We're super excited to share the works of Nanda Ormond... Nanda has the unique ability to illustrate and animate what he sees in his head, painting the world with youthful imagination and humor. After completing his studies in animation, he taught himself how to turn his lifelong passion into a rewarding job where he has worked with some of the biggest brands in surfing...
1. Who are you?
My name is Nanda Ormond, I was born in NZ in 1985 with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck and a blue face. Mercifully I survived and grew up to be an aspiring animator and illustrator, occasional writer, average surfer.
2. Describe your medium & process for your photos...
My illustration work is usually made with pen and ink, and coloured with watercolours and gouache. I like to use dip pens with flexible nibs, they are exciting and loose and any mistakes you make can be called style. I always start with pencil, and am attached to using Staedtler Mars Lumograph pencils although they are expensive and I don't really know what difference there is between them and a Faber Castell. They look nicer and feel right. I try to make as much of the drawing in traditional mediums as I can, before scanning and fixing in the computer. Computers are less romantic. Nobody show photos of themselves nerding out at a computer but people love photos of us dipping our pens languidly in ink, stroking the pure, virgin page passionately with the nib, glass of wine in hand...
Sometimes I treat myself to expensive cold pressed watercolour paper to draw on but mostly I buy whatever crap they have at the $2 shop. With my animation the workflow and process really changes to suit each specific project. I studied Classical Animation for three years at uni in Auckland, which was such a specific thing that it actually left me woefully underprepared for work in the real world. I could draw competently with pencil and could chew through hundreds of reams of paper to animate, but everything else was a mystery to me. Everything since then I've learnt on the job, out of necessity, so that I would have a job. Animation at its essence is not complicated, you just do something, take a frame of it, change it a little bit, and take another frame. I try to keep this in mind when approaching each new project, so that I don't exclude some possible exciting method or idea. I don't mind if I work entirely within the computer or with stop motion and camera, or a mixture of techniques, as long as I can stay interested and the project doesn't suffocate the life out of me. Animation can be overbearing.
3. How did you find your passion? Who/what influences your work?
From very early on I can remember having stories and scenes and characters in my head that I wanted to see on paper or even better, on TV. It would be fair to say I had an active imagination, and this was the main reason I persisted with drawing through my school years and later uni years, I really just wanted to be good enough at drawing to realize the scenes I could see in my mind. Especially the babes, I wanted to be able to draw girls really well and was preoccupied with that for a long time. I was not interested in sports at all and surfing often felt obligatory to me ( to my later shame and regret ). I wanted only to watch cartoons and read books and comics and then, once my mind was swirling with all of that, to regurgitate it forth on to paper, reordered and rehashed to my own liking. Today it is a very similar process for me in my work, I sometimes spend days looking at art and animation that I like, putting off my own impending deadline until the last possible moment when I feel like my inner cauldron has all the ingredients and is bubbling and ready. I like so many different artists and styles and ideas, I feel like I want to try a bit of all of them them, just a little taste each time I make a drawing. I've never felt a strong voice compelling me to make art in one way, or any innate style that demands to be adhered to. I think that is probably a fairly good sign that I am not a master or genius, I feel more like a fan or an admirer. I make my work thinking of all the great work that's come before me, I let their influence animate me.
4. What excites you about your work? What do you struggle with?
I guess I'm excited now by the same thing that excited me as a kid, the possibility of drawing something out of my mind or the realms of imagination, and capturing a moment of it. It's kind of thrilling when you draw something or get a movement happening in animation and it looks as good as how you imagined it, you get a little buzz, maybe even goosebumps. Maybe that's just cos I often work in a cold room. But like I said, all the endless stores of cool art that's been done and being made out there excites me, I get excited to make art when I see cool art.
Also what keeps me going is seeing improvement in my own work. Drawing doesn't feel like whose peak is limited by your age or physical capabilities, like maybe surfing or skating is. I feel like I can conceivably keep on improving until it's time for me to leave my wrecked old body, as long as my mind and ideas stay sharp. That's quite a comforting thought for me.
As far as struggles I think I struggle with keeping a balance between my work and the rest of life. When I'm working on an animation project it always seems like my deadlines are looming, so the work engulfs me and everything else falls by the wayside; my health, the laundry, bills that need paying, how I relate to my family. I turn in to this sickly little animating gremlin, hoping I get the job finished before my body craps out. Then when I don't have a deadline I barely draw at all, I just surf and do chores and surf and try to rebuild my health and energy, so I have hardly any personal work to show from the past few years. I find it very difficult to put a balance of all those things in to one day.
5. What are your goals? Where do you see yourself going?
I don't know that I've ever put much focus on goals, I'm not convinced that endeavoring for some imaginary situation in life makes anyone happy. The people that make it where they wanted to be seem a bit empty and have to keep putting the goal line further away, the people who never achieve their goals are agitated because they feel something is missing and if they just had that thing they'd be happy. So I just do my work because I enjoy it and I try not to invest too much in the fruits of my labour, some people "succeed" and some don't but I don't see a clear link between success and happiness. I called my website Famous And Cool as a kind of homage to people who are out there trying to make it happen, trying to force it.
I do think about new things or opportunities I'd like to have tho, I'd like to work more collaboratively in the future with people who I think are doing cool stuff. I'd like to bring a bit more meaning in to my work and work on projects that have some benefit to people, or the planet, or living entities at large. I'd like to make enough money to buy some things for our farm, like a sick Hilux. But I don't focus hard on these goals I just kind of trust that if they're meant to happen they'll happen, otherwise it's ok if they don't.