Sharp Lee

Hailing from Johannesburg, South Africa is none-other than Sharp-Lee Mthimkulu, aka LeetchiSan, a multi-disciplined creative. LeetchiSan, an alias that meaningfully translates to “respect the power within” addresses personal matters relating to the self (introspection, discovery and worth).

Q

Please introduce yourself and the role that you’ll be playing in this year’s festival.

I am Sharp-Lee Mthimkulu, commonly known as LeetchiSan. I’m a designer, illustrator, animator and motion designer, amongst other things. I also do videography and web design. In terms of the festival, I was a student in the Informal Visualisation Lab, where we had someone from Columbia show us this one programme and how to use it in all our collaborative realms to produce one final product that was launched on Saturday at Fak’ugesi. I will be hosting an ‘Illustration Battle’, where six illustrators will be battling it out in three rounds with the winner taking home R1500.00 in cash. I also got retained to do some animation work for the festival.

Q

What does it mean to you to be a digital artist?

To be a digital artist, I’d say, is all about using digital tools to express oneself, or to express an idea while observing everyday life and the use of those tools to fuel creativity.

Q

What can we expect from you at the festival? And how will you be using this year’s theme?

I’m always willing to learn and understand new things, hence my involvement with the labS, where I continue to learn new skills as an illustrator, and on many other programmes. For example, we have a workshop where we illustrated a lot most of the time, but then towards the end, there was a link to coding and how you can take those illustrations and put them into a programme that makes games.

Q

How has being involved in this year’s festival impacted you and your artistry?

Fak’ugesi is always insightful in terms of seeing all the submissions and seeing what other people are kind of working on and so it is an event that is always inspiring to be around. Takeaways for my way of illustration in collaboration with Fak’ugesi also helps with the next grant funding, over and above that it’s also amazing to see the work open to all the people. 31

“One of the main reasons for my career in illustration is the idea of accessibility...”

Q

Let’s talk about accessibility, as a centre of discourse in art and its significance. When it comes to creating digital art, what tools are needed for your audience to access your art? Secondly, where does one start as a digital artist?

The Internet. At this stage, that’s one thing you’ll need, as well as having access to the physical work. One of the main reasons for my career in illustration is accessibility because I feel that there’s no access to local illustrators- I remember when I was in varsity doing my thesis and assessments, I would try to find local guys to write about but there’s none of that, it’s mostly international people. So that was my thinking around the ways of illustration- to create a catalogue of African illustrators that students or other people could use as a reference for their work. These days there are so many programmes, tools, and apps. There are quite a few options you can explore to create. And I guess in the digital space, it’s easier because you can just upload, but that doesn’t mean you get paid for that. Learning to navigate digital spaces is also important because to some extent, we are nearing an end to gallery life.

Q

If you were to mention one start-up app, for a beginner to use, what do you think that would be?

Okay, let’s also clarify that in digital space there are a number of ways to showcase. So, you can say it’s a digital illustration, or it’s a 3-D character, or it’s like motion graphics, or like abstract stuff. So, all of those can be created within different programmes. So then, going back to your question, one should first decipher in which direction they’re trying to go, because there are specific programmes to get started. So maybe for like illustrations it would be Auto Disk Sketchbook, that’s a free available programme, that you can just download and then use on almost all devices, phone, laptop, tablet. With 3-D stuff there’s Blender which is another free programme that you just download and use to produce great results.

Q

What issues do you believe are in the way for digital artists to interact with their audience?

Understanding the business and monetization aspect and getting the confidence to manoeuvre in that space. We’ve all been to exhibitions where it’s like a scribble on the wall selling for a huge amount, so if you understand the business behind it and understand the space surrounding, then you can walk in confidently and own that price.

Q

What inspired the By Way of Illustration book, and how has its impact grown over the years?

By Way of Illustration came about through the desire to learn and to kind of understand the illustration space better. I knew a few friends that were already illustrators but their career paths kind of went in other directions. So, we hosted events at The Hive in Joburg and invited illustrators to have these conversations, where some of us also performed live illustrations, and from there we decided that the information wasn’t to be kept as just an event. So, we took those illustrations and decided to input them into the first book, and that kind of started the build-up of the book.

Q

And how has the impact of it grown over the years?

I mean at first it was just an idea that being- we don’t have conversations with illustrators, and that evolved into the workshops with this year’s collaboration being with Fak’ugesi, and we have also collaborated with Basha Uhuru. So yeah, it was an idea that has its value amongst people, to a point where now there are other ideas added to the project. It’s no longer just an event series or a book series, we’re now creating workshops, having our own digital exhibitions, you know, so yeah its now growing fruits.

Q

What are you hoping to achieve through the festival with your motto, ‘Respect the power within and your overall artistry’?

Respect for the power within comes from my aka, LeetchiSan, which when broken down means; Lee (me) chee (power) and San (in the Japanese cultures if you’re respective, it is inspired by their respective policy). In respecting the power within, you’re respecting yourself and wanting the best for yourself. Growth is always required in learning and growing a community and extending opportunities, so through the festival all of those boxes have to be ticked.