He’s known as the dirtiest and most undead skinner on FR and he just happens to be a skinner that supports original skins over mainstream. Although he’s a colossal tease and has yet to release any of the works of art he showed off last year with Carravaggio, today we take the spotlight and shine it on DJ to see if we can find out two things: 1) If he’ll ever release any more skins and 2) How’s the undead life?

FREEDOM FORCE

For the majority of the time I have known you, you have been skinning original characters. Why do you choose to promote user-made designs over company owned designs?

Personally, I chose originals over the mainstream skins because they are more of a challenge. I mean, when I first started skinning, FF was still in its infancy, and everyone was doing mainstream skins, myself included. It wasn’t until FF started to really grow (I think that was around the time I joined Electric Freedom or somewhere around there) that I’d already done a bunch of mainstream characters and had started to burnout on them. Everyone had done the characters I wanted to do and though a few of them I felt could’ve been done better, I didn’t really want to do my own version mainly because I thought the community didn’t need another Justice or Spider-man skin at the time. There wasn’t a challenge left in the mainstream skins. Around that time, I came across Glitch Girl’s originals and found them interesting. So on the whim, I did a few of my own, and though the first few I did were less than perfect (Black Talon being perhaps my lowest one EVER), it provided that challenge I needed. Ever since then, I found originals more satisfying to skin, especially the early work on the character – creating the identity, finding a name, researching the time they might exist, etcetera.

You have done a few mainstream skins over your skinning career (Arcade in Ultimate Trio, Rorschach from Watchmen). Why did you choose to do the few you have done?

Well, you forced me into doing Arcade. I mean, once you had your grimy, little hooks into my brain, you wouldn’t leave me alone until you had your precious piece of flesh. All kidding aside though, most of the mainstreams I’ve chosen to do have been those that required some type of extra work. Look at Rorschach. Around the time I released that skin, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, wanted a skin of Rorschach, but they didn’t seem to find a real way to get the mask to work. That was a challenge that I found interesting, and after talking with Val and playing around with the new technology FFVTR brought about, I decided that I could do Rorschach and really do him right.

That’s another thing about the few mainstreams I’ve done. I must feel that I can do the character right and really honor the artist and writer’s that came up with the character through the skin. If I can’t do that, I won’t do the skin. That’s part of the reason I’ve never really done to many of the non-AOA X-men characters or a Spider-man/Batman/Superman skin, because I feel others have honored those characters better than I could have ever done.

Skoping is the current rage and I know you have done a few skopes yourself. What would you claim as your best skope and how easy would you say nifskoping is to do?

My best skope…hmmm…that would probably be a toss up between Panzermann and the second version of Chinook. Though they both provided complications in one way or another, Panzermann especially, I had real fun doing both of them and never did I feel [like] I was doing any real work. As for Nifskoping in general, it really depends on how difficult a task you set for yourself. If you’re just doing some minor tweaks on an existing character, it’s absolutely a breeze, but if you are taking parts from multiple characters and trying to get them to work together on one base, things can get a little hairy. As an example, take Panzermann. I spent forever trying to find a normal sized human base to hang all that armor on, but I kept running into trouble – the chest plate would have clipping problems, the feet would be too short, ect. It wasn’t until I decided to try Tommyboy’s Superman-Prime mesh that I finally found something that would work.

You’re an old time member of FR, correct? Has anyone on the forums motivated you in any way, shape, or form?

Yeah, I guess you could say I’m an old FR member, though I consider myself more of one of the early innovators on FFC before being an FR member. I mean back on FFC, we were still discovering what the tech would allow us to do to the skin. Moreover, I must say, Firestorm and Gyruss proved to be major influences on me then. Both of them saw something in my work at the time and were more than willing to take me under their wings when I was first starting out by giving me a place at Heroes for Hire and encouraging my eccentric ideas on pushing the medium at the time.

Many have complimented your face work on skins. Do you have a set method you use to develop the skins and how did you create/learn this method?

I don’t really have a set method now because I’m constantly adding new things to my skill set and trying to get better no matter what. I mainly delve through a lot of art magazines (stuff like ImagineFX and 3Dworld) taking their tips and techniques and applying them to skinning. You’d be amazed at how many of the techniques artists use in Digital Paintings can be transferred over to skinning, especially the sci-fi and fantasy stuff.

You and Carravaggio have teamed up recently for a few skins, right? What inspired this team-up and how easy was it to work with Carra? Did he challenge you to step up your own skinning game in any way?

Carravaggio and I were members of NPI together and both of us were very big into bringing about new ideas and reworking old ideas in that universe. A lot of the time there, we would work our separate ideas to where they worked out in both of our favors and make the universe feel more like a connecting world much like the original Marvel Universe felt. Therefore, when he decided to bring up the idea of putting together the Nazi team after seeing my Stahlhelm character, it was like jumping back into the old NPI work. The two of us work real well together, giving each other enough space to do what we do best and develop the characters down the paths that feel right to us, as well as tossing ideas off each other when we got stuck on something. I remember when I couldn’t tell if one of the character’s in our Cowboy collaboration needed something else because I’d spent so much time with it, and Carra was right there for me running through some different ideas on what could be done.

As for challenging me to step up my own skinning game, oh gods yes. Car’s stuff at the time was so much farther out there in talent and skill level than any of my stuff at the time. I wouldn’t have even thought about putting out second-rate stuff in any collaboration especially with Carra. Therefore, I really tried to outdo anything I had ever done beforehand in our team-ups. During our Nazi team-up, I was constantly trying out new ideas and techniques that I had seen in magazines hoping they would make the skins really stand out and equal the quality Carra was putting out. Though some of the ideas didn’t work, the few that came out really well blew everyone, including Carra and myself, out of the water. There are times nowadays that I wonder if my skinning ability would be where it’s at if I hadn’t teamed with Carra.

Devising a costume can be time consuming and somewhat difficult. What would you say is your process for designing characters?

If you ask most of those that design their own characters, you’ll hear a lot of times they develop the powers and costume first and then let the character come to them from there. I don’t follow that technique at all. Instead, I take a short concept idea –something like “Man in a Tin Can” (I used this for my original concept for Panzermann)– and then start brainstorming names that might fit. I could spend days brainstorming names, spinning different ideas, and [coming up with] potential backgrounds at the same time. Once I’ve finally come up with a name, I finally start working on the visual form while letting the name and ideas influence the way he looks until I am finally satisfied. On rare occasions, I might come up with a name that will automatically bring about a certain look in my head and I’ll chase that idea until I’ve either got it exactly as it looks in my head or I decide what I have won’t work out.

Most skinners are known for having a “list”. Are there any skins you wanted to create but never got around to or were taken on by other skinners?

I don’t really have a list because I just kind of do whatever strikes my fancy at the time. Therefore, I really haven’t had any skins that other skinners have taken and done. I have, though, always wanted to go back and revisit my old NPI villains (Garkain, Wild Card, Blue Blood, and Wusheng) and redo them correctly. I’ve always felt bad that I never put down my best work on those skins at the time and with the advent of Nifskoping and a handful of more fitting meshes in the pipeline these characters could really become what I first envisioned them to be.

Outside of the skinning circuit, was there any other area of content creation that interested you as in modding or fxing?

I tried my hand at meshing once, but that didn’t quite work out well – I kept having size problems and such. Other than that, I haven’t really been that interested in modding or Fxing. They just seem [like] too much [of a] hassle and trouble for someone as unfocused as I am. I’ll leave those to the pros like Prem and Benton.

I suppose it’s a sign of respect, but how do you feel about creators holding off on a project when they know someone else is considering doing the same thing (e.g., a skinner not creating and/or releasing the same character even if they choose to do a different costume)?

I guess it could be taken as a sign of respect, but at the same time, I find it’s the idea that if that original creator honors the character’s creator(s) in their skin, then it’s also not worth doing. I mean, if I were to do Spider-man, I wouldn’t feel right doing it because there are so many Spider-man skins out there that have already honored the character better than anything I could ever do.

Benton submitted this question, so you can thank him. In the year of 2007, you and Carra made a huge host of nazi skins. Which skin would you classify as the most difficult to pull off, and how did you go about creating the roster? Which skin would be your favorite?

Somehow, I knew Benton would field this question, seeing as he wants those Nazis for his mod. The idea for the roster came from Carra, he saw my Stahlhelm skin and was intrigued in the idea of doing a team of them. So he pitched a short list of archetypes at me along with the idea, mainly a poor man’s Nazi version of the JLA with only like five or six members. I took that idea and ran with it, expanding the roster to something like twenty members, all of them based on rough archetypes that appeared most often in both the JLA and the Avengers. Some are really easy to notice, like the Tactician (Captain America/Black Canary) and the Archer (Hawkeye/Green Arrow), while other’s were a bit harder to put together – Telepath was the hardest for me until I remembered that Moondragon had been a former member of the Avenger and Martian Manhunter possessed telepathy.

As for the most difficult and my favorite Nazi skin, that can be answered with one skin: die Eisen Soldat. I spent months trying to decide what to do with him, running through multiple ideas on what pieces to use and how he should look. It wasn’t until I remembered that Syn had made a robot mesh for Prem that things started to fall in place. Once I had the mesh, the skinning, while extremely time consuming (using two separate layers of texture and making sure neither was overwhelming the other was a pure pain), was amazingly easy. I really love how he came out in the end, and I would consider that skin to be one of the best I’ve done to this date.

While you may not be involved in the content side of FF currently, is there anything presently being shown off that interest you?

I’ve been off the boards so long that I don’t even know what’s going on anymore, so I guess the answer would be, “no, I haven’t seen anything that really has interested me.”

Going with the previous question, could one effectively consider you retired at this point? If so, what got you to this position?

I’m more in a position of rejuvenating; I got to the point that I just burned everything out of myself. I couldn’t come up with good ideas or backgrounds that were really fitting of the character’s I had in mind. Along with that, I’ve lately started doing some digital art, and it’s taken up a lot of my free time. The free time I’ve had lately has been used up trying to help a very dear friend of mine get through some really hard times. Thus, skinning has kind of taken a back seat for the moment, but hopefully in the next few months or so, I’ll be able to show off a few new ideas that I’ve been tinkering with. So don’t book that retirement home suite for me yet, Prem, because I hate those places!

What was it that got you interested in providing content for the community in the first place?

It was mainly the idea that one could provide content to a community of like-minded people and receive feed back on it. If no one ever had given me helpful advice on doing something better or [told me] that something doesn’t feel right, I don’t think I would’ve stuck around as long as I have.

MISC.

The Ultimate Evil sent in this question and I would like you to answer it honestly. What…is that smell?

As I’ve said before, that’s my new cologne: Ode de Death. You can find it at your local mortician for only $12.95 a bottle!

Ok, let’s get into the meat. Who would you classify as your favorite character in the comic/TV world and why?

I don’t really have one, unhappily. Well, I guess I could say The Spider from the old pulps, but besides the writing and the character’s look, there really isn’t anything that draws me to him. Otherwise, most of the comic/TV characters leave me wanting something more. Don’t get me wrong, I think Spider-man, Batman, and all the other characters are great works, but they just aren’t right for me.

Sometimes I consider your avatar an embodiment of death. What is the story behind the creation of your FR persona?

That’s a long story. The name “Death’s Jester” is an old nickname I picked up when I was dating a gal whose real name was Death (rest her soul) and it’s stuck with me ever since. As for the avatar, it didn’t come about until I joined electric Freedom where everyone had an avatar and I was avatar-less. Therefore, I whipped something up at the time, nothing special, just a guy in armor with a skull head, that I thought would fit my nickname. It wasn’t until later that the avatar really became its own little persona. If memory serves me correctly, it was around a time that some really bad things happened in my life – I had lost quite a few friends to death and had had my heart broken – that the character of Death’s Jester really became what you see nowadays – a drunken, uncaring, mean, stinky, yet funny embodiment of Death.

Books are something that help us to live out fantasies. What are some of your favorite books or authors?

I love anything by Richard Matheson and HP Lovecraft; both of them have really contributed a lot to my weird take on the world. I’m also a big fan of Harlan Ellison and his more acidic works.

Not all TV is good for your brain. What are some shows you would recommend to others?

I stay away from the TV; those HD waves aren’t very good for us undead – they have a very bad side effect of increasing the deterioration of the brain cells – so I really don’t have a show to recommend.

I haven’t made a habit of asking about musical choices, but what type of music do you find yourself fancying?

I like to keep a wide range of music around to help influence my work. I’ve lately found myself playing Marilyn Manson, Aerosmith, and Metallica along side BB King, John Lee Hooker and Charlie Parker. I will say that no matter what I’m listening to at the time, I’ve got to have some blues or emotionally down music along with it, no matter what.

If you could write a comic and have it published, what type of genre do you think it might be in?

I once had actually tried pitching a comic with little success. It was the story of a female detective chasing after a slightly super powered rapist who no one could identify only to become a victim herself and how she deals with it. It’s not really something that fits into a specific genre; it’s one of those multi-genre arching type ideas.

Over the past few weeks, there have been several assertions that skinners have powers. DJ, what…is your power and why have you been hiding it?

Skinners have powers now, eh? I hadn’t heard that our evil secrets had finally gotten out into the normal forum conversation. Seeing as everyone is talking about it then, I guess I should just go ahead and tell everyone that my power is to slowly drain all living essence from those with IQ scores lower than 156. I’ve been hiding it because there are so many out there with IQ scores much lower than 156 – OW_Tiobe and Tomato being two wonderful examples.

Using two adjectives only, what are two words you’d use to describe yourself and why?

“Drunken [and] undead”…because that’s exactly what I am. I’m not truly dead yet and I’m forever pickling my liver in hopes that one day it will give up it’s incessant want to make me healthy.

Although I’ve used this question before, I see nothing wrong with using it again. If you had more time in the day, what would you find yourself doing with it?

Man, more time in the day? Probably drink and spend more time with my close friends because lately I’ve found myself with very little time to be with them.

So now we know part of the story that went behind the creation of DJ’s avatar, how teaming with Carra helped to pushed DJ in the skinning field, and that he thinks someone forced him to do an Arcade skin. While that may  be some of the things you learned from this piece, what I learned is that DJ will always be one of my rivals. Tis inevitable. If you want to grab a very select few of DJ’s skins until the rest of his collection finds itself online, you can go here. So that’s that. Hope you enjoyed it!