, wrapping it up with a GPA that basically confirmed it would have been better to not have tried. While sitting in my apartment working on making another Indie game I came across a tutorial on digital painting. The guy ran a school in Singapore.

I had no idea who he was, what he had done or really what he was teaching, but he promised it would be a ton of work and the job placement was good. My Hail Mary was applying to the school and with an exemplary act of charity, I was admitted.

At the time of my starting Feng Zhu: School of Design my “art” capabilities were nestled between preschool macaroni art and kindergartener finger painting. A gruelling year of all-nighters painting, podcast and pounding back gallons of energy drinks I managed to have a single piece portfolio ready. The discipline I received from this art boot camp though was invaluable and to this day I credit this time as the inflection point of my life.

It took expanding on that foundation back in LA to finally land my first full-time studio gig in Wroclaw, Poland. A few years of experiencing Poland (and falling in love with paczki) I moved back to LA to once again build more skills and hopefully contribute to more games.

Please tell us about your art.
My brother is my single greatest inspiration for art. All the hours spent with him grinding away at some in-game milestone or walking and chatting about some bit of lore or mechanic have translated to me spending endless hours in front of my computer trying to perpetuate that for others.

I primarily use pen and pad or photoshop but I’ve been taking more and more into 3d these days. Since I only started in my mid-twenties, I’m constantly playing catch up to other artists who have been working on their craft for decades but when I get stuck in with something I’m obsessive, so I’ll get there. I’ve learned to love the art and technique of image making but for me, it always has to serve the higher purpose of building worlds that people would love to share experiences of.

What do you think about conditions for artists today? Has life become easier or harder for artists in recent years? What can cities like ours do to encourage and help art and artists thrive?
There absolutely is no better time to be an artist than today but there is a shift that is happening. The internet has been able to provide so much with cheap tools and free lessons on how to use them and coupled with the exposure to subcultures there is unlimited inspiration to be had. The caveat though comes that you’re competing now in a global pond.

I think biologically we’re programmed to excel at being big fish in small ponds. Before the internet, if you’re the greatest among your family and friends at playing guitar, then you’ll be encouraged and given opportunities within that circle to continue that pursuit. Now, however, from the moment you pick up that guitar, you’ll be able to compare yourself to everyone in the world, from four-year-old prodigies to professionals who’ve spent half a century mastering it. It’s unbelievably hard to block all that out and get over the initial stages of being awful at something. There is an entire industry of self-help trying to just get people over that hump.

The best thing LA can do is to foster local, almost isolated ponds, where expression of craft doesn’t need to compete on the world scale but where the passion to do so is cultivated. Let people make mistakes and give them space to grow from them.

How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
For digital art, Artstation is the go to place and mine is gregwestphal.artstation.com or gregwestphal.com. I always love to hear feedback and project proposals.

In terms of seeing a project I’ve worked on that will be coming out soon, please check out Dying Light two. I had a great deal to say about the weapons and some of the other aspects of the game.

Contact Info:

• Website: greg.westphal.design@gmail.com
• Phone: 8014506791
• Email: Greg.Westphal.Design@gmail.com

Image Credit:
Greg Westphal

Suggest a story: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.