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Hi I’m Justin Maller, an Australian illustrator and art director.
It’s morning, it’s time for coffee.
... It’s time to buy some coffee, let’s go!
I’ve been making digital art for 12 years now.
I went to the University of Melbourne and studied
a very helpful degree in creative writing.
Since I graduated that in 2007 I’ve been freelancing full time.
It’s fun being able to do what I love, every day,
and not have to work in an office – I like this.
So I came to New York to find somewhere new, and explore and see something different.
I only meant to come for a short time but... I met a girl, and now I live here.
So in 7 years I've done work for a lot of different clients.
I’ve worked for Verizon, Coca Cola,
Nike, the Grammys, Dolby, ESPN...
I’ve worked for a lot of people and I’ve had a lot of different bosses.
It’s nice to be able to think of a brand and then bring your own ideas
to a preexisting concept and find new ways to imagine it.
I wanted to start a business that would help my friends
and other people in the industry to grow their careers
so that the quality of the work that was coming in matched
the quality of the work that they were making going out.
I met with Ben and Eric from Satellite Office and together we decided to launch Reach,
an agency aimed at bringing in more work and enhancing
the creative careers of emerging artists from around the world.
We launched Reach with a roster of 20 artists encompassing a broad range of esthetics.
The purpose of Reach is to be the business behind the studio.
So what we want to do is to free our artists to work on their work,
concentrate on the creative and not have to think too much
about the administrative and billing side of things.
So one of the more interesting jobs that I’ve had come in was for the Grammys.
This was another one of those jobs where it's like "we need 8 images in a week",
... but these are not the kind of images where you can make 8 images in a week.
Each of these was definitely going to take between 3, 4, maybe even 5 days.
So, to solve this problem, I knew that I had to reach out and get some help on it.
So what I did was reach out to artists that I work with, with my agency, Reach.
I reach out to Takeshi - Emeric Trahand, I reach out to Jeff ***,
and I reach out to Niklas Lundberg, 3 very good friends of mine.
And in collaboration with TBWA we produced a really great campaign.
One day, several weeks ago I made a piece just for fun, and it was really enjoyable.
I showed it to my girlfriend Ting, and she was like “that’s good",
she said, "yeah”. I said "I’ve been making one a day”, and she said
“well, let's see if you can do one a day for a whole year”, and so I said “OK!”.
Thus far, I’ve created 38 different images. One image often feeds into another.
It’s a really organic evolution from one thing to another.
Each of these images takes me roughly an hour.
I take something and I make it and what I do is usually, throughout
the week I’ll do different interpretations of the same material.
Ok, so this is made, it’s time to go get some lunch.
Maybe a cliché, but one of the best things to eat in New York is bagels.
... It never stops.
I started Depthcore in 2002, just after I began making digital art.
Maybe a year or so later.
In the beginning I think there were 12 or 13 of us, just other digital artists
whom I had seen around the community, mostly guys making 3D abstract.
Depthcore operates on a simple principle:
Every twice a year, we’ll say, we release a themed exhibition of work.
We come together, we decide what the theme is going to be,
and then every artist submits their own personal interpretation of what that theme is.
We’ve got roughly 200 artists who are a part of the Depthcore Collective.
There’s no advertising, there's no commissions,
it’s all just creating work for the sake of personal exploration.
So lunch time is over – let’s go and work some of that off and play a little hoops.
So after a big day, it is now time to relax, have a beer and watch the Nix…
lose.