This Month WHACK is featuring the artist Alex Soto. We sat down with Alex to find out about his inspiration, creative process, and show off his amazing animations.

Do you ever deal with clients that restrict your creative process? – I feel restriction will always exist in anything anyone does. In design and art your not only restricted by your medium, but the conditions your working in, your preconceived notions, your capabilities, your ego, and so on. Using your restrictions is part of the creative process. Adapting doesn’t mean conforming, it is more about being able to understand the resources available and possibilities within those parameters. Ultimately, it is the process itself that needs restrictions in order to exist. Whether, I welcome restriction or not, I let it play itself into my work and flow with it.

How do you deal with criticism from your peers? – The value of criticism is most beneficial when you step away from your ego and contemplate the ideas presented to you. In a work environment criticism can be like a tuning fork. When your out of tune with the project, your peers will guide you. Being receptive to that is figuring out what the difference is between the note they give off and the sound that your playing.

What inspires your style of illustrations/color pallet? – I look everywhere for combinations. When I see an arrangement of colors I have never seen before, I get excited and investigate. My over all style is inspired and a result of nature, the subconscious and a mix of experience and experiments.

What visual references do you call upon for inspiration and influence? – I’m inspired visually by almost everything, but a few stand-outs are: patterns in nature, space, cartoon imagery from childhood, technology, science, waves, explosions and repeat pattens. Although, all of these are secondary to being influenced by the concept of process and its relationship to everything.

What personal projects are you pursuing at the moment? - I am building a body of work that includes video, animation, drawing, sculpture and photography. For the moment I’m taking the process of making something, capturing it with video and using it as reference for the next thing I make. Then, I record that and repeat, wrapping the project into itself continuously. It is “me” studying the “me” that I can’t see from an other perspective.

“Like the Oak” -photo taken from Adam Kuehl

Beverage of choice? – Coffee

Favorite object? – This is one of my favorite objects my good friend Kellie Moore gave me. (captured with my webcam)

You can view more of Alex’s work at his website and follow him on his video blog.

Thanks Alex for being one of Whack’s featured artists and tagging our wall with your artwork.

At the core we are all artists here at WHACK media design. The need for creative ideas is constant. We want to help support spontaneous creations, by tagging our back wall. It’s our way to feature your art, creation, sketch, painting, whatever the medium. We encourage you to tag our wall and we’ll feature your artwork for the month, link to your site, facebook, twitter, etc., to help promote you as an artist, as well as keep our wall fresh with ideas. Find out how to be a WHACK featured artist.