Hi Folko. Please introduce yourself and tell us when and how you got started in cg?

My name is Folko Streese and I live in Berlin, Germany with my girlfriend and my little daughter.

I started out as an illustrator for an interactive media company. I had to do illustrations and animations for edutainment cd-roms. First I did a lot of stuff traditional and touched it up in ps but step by step I discovered that I could realize much more in a shorter timeframe when using the digital tools. I asked my boss for a wacom tablet and soon I did all my work digital.

Then I got my first freelance job as a texture painter  (I painted 150 face textures with the mouse because at this time I had  no wacom at home yet :)) and after that I moved from Hamburg to Berlin to work employed as a concept and 2D artist. Nowadays I am a Freelancer and very happy with it.

Tell me more about the process of creation? What do you start with?

Usually I start with a more or less rough pencil sketch, scan it in and then start to paint it over. Lately I started sometimes directly in photoshop without preliminary sketches. If a high-end illustration is needed I start with little pencil thumbnails to nail down the composition.

What software do you use at every stage of work?

Sometimes I start to lay out the perspective in SketchUp. For painting I use Photoshop. It was the first painting software I got in touch with and it is still my favourite tool. I tried Painter once but I was overwhelmed by all the adjustments you could do and since Photoshop got his extended brush engine (I guess they added it in version 7.0?) I am quite happy with it. Maybe I will try painter in the future again, because I have seen a lot of amazing stuff done with it but at the moment I don’t have the time to test it intensively. It is some years ago I painted textures, at that time we first used detailer and later on deeppaint 3d in combination with the texture weapons extension. For 2d animation I use flash and if the intended use demands it I do illustrations in flash as well.

Have you any tricks and your own “know-how” in painting, if it’s not secret tell us about them?

I am not the first one to state it but that´s just the way it is: The best trick is to paint, paint, paint :). Of course over the time you develop your own way to handle your software intuitionally and you discover little tricks here and there how you can achieve certain effects. You can do a lot with custom brushes but I myself am just discovering all the possibilities custom brushes offer.  It’s definitely a timesaver. Sometimes I blend textures to make the pic more vivid. In general I don’t think there are “evil” filters or tools in Photoshop, it all depends on the way you use them.