I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Dusty Peterson over the past few months after he agreed to do the artwork for my band’s latest album (Behold! The Monolith). He is one of the nicest people you could ever interact with and is supremely talented and one of the fasted up and coming artists in his fields of album cover art and video game art design. His artwork has graced the cover of two Bloodbath records, the aforementioned B!TM record and many video games. He agreed to be interviewed a few weeks ago and this is what followed:

Kevin McDade: When did you get heavily into drawing?

Dusty Peterson: When I was about 15. I’ve drawn my whole life, but I think that was the year that I really started to push myself beyond just being a hobby. Other than a little part time job at a Pizza Hut, I basically spent every hour of the day drawing.

KM: What were/are your influences?

DP: Michael Whelan is probably the artist I was most influenced by. When I was around 13 or so, I loved to go to the book store and sit in the art book section and just flip through art books. One that caught my eye was his book, “The Art of Michael Whelan”, and it totally changed my life. From that point on, art books were constantly on my Christmas and birthday lists. My dad bought me that book and many others, he was very supportive of me…those books are really expensive! Other artists around that time frame that helped forge my style are Wayne Douglas Barlowe and of course H.R. Giger. Then of course there are a ton of other metal album artists that I get inspired by daily.

KM: Did you go to any schools or academies for art?

DP: As far as illustration goes, I am self-taught. I do have a degree in Industrial Design Technology that I received from the Art Institute of Seattle, however. A little different than illustration, but at the time I had a fascination with Stan Winston and other similar creature shops and was still looking for a way to realize my dream of drawing monsters all day. Industrial Design Technology seemed like a decent degree to get me well-rounded and knowledgeable in the ways of model-making and prop building. Unfortunately, I found that industry to be quite difficult to break into after graduating and so I had to adapt to find work, which ended up being video game art. But really that degree had nothing to do with drawing at all. I think I might have had a perspective class in the first quarter that was mandatory for everyone, but that was it. Everything related to illustration has been on my own research and willpower to learn more.

KM: I know you do a lot of artwork with computers, what other mediums do you use/what is your favorite?

DP: I do primarily do my work in photoshop and other programs, but it’s all based around knowledge of fundamental painting techniques and I usually paint on 1 layer. I haven’t painted in traditional media in years, but when I was, I preferred acrylic and sometimes watercolor. These days unless it’s digital or pencil I don’t even mess with it. I miss it a little, but I just don’t have the space to set up an easel and stuff like that.

KM: I understand you do video game artwork for a living, what company do you work for, what games have you done, and what are you working on now?

DP: I’ve been in the video game industry for almost 10 years, so I’ve been at a few developers. The most noteworthy titles I have worked on are Spiderman: The Movie Game when I worked at Treyarch and F.E.A.R. and F.E.A.R. 2 when I worked at Monolith. Right now, I am working at a small developer called Cat Daddy Games and it’s great because we make casual Wii titles. Still very much a serious job, but the crunch and workload is far less demanding than at more “high profile” developers, so I am able to pursue my album cover side-career much more easily. When I was working at past developers, I could never have had the momentum I am having right now due to the 4-6 month long crunchs that would completely take over my life 2 times a year.

KM: You’ve done album covers for Bloodbath and my band, have you done any others and are you working on any album covers at the moment?

DP: Definitely, 2009 has been a great year for me. I just finished working on Six Feet Under’s cover for their next Graveyard Classics album and currently I am working on Whitechapel’s next. I also have another one coming up that I am really excited about, but the ink isn’t dry on it yet. I’m just so honored to be asked to do these things. From a band’s standpoint they are just looking for a cool cover for their new album, but from my standpoint I’m just constantly excited to be an artist and to have the opportunity to be able to work with such talented musicians to help realize their visions. It really is a dream come true.

KM: What are you working on (as a freelance artist) at the moment?

DP: The album cover thing is pretty much all I am doing right now beyond my day job. Both are completely different, but important parts of my life at the moment. When I am not doing either one of those, I just try to spend time with my wife, relax, and catch up on video games as I am quite a hardcore gamer (It’s “research”!).

Original article located HERE.

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Original article located HERE.
 

I was recently asked some questions by Finnish magazine, Miasma, about my artwork for Bloodbath. As you can see, it was a pretty sizable sidebar in the Bloodbath article itself! Since it is in Finnish...I will put the original questions that were asked of me here.

I'm not sure if anything was edited out, btw, so there may be an additional question or two here:
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So you won the Bloodbath contest. Tell me [a bit about the] choosing process and how you got the idea to submit your work?

I am a huge Bloodbath fan (and also a fan of the primary bands of the individual members) so when I saw the news post on their website, I knew that I could come up with something that was competitive. Illustrating metal album covers is an industry that I have always wanted to get into and I figured even if I was not chosen, it would be a good portfolio piece. 

Did they say exactly what you are going to create for them or did you have some freedom of creation?

Yes, the concept was entirely the bands. The original concept was simply to have a priest with a dog's head baptizing a baby in blood. After submitting a few rough ideas, they decided that they wanted disciples in the background as well. After receiving that initial concept, though, the realization of it was all on me.

Are you more satisfied with Unblessing... or with Fathomless cover? Do they came up the way you like?

I think the Unblessing cover is more striking initially, but I think the Fathomless cover has more subtleties that make it more interesting. Also, the Fathomless cover was a significantly more complex painting, so it's my favorite for that reason. 

The dogpriest, this character is now in both your Bloodbath creations. Is this creature going to be some kind of Bloodbath's own Eddie or Vic Rattlehead, ha?

I don't know of any longterm plans, but he is the theme of both covers (check the shadow on the right of the full Fathomless painting if you missed it), so I suppose it is up to Bloodbath if they want to feature him in some way on future albums. I think there is potential.

Do you think that there's going to be a lot of request from now on when you "famous" from Bloodbath? :)

I certainly hope so! It's definitely a desire of mine to do more album covers for other bands besides Bloodbath. I also hope to keep a relationship with them for future projects, so we will see!

Ok, let's talk a bit about inspiration, do you have to force the suitable art out of you, let's say in Bloodbath context, or do you actually just act as a tool of some dark forces, huh?

I am a huge horror movie fan, so I generally refer to my mounds of dvds if I ever have "artist's block" as they say. But for the most part I do very little sketching or thumbnailing. When I have an idea for something, I just start painting and the end result is usually very close to the way I initially thought of it.

I cant pinpoint any obvious source of inpiration among metal cover artists, but do you have some special favouriteS?

Michael Whelan (Sepultura, Meat Loaf) is actually my biggest influence of all time. My father bought me his art book when I was 13 years old and it completely changed my life. Obviously people such as Derek Riggs, Vincent Locke, and Edward J. Repka are also people I look up to now as well.

Do you actually listen much to death metal?

Absolutely, metal is my life! I listen to all kinds of metal, though....a lot of death metal a little black metal and some classic metal as well.

Anders told me that you work mainly in game business, not in the music bizz. So tell me about your projects in that field. Which is more fun, to do metal covers or game covers?

I have been in the video game industry for almost 9 years. It's "the day job", but it's a great day job. I've worked on FEAR and FEAR 2 for Monolith Productions and I worked on the first Spider-man movie game for Treyarch several years ago. I definitely prefer doing metal covers as it's related more to my interests. Ever since I was 7 years old I've been drawing dark and evil stuff. To be able to paint metal album covers is truly a dream come true.

You have also Transformers art in your page. Lovely! I was myself a huge Transformers fan in the good old days but haven't checked what's up in, let's say, 20 years. Do you still adore these robots? was the movie
letdown?

I am a huge geek with Transformers. I actually keep up on it more than the average person I'd say. I have more than a handful (or a room full) of toys from various generations all over my house. My wife is awesome, too, she completely supports my Transformers adoration and buying habits so I feel very lucky with that. As for the movie, I actually really liked it. At first I wasn't so sure about the design approach of the Transformers themselves, but that all changed after watching the movie. 

Now it's time to advertise your work. If some reader is interested in to obtain your piece of art to her/his upcoming musical release, what should he/she do?

My website is www.dustypeterson.net which is where I make all my major announcements about future projects, and it obviously has my gallery. 

There ya have it! Enjoy!

My cover for Bloodbath's "The Fathomless Mastery" was voted as the 2nd best metal album cover of 2008 by readers of Terrorizer magazine. Thanks to everyone who voted for my art!