Interview with Runend

Published    16th April, 2018

Could you tell us something about yourself?

Hi! I’m Faqih Muhammad and my personal brand name is runend. I’m 22 years old and live in Medan in Indonesia. I love film animation, concept art, game making, 3d art, and everything illustration.

Do you paint professionally, as a hobby artist, or both?

It can be said that I’m a hobbyist now, but I keep learning, practicing, experimenting to find new forms and new styles of self-expression, all to improve my skills and to be a professional artist in the near future!

What genre(s) do you work in?

So far I’ve made scenery background with character as a base to learn something. Starting from the basic we can make something more interesting, but still it was quite difficult for me.

Whose work inspires you most — who are your role models as an artist?

Hhmmm, there are many artists who give me inspiration. Mainly I follow Jeremy Fenske, Atey Ghailan and Ruan Jia. I won’t forget to mention masters like Rizal Abdillah, Agung Oka and Yogei, as well as my friends and mentors.

How and when did you get to try digital painting for the first time?

It was in 2014 using photoshop, which I used to create photo-manipulations with. In 2015 I finally bought my wacom intuos manga tablet and could finally begin learning about digital painting.

What makes you choose digital over traditional painting?

Digital painting has many features that make it easy to create art. Of course there’s no need to buy art supplies: with a computer, pen and tablet you can make art.

Lately I’ve been learning traditional painting using poster color, and that makes me feel both happy and challenged.

How did you find out about Krita?

I used Google to search for “free digital painting software” and I found Krita :D.

What was your first impression?

I was like “WOW”, grateful to find software as good as this.

What do you love about Krita?

I have tried some of the features, especially the brush engine, UI/UX, layering, animation tools, I love all of them! And of course it’s free and open source.

What do you think needs improvement in Krita? Is there anything that really annoys you?

Probably the filter layer and filter mask performance. Those run very slowly, I think it would be better if they ran more smoothly and more realtime.

What sets Krita apart from the other tools that you use?

Free open source software that runs cross-platform, no need to spend more. If you get a job or a paid project with Krita, there is a donate button to make Krita better still.

If you had to pick one favourite of all your work done in Krita so far, what would it be, and why?

I love all my work, sometimes some paintings look inconsistent, then I will make it better.

What techniques and brushes did you use in it?

Before starting I think about what I want to create like situation and color mood. If that’s difficult from only imagination I usually use some reference.

I first make a sketch, basic color, shading, texture, refine the painting, and check the value using fill black layer blending mode in color.

In Krita 4.0 beta there are many new brush presets, I think that’s enough to make awesome art.

Where can people see more of your work?

Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/runend
Twitter: https://twitter.com/runendarts
Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/runendartworks
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/runend.artworks/

Anything else you’d like to share?

Krita is an amazing program, I’d like to thank the Krita team. I wish Krita a good future, I hope Krita can be better known to the people of Indonesia, for instance on campus, schools, the creative industry etcetera.