Slashcast Insider Interview with Lizardspots

Interviews by Fans
Title:	Slashcast Insider Interview with Lizardspots
Interviewer:	emmagrant01
Interviewee:	Lizardspots
Date(s):	October 14, 2006
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	Harry Potter
External Links:	official transcript (WebCite) Episode 10 show notes episode direct download link available on Tumblr
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Slashcast Insider Interview with Lizardspots is an interview segment of the podcast Slashcast, "Episode 10: Let's Dance." A transcript of the interview is available at Slashcast's sc_transcripts community on LiveJournal.

The interviewer is emmagrant01, the interviewee is Lizardspots.

The focus of the interview Lizardspots' fanart and her specific discussion of it.

The Interview Series

See Slashcast Insider Interview Series.

Excerpts

[I found out about fanart] through the Harry Potter fandom only, actually. I've been in some other fandoms previously; I've been in [Hornblower], and Jane Austin fandom, and Red Dwarf as well, but they had no fanart contingent whatsoever. When I was in the Harry Potter fandom, I came across three artists at exactly the same time, basically. I came across, um, Marta of art dungeon, glockgal, and squirmy. And I saw their work and I was just amazed, and I thought, "Wow." I'd never even considered drawing what- all these ideas in my head, and I thought, "Wow, I want to try that now."

[The first piece of fanart I posted]: Um, I drew this terribly pathetic anime portrait of Snape and I posted it on DeviantArt, like a complete newbie. I, um- I was just experimenting. I hadn't really thought what kind of style I wanted to draw in, or anything like that. And I'd seen some japanese art around of Harry Potter, and I really liked the variety of poses and the anatomy and I wanted to try it. It wasn't particularly great, but that was my first... I got a few bits of feedback, it wasn't very exciting. Just a few, "That's nice. That looks nice. You should try drawing now and then." That was encouraging, but because the feedback wasn't particularly enthusiastic, that drove me to improve myself more, because even I could see that I had a lot of room for improvement. But um, the main thing that DeviantArt helped me with was meeting all the fanartists. Through DeviantArt I met duckpuppy and I made friends with her, and she introduced me to Live Journal and, um, since then it's just been, you know, a roller coaster.

Mostly I use digital media. Um, partially because I'm living with my parents and I have to quickly be able to minimize things on the computer, which is a lot more difficult when you have a piece of paper with smut all over it on your table. It's a bit harder to quickly put away. Um, yea, there are a lot of people in my house, so I have to be careful. And also, digital media is just so versatile and, um, you know, correctable. If you make some humungous [sic], awful blunder, you can get rid of it quick as a flash and it won't harm the rest of your picture, which is just wonderful. I just wish that- often when I'm doing a natural media piece, I mentally think 'undo' and then I think, "Damn, I can't do that!"

["A Spell for My Enemies"]: Well, that was for the "Snape, the Half-Blood Prince" fest which was run by [aubrem] on Live Journal. And, um, I saw that really as a chance to draw what I see as canon Snape. I mean, I draw mostly slash and het and fun things. I never really explored the darker, more canonical aspect of Snape, which I really, really love reading about in fiction, but I'd never drawn it myself, so I saw that as a chance to explore that. Can't quite remember where the idea of him experimenting on animals came from, but just thinking of possible dark, creepy, awful things that a young snivelly, lonely Snape would get up to in his teenage years, and I thought, um, you know, from the book, the sectumsempra spell was one of the most violent of Snape's creations. And I thought, "Well, if he was trying it on people, he must have first tried it on animals," and he, as a potions master, struck me as someone who was really not squeamish and had no qualms about, you know, slicing up animals when they're screaming at him. Um, yea, so that's sort of where the idea came from. The image that struck me was, I don't know if you're looking at the picture I'd drawn, but um, the mouse at the bottom corner of the picture, with it's bleeding, dead eye - that was the main image that came to me, sort of the strange perspective and from there I worked up.

Um, yea. It wasn't really a- I guess it's a personal mission [to draw Snape as ugly as possible] rather than a fandom mission, so to speak. Um, I'd been drawing, you know, I always draw Snape. He's my favorite character. I got a comment on Live Journal, someone saying, "You know, your Snape's getting rather pretty, lately." And I suddenly looked at all my pictures and I thought, "You're right! What a shame! How could this possibly have happened?" Because, the main thing I love about Snape is that he's so repulsive and awful, and yet I suddenly realized I wasn't representing that as I saw it in my head. So since then, I've been trying to make an effort to make him unattractive and yet sexy. I don't know whether I've been successful, but um- and I definitely haven't made him ugly enough. That's an on going mission of mine.

When I first drew my first pieces of smut art, I'd just turned 18 and I was very embarrassed while I was drawing it, you know. There was no one around, of course. When I was drawing it I didn't dare show it to anyone except on Live Journal. But I was still embarrassed, I was telling myself, "Good god, woman, what are you drawing? You're drawing someone's balls, this is terrible." Um, but, you know, since then I really don't care anymore. I have to pay a lot of attention to the anatomy and the posing, things like that and try to make it visually interesting, because porn can get a bit repetitive, especially in a fandom like Harry Potter where there is so many talented artists drawing smut of a million different pairings, and there's only so many ways you can arrange two people, so, you know, I try and experiment with expressions on their faces, mostly. And the sexually explicit part of the picture, it doesn't take that long to figure out, but yea. I pay about just as much attention to explicit scenes as well as not explicit scenes that I draw.

[My advice for new HP artists]: Get involved! Just, you know, interact with artists, chat with them, share feedback and then they'll notice you. They'll, uh, they'll interact with you again and they'll friend your live journal or DeviantArt or where ever you are. Just get involved. If you see a fest that looks interesting, have a go at it. You know, jump straight in, don't be shy just because you're new, that doesn't mean anything at all. If you're keen, if you have the drive to contribute to the fandom, that's more than enough and you'll see that it'll be great fun, and people will see your work and gradually you'll gain an audience.