Tony Siruno goes ape at the Qpop gallery in LA

Tony Siruno is one of our industry's leading character designers. For many years he worked for DreamWorks, helping to design many of their best-loved and most successful characters. Recently he has moved to Sony to head up their character design department. Tony has just contributed some artwork to an exhibition at the Qpop gallery in Los Angeles. FLIP asked him to tell us what this new exhibition is all about.


FLIP: You're exhibiting some work in a big new exhibition - tell us about it! 

Tony: It's an exhibition at Qpop Gallery in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. The exhibition will explore the Monkey King legend and the artwork inspired by "Journey to the West".


FLIP: Who else is exhibiting - any other pieces we should look out for? 

Tony: There will be many artists' from the entertainment industry exhibiting. My favorites that I always look forward to are Patrick Awa, Chris Mitchell, Nicolas Illic, Jeff Ranjo, Tuna Bora, and the list keeps going....


FLIP: How do you like to work - pen and ink or digitally, or a mixture of the two? 

Tony: I work exclusively on a cintiq with Sketchbook Pro 6 and Photoshop CS6. Once in a while I'll draw on paper just to get back to the basics.


FLIP: Where else can we see samples of your work? 

Tony: You can see my online galleries here:

http://www.facebook.com/l/zAQHg82kuAQGgcNhca6Puz0yPQq_RgkZOp5oR39WwIpaS6A/theconceptartblog.com/2011/08/28/o-portfolio-invejavel-de-tony-siruno/

and here:
http://www.facebook.com/l/LAQF6R7f5AQFR00WuURGCkXKPw0kBOqcl4agPZ3UcG9qf0g/www.animationinsider.com/2013/09/tony-siruno/


FLIP: What are you working on now?

Tony: I recently left DreamWorks back in March 2013, but my last project i can mention that I worked on was How to Train your Dragon 2. Since then, I've been working at Sony Pictures Animation as head of character design on one of their future film projects.