Featured Pro Portfolio: Justin Fields

Really understanding the business side of art. I am constantly learning and questioning everything that I hear. A lot of art schools don’t prepare you to understand the complex ways in which you will do business as an artist. Understanding rates, contracts, negotiations, NDA, rights to share the work, all of these and more are what I have been having to navigate for Ironklad Studios, as well as for myself. Most days I have at least 3 hours or emails, updates, management and art direction to do before I get to sit down and work on my skills as an artist. It’s a juggling skill that takes a while to get used to. So in a round about way to answer this, it seems time is my biggest obstacle.

You need time to work on your craft and time away from it to really grow. You need miles on your soul just as much as you need them on the canvas. I have a lot of projects I want to try my hand at, so I have to get better at managing it. These days I tend to make career bucket list things like work with Magic the Gathering, work with ILM, Weta, Blizzard, put out a collectible statue line, put out my own book, direct a short, do a cover for Heavy Metal, make a Gnomon DVD…. Stuff like that where it breaks me out of my shell in a good way and I get to work on things that inspired me to become an artist in the first place.

 Oh man…. the list is so huge! First and foremost would be Jerad Marantz. Not only is he an amazing artist but I owe a lot to him for getting me started in this industry. Iain McCaig for always listening to me and having the best answers for anything an artist might be going through. Neville Page for inspiring me to go the concept route, Stan Winston and George Lucas to keep my imagination running wild, Ryan Meinerding, Andy Park and that whole crew at Marvel for bringing my childhood heroes to life. Bobby Chiu and Kei Acedera for teaching me how important it is to experience life and not stay behind a screen all day. Dan Luvisi for showing me that passion is the key to creating worlds. Steve Jung and Jung Park for seeing me as an instructor and how much I enjoyed teaching.  Ben Mauro, Alex Konstad, Aaron Limonick, Wes Burt, Kemp Remillard, Karla Ortiz, David Levy, Crash McCreery, Alec Gilis, Tom Woodruff Jr., Phil Saunders, Dominic Qwek, Phillip Boutte, Shane Mehan, Dylan Cole, Ben Proctor, James Paick, John Park, Fausto de Martini, Vitaly Bulgarov, Karl Kopinski, Doug Chiang, James Clyne, Christian Alzmann, Aaron Mcbride, Jason Scheier, the list is huge! And it keeps growing, every day. So get out there, attend a few workshops every year, meet and mingle, get your social on!See more of Justin’s work on his portfolio website. To learn more about ArtStation Pro websites, click here.