Meet Mert Kizilay

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mert Kizilay.

Mert, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was born and raised in a very small town in Turkey called Malkara. It was a great childhood. I carry a lot of marks from my hometown and culture. There was not much accessibility to many things at that time. But there was one tiny shop which was importing a few comic books once in while. My older brother -who is a very successful director/designer- was collecting them, and making drawings based on those. I sort of followed his steps. That’s how I got into visual arts.

I studied Fine Arts and classic animation in a city called Eskisehir. I have lots of good memories from that period. I got to know many inspiring good friends. I had the opportunity to try and experiment many things. I played with different materials, made paintings, collages. I explored lots of different mediums; cel animation, live action, CGI, stop motion. I have created several short films back then. I was also into sound design and composing; mostly foley and electronic.

After graduation, I worked heavily on advertisement projects for several years in Turkey. Non-profit art projects were still part of my life. But as an artist, I didn’t want the advertisement to be dominant in my life. That’s why Title Sequences seemed like a better balance; more narrative driven, having more space for expression and different styles. And that’s how I moved to Los Angeles six years ago. Although my interests got expanded since then, I’m still working as a freelance creative here in Los Angeles.

Has it been a smooth road?
I consider myself really lucky as an immigrant. I had a good job, met with lots of truly great people. I have really good friends here. However, especially 1st year was particularly rough. I lived in Istanbul before moving here, which is a very walkable city with a good public transportation system. Los Angeles was really hard to explore without a car. And other usual things like; coming from a very different culture, trying survive as a foreigner, crazy competition, being away from loved ones and so on… Some still remain but as time goes by, I got used to it. Friends helped a lot to me to adapt. I got better at my craft, I started to discover things that I like in the city, met more and more people, came across more opportunities. A lot to appreciate here.

But over the years something else happened; witnessing the huge evolution of my country from distance at that time. A lot of things shifted, changed politically and culturally. That definitely changed my perception on a lot of things. It caused lots of different emotions.

Another thing is we all sculpt this tangible, more visible and also, kind of naturally obscured unique structures about ourselves at the same time. One is easily visible by others; things like career, image on social media, physical things we decide to own, movies, shows and music we talk about everyday and such… This became a little to prominent and too prior in our lives. The other part is less visible; requires more digging I guess; a combination of experiences what makes us really “us”, like the example I gave above about the transformation of my country. We all have very personal marks and stories coming from our past. We carry and reflect those in a subtle way, in our eyes, voices, gestures… but going through deeper and discovering what’s beyond requires different mindset. I think Los Angeles struggles a bit on this manner. We should be able to create even more room for authenticity in our daily lives. We can definitely use more sincerity.

We’d love to hear more about your work.
Currently, I’m working as an Independent Creative Director and Designer focusing on visual and experiential media. Which means that I can provide concept creation, team management, and execution based on project or needs. I could be designing a sequence for prologue of a feature film, or a main on end title sequence. These may have 2D/3D design or live action or more traditional methods requiring pen and painting. We shot melting ice for National Geographic promo. We designed the entire point of view graphics for the latest Robocop movie. We were Imagining it as fully functional operating system. We have imagined Oz the Great and Powerful ending as a classical zoetrope animation. I created a full abstract CGI film for Frank Riggio’s TTTT music track. Or it could be a simple typeface. These are some examples… And most of these projects were a result of marvelous teamwork of course.

I never focused on what I think that I’m really good at. I just dived into to things that I have found interesting, and once I was in it, I could somehow sort things out. I think this attitude naturally brought me where I am. I worked on many different projects, with very different mediums. I still love going back and forth between analog and digital. I love thinking with sound. Idea and concept are crucial. Even though I mostly believe that communication and clarity are very important for paid jobs, I still like stressing my work with contemporary and experimental approaches. I always believe there is a nice and quirky flirtation between design and art.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Things are evolving faster and faster with the technology, politics, and how we consume things in our industry. In the near future new technologies like VR, AR, MR will be even more accessible. This will definitely create new areas to explore. Real-Time Rendering is slowly taking over CGI productions. Artificial Intelligence will become more and more major for content creation and consumption. Lots of mediums are emerging, this will aggressively continue. However, I don’t think these new things will simply replace what we already have like conventional formats such as screens, papers or the way we interact with things anytime soon. They will definitely expand our playground and bring new possibilities, but we will be using many existing principles to tell stories, with necessary adjustments.

Artificial Intelligence is a huge thing. But I think instead of relying fully on new advancements, I really believe it’s always better to take advantage of them and combine with the existing. Conscious and subjective decision making is crucial when it comes to art and creation. Francis Ford Coppola once said at a Q&A; “Risk is sex of creativity.” This is very important to keep excitement, curiosity, and experience continuously.

And finally, we should be very careful about how we use real life, existing sensitive subjects such as equality or racism in our products. It was hurtful to see some that some brands were using victimhood as material for their commercial/marketing videos. I really believe that it’s crucial to be vocal and expressive about important subjects as creatives. But at the end it shouldn’t make it feel like it has been done for the sake of PR/marketing. We should be really responsible and sincere about what we do.

All in all, I see that everything is getting more and more intimate between creators and consumers. We can instantly release what we create and share it instantly, let it interact with people, and acquire instant feedback in our age. Which is very valuable. It’s up to us how to shape it at the end. Regardless, it’s an incredibly dynamic and exciting era.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mertkizilay.com
• Phone: 3105923976
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mertkizilay/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mertmalkara
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/kizilay/

Image Credit:
“Kina Choi” for portrait photographer

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