Meet the Fans #3-Jason
Freelance Artist Jason Chester creates outstanding pop-art styled pieces mainly focused upon video games. "Most of my paintings are essentially direct recreations of posters that already exist but done in a different style." Taking on average 70+ hours to produce a single piece, he has seen his work go viral and push his artistic boundaries.
Around the age of 7, he was inspired to draw. As well as being his favourite game in the franchise, Tomb Raider 3 (Core Designs, 1998) encouraged his passion to draw. "I am always finding old drawings around the house of the characters that I drew 15+ years ago."
"My Darker side loves the creepier nature and the story...I also found my love of maps after relentlessly drawing the Tomb Raider 3 globe at the end of each location." His passion for the game not only improved his art skills but he mentions he can "name every country, capital and flag in the world (just about). Again, this all spurs on from Tomb Raider and that Globe in TR3 which sparked my interest in maps and locations."
Studying art as a G.C.S.E. he unfortunately only got a C. But this didn't put a hold on his passion to draw. "I Never cared much for the History and research required, and I think my lack of interest on that side of the subject is what set me back. I just wanted to draw!"
One of the most demanding projects was a piece that took months planning before painting. Titled 'History of PlayStation' "It took over 250 hours to paint over 3 months." Featuring 54 iconic characters spanning over the 20 years since PlayStation launch including familiar faces such as Crash Bandicoot (Naughty Dog, 1984), Cloud Strife (Final Fantasy VII, Square Enix, 1987), and Lara Croft (Core Designs, 1997).
A further issue where thrown into the mix as regular updates on social media encouraged for more characters. "Loads of people had suggestions of characters...it went from 28 characters to 54 It was a great challenge and one I’m proud of that I can say I finished."
But this wasn't the last time he produced a piece based around PlayStation. He was contacted via Twitter by the creator of the YouTube channel Retro Replay. Which hosts an assortment of let's play games featuring voice actors Nolan North and Troy Baker.
To which he was asked if he could paint Nathan and Sam Drake from Uncharted 4 (Naughty Dog, 2016). After its completion "they had fans of the channel enter a competition to win one of 5 prints, signed by Nolan and Troy. I receive a 6th signed copy so that was awesome! I couldn't believe it to be honest and it didn't feel real until I woke up one morning to hundreds of Twitter notifications as they had tagged me and my art in a tweet and it was just incredible. Everyone was saying such lovely things and the timelapse video I put up of me painting the piece received a few thousand more views after that. I'm really grateful that they decided to use my work. It's Still hard to believe it happened!."
Alongside his Uncharted piece he has uploaded other speed drawings showing the process of its creation. One of which included a highly detailed adaptation of the Obscura Paintings featured on Tomb Raider the Angel of darkness (Core Designs, 2003) .
Originally produced by one of the lead artists on Angel of Darkness Paschal McGuire Jason made a new adaption "The obscure paintings we’re done by finding the highest possible definition versions of the pictures. I drew a grid over the picture to help me with the positioning of the drawing. Then I used a fine tip pen to ink the pieces, I could make out what most of the images were showing but I did have to make some bits up!".
In 2016 Tomb Raider was having a collaborative celebration of both Rise of the Tomb Raider (Square Enix, 2015) and the 20-year anniversary. In October a Tomb Raider fan and resident in Lara's hometown creation (Derby) Luke Earle organised a fan event, which Jason attended.
The event invited some of the old creators from Core Designs, as well as a screen viewing of Tomb Raider lethal and Loaded (2001) with a hosted Q&A. Jason decided to create a special piece to get it signed by the developers as a memory.
From that point on he continued the tradition and produced more one of a kind pieces to celebrate the events. "I had the idea of making these sorts of mementos from the events. So, I did one for a meetup I went to at Play Expo in Manchester and then the one for the next Derby meetup to see the latest TR movie and finally The Tomb Raider Suite Buffet reception."
These one of a kind piece's stunned Tomb Raider fans and creators alike towards its development Jason describes the creation by using design software AutoCAD. "The piece of Lara Playing the Harp was essentially taking a picture of Lara and tracing, with basic lines, her main features such as her outline, eyes etc. then I found a picture of her crouching, so I copied that too and basically just spent some time manipulating both the traces until they looked correct. Once I had her main pose I just used reference pictures of people playing the harps to draw in her arms and the harp. All this work gave me my reference picture to then paint it."
During his free time he works alongside his partner Victoria Pheasey on a podcast called The Vault. Victoria also has a passion for Tomb Raider and creates cross stitches of Lara Croft and commissions on her mini business 'Bubblegum stitches xo' . When asked upon any creative collaborations Jason said "Vic has produced several novels and is on the verge of completing another, so I guess we could collaborate on that angle. Perhaps I could do the Cover art?."
As for upcoming projects, Jason says "I really want to develop my knowledge of the human figure, so I can draw them from memory. So, I’ll probably be working on that for the foreseeable future. Although, I really want to start creating my own pieces based on scenes from games".
"One of the fundamental reasons for making them TR specific is just because they are great reminders of all the awesome people I’ve come to meet in the Tomb Raider community. Many of which I’m lucky enough to call friends now!"
You can find Jason's artwork on:
- Twitter: @jches16
-Instagram: jpc_artwork
-YouTube: JCP Artwork
