Matt Dixon
British artist Matt Dixon's women have a wonderful tendency to be either seductively gruesome, deadly dangerous or seriously strange.
Matt Dixon (b.1972)
"What I find most attractive about pin-ups is not the graceful curve of a well painted thigh or the rosy bloom on the cheek of a pretty face. Of course these things have appeal, but what really draws me into a pin-up image is a girl with attitude and confidence."
Matt Dixon was born in Birmingham, UK, in 1972 and he has been an enthusiastic waver of pens and pencils for as long as he can remember. All his work is now created digitally, a process which he finds significantly faster and more efficient than traditional methods.
"Digital art first captured my imagination when I began to assemble images from ASCII characters on a Commodore VIC-20 way back in 1980 - happily, things have moved along a little and Adobe Photoshop allows me to achieve slightly more sophisticated results than I got back then.
"I think that's part of the draw I have to fantasy and sci-fi subjects. Often the girls portrayed in genre artworks are no more than props to be draped at the feet of a victorious barbarian, or offered as food to flesh-hungry aliens. I love those paintings, but I'd much rather see a woman standing triumphant over a slain dragon, or vanquishing the robot from dimension X."
His long association with the games industry began when he first contributed art to a video game in 1988. He is very proud to have worked on titles for almost every major gaming platform since then. He was employed by one of the UK's largest independent games developers for more than a decade, initially as a production artist, then as an art lead. During this time he felt privileged to be involved with numerous high profile game and movie licenses, including Harry Potter, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon and Pirates of the Caribbean.
Matt now works freelance providing illustration and concept design for print and digital media. Recent clients include Electronic Arts, Hodder Children's Books, Sony Online Entertainment, Macmillan, Future Publishing and Blizzard Entertainment.
"That cheeky glint in the eye means so much more if there's a sense that the girl in the painting is self-aware and comfortable with the sometimes rather unlikely situations we artists choose to put them in. I like to know that she's in on the joke, and enjoying it!"
Matt is also the author of The Fantasy Artist's Figure Drawing Bible, an instructional book aimed at budding character designers (see below).
