Tyler Kupferer
Base14 Part 1
Homepage: http://www.base14.com
Feature By: Jonathan Earley
Alysha and Tyler are a dynamic brother-sister duo who formed Base14 Productions. Tyler uses Base14 as a battering ram for his animation projects, while Alysha presents her fine art and fashion design. This Columbus-native duo now works and studies in Savannah, Georgia. This feature article has been split into two parts to exhibit each of them individually, but also as a team.
Tyler fuses his engineering mentality with a quirky sense of humor and visual design. Reading through Base14's About page will give anyone a very accurate idea of Tyler's unwavering attention to detail and emphasis on pre-conceptualization. The nearly half-page description of the creative process behind the name "Base14", explains roots in mathematics and scientific principles along with the significance attached to particular numbers and number sets. The blog is scattered with various animation tests, video tutorials, completed animation projects, and insight into Base14's development.
C-buz: You seem to have put a LOT of thought into the name. Are you the type of person that thinks things out a great deal before executing?
Tyler Kupferer: Absolutely. I find my mind is hard-wired to analyze subjects down to the smallest detail when I'm passionate about them. And while this can become tedious, it's invaluable to projects that require pre-production. Especially when I'm working on my films, planning is over half of the entire project. Pre-conceptualization is also where you can give your mind a chance to be flexible and explore every idea you have. It's the opposite kind of creative thinking you need when you're in the middle of production and have to think on your toes to adapt to uncompromising circumstances, which is also invaluable.
CB: You went to Sydney for inspiration. What did you find while you were there?
TK: Before my trip to Australia and New Zealand, I had never been out of the country before. By the end of my junior year of college I had spent four years constantly cycling through school and internships, and desperately needed a change of pace. My trip down under finally gave me a chance to immerse myself in a different culture and just start thinking in new ways. When I took the time to open my mind to these new cultural ideas, I had a chance to interpret new artistic ideas as well. It can be easy to get in a rut and lose your artistic energy if your routine gets too repetitive, so being able to experience places and ideas I had never seen before renewed my drive to explore my thoughts.
CB: How did you first get into animation?
TK: I did some stop-motion early on, using the Lego Studios movie making toys that came out in 2001, but the first significant work I did in animation was in my Computer Graphics class at Columbus North High School, where we learned 3D Studio Max and Macromedia Flash. I have been a compulsive illustrator all my life, so I felt much more connected to the 2D environment of Flash than the 3D world of 3DSMax. However, Flash has a very steep learning curve, and I only produced two 2D animations that year.
I began using Flash more and more in college for various projects, but never actually animated a legitimate short film until my junior year when I was trying to win first place in a lucrative animation contest at Purdue. I worked tirelessly to fulfill my vision and somehow found the process very satisfying. After that I was hooked.
CB: Your comic, "Rightfield" was published in Purdue's newspaper. What kinds of feedback did you get from that comic?
Not as much as I would have liked, considering how much I value constructive criticism of my work. But a large majority of people, I think, had no idea who wrote Rightfield and probably didn't care. They just liked to read it. Those who did know I wrote it would tell me about strips they really liked, but for the most part provided little suggestion on how to improve it. The best suggestions I got were from web cartoonist David Malki!, creator of Wondermark, after I wrote him asking for advice.
Still, Rightfield elicited a full range of opinions. I got an email from one reader who compared it to the greatness of Dilbert and Calvin & Hobbes, while on the other end a few people made their own hate group on Facebook called "Rightfield is the Worst Cartoon Ever Written." Despite my solicitations, the founders were unwilling to elaborate on their viewpoint. Just as any artist must accept, you can't please everyone.
CB: How do you and Alysha work together as a team?
TK: Alysha and I mostly do our own work since our talents lie in different areas. I work in film, animation, print and web design while she works in fashion, accessories, sculpture and music. Still, the powerful part of our partnership lies in constant collaboration of concepts and critiques of our work. Alysha may not help me write the screenplay for my next movie, but she knows what a good screenplay should look like and tells me in no uncertain terms when its not working. It takes a very high level of trust to have someone that will always tell you the truth about your work, especially when it really sucks. Alysha and I have that level of trust and keep each other's work in check.
CB: Did you get along growing up? How is your relationship different now than it was growing up?
TK: Alysha and I have always gotten along very well. We just think on the same wavelength, I feel, even though our artistic skills are tuned to different areas. We're fortunate that we like the same kinds of movies and music, because it gives us common ground to start from when conceptualizing news ideas for creative work.
CB: Who or what are some of your biggest sources of inspiration?
TK: As kids I grew up with Disney cartoons and the comic strips in the newspaper (most notable Peanuts, The Far Side, Calvin & Hobbes and Dilbert). So I think those, along with my teenage years watching The Simpsons, have been the biggest media influences on my style of draftsmanship, storytelling and comedy today.
CB: How do you go about promoting your own artwork?
TK: My knowledge of web development is a huge boon to promoting my work. I found that by the time I reached college I had such a steady stream of work being made that it would be easiest to condense it into one place to allow me to display and reflect on the progress of the work, so I was lucky blogs were just coming into popularity at the time. Our blog, Base14.com, is our single one-stop venue for chronologizing and promoting the work we produce. Then we can feed the blog posts into RSS, Facebook and Twitter to deliver the news to interested parties however they like to receive their news. It helps to be flexible with the times and find as many opportunities for others to discover your work. Until we really need to worry about making a profit on what we do, it's worthwhile to try anything once.
CB: Did you have an artistic or graphical community while you were in Columbus?
TK: The one place I found a community of other like-minded designers was through the North Publications program. A great number of students in there were not only interested in written journalism, but also graphic design, web development and following artistic trends. I had several friends in theater too, but the journalism department helped me realize that I was capable of pursing art as a career, rather than just a hobby.
CB: How has Columbus affected your outlook on life or the way you go about your art and design?
TK: I still am very proud to be from Columbus, because of its special focus on art and support of artistic endeavors. Living in a community that had high-class architecture, sculpture, panting, theater, etc integrated into its fabric gave me a good background a familiarity with art that I might not otherwise have in a small mid-west town. When I realized that art was my passion and abandoned my initial engineering career path, this background was already there to allow me to make that switch successfully.
CB: How can Columbus be more supporting of local talent and art?
TK: Having not lived in Columbus for several years now, I'm not too familiar with what is and isn't offered to young artists in the city these days. I was sad when the IMA gallery closed at the Commons Mall, and would like to see some new kind of public rotating gallery take its place.
CB: How do you think the Web has affected art and how it is shared, created, manipulated, conceived?
TK: The web is huge when it comes to how new and emerging artists can find audiences and build exposure. The more it matures the more it helps new artists. The important thing, though, is for artists to understand how to correctly use the web to their advantage, without assuming it can be a replacement for more traditional methods of exposure, which for only a few select people it is.
CB: If you could go back ten years and tell yourself something, what would you say?
TK: Join every extra curricular activity that seems remotely interesting, especially in High School. You never know what hidden talents you might have, and now is the time to experiment. You can still change your mind in college too, but it costs more and takes more time. Spend your time exploring and find what you really, truly love.
CB: Where do you see yourself ten years from now? How about fifty?
TK: Ten years from now I hope I'm making animated content of some kind, whether it be movies, television or the Internet. (Maybe it'll all be the same thing by then.) Fifty years from now I hope I'm the director of those movies and television shows, passing on the ancient art of story-telling to the next generation.
CB: What advice do you have for young aspiring artists or musicians in Columbus?
TK: Make art that you enjoy making. The greatest artists and musicians of any generation were not successful necessarily because they were the smartest or hardest-working artists around, but more so just because what they did happened to jive with the popular ideas of the time.
“Make what you love and if others love it too, all the better. If no one gets you, at least you still enjoy it, and you've remained true to yourself.”