Andreas von Buddenbrock is a young 24-year-old and funky fresh artist of the 21st century currently enrolled as a first-year student at the Savannah College of Art and Design – Hong Kong. He is an illustration major with humble plans for the future. Born in Stockholm, Sweden, but growing up his family travelled through many countries.
Interview: Andreas Von Buddenbrock
What made you choose to come to Hong Kong for school? That’s a good question actually. I was here (Hong Kong) last year with my friend for a week, and I really liked the city.
I was looking for schools in Asia. SCAD was the first one I found and the best one I found. That’s why I applied for the school. Do you plan to study at the Hong Kong campus for all four years or do you have plans to go the campuses in Georgia or France? I may consider transferring for a quarter or something. It all depends on money. If I can I will graduate from here in less than three years from now. I might go to Savannah for a quarter or so. If I get temporarily bored of Hong Kong, I could go there just for fun. What does illustration mean to you?
YES. [laughs] Illustration means the world to me. No, but it could mean illustrating for a magazine, but it could also be illustrating from your heart, so to speak. It’s when you are painting or drawing with something deeper in mind, maybe a message behind it and with more thought than just drawing for someone else. I mean, all of that is illustrating, but there are different aspects of it. You’ve travelled a lot, right? Yeah I have, mostly when I was younger, with my stepfather, because he was working a lot abroad.
Me and my mom would follow him. That’s why I’ve been travelling. You like travelling? No, I don’t like travelling. I like being in different places, but I don’t like the travelling, per say. Hate that. “I like being in different places, but I don’t like the travelling, per say. Hate that. ”Does your home influence your art at all? I guess, no. Not so much. It is mainly American, and maybe some Asian Art. Sweden is very influenced by America overall.
Do you have any personal heroes or any artists that have influenced your art? I don’t know many names. I can’t name drop very much, but I did like a lot of old comic books when I was a kid. And I guess I got inspired by a lot of them, like Spiderman and Donald Duck. I always liked the ones that had the best cartoonists. I didn’t care much about the story. I just looked at the pictures when I was younger. Usually also I copied the pictures, and that way I learned and improved. I even had, –uh, when I watched Cartoon Network, my dad had on his T.
V. you could freeze the frame. So when I saw something on T. V. that I wanted to draw, I just froze the frame and I would draw it. I drew from television. What do you plan to do after graduating from SCAD? I want to become an illustrator. But, that is very broad, I know. So it depends. There are many kinds of illustrators, and I guess I can see myself doing pictures for newspapers, for books, video games, maybe comic books. But the thing I don’t like about comic books is that, well, I try to make my pictures as good as possible.
In a comic book, the pictures are almost irrelevant. I like the ones that are very well made. Some of them the picture look almost like paintings, but you just look pass them and you have, –what do you call that, a text bubble? It takes up half the page blocking over what you draw. Tell us about the favorite drawings of your own. Usually my favorite pieces are my most recent ones. I like to look at it like I am evolving. Which I guess is a good thing. Those are the ones that I am most proud of. I started sketching with ink recently, and I like that.
I chose some movie scenes that I like to draw. And then hopefully, like a year from now, I will look at them and think it’s crap! [laughs] Finally, let’s do a fun question. What is your favorite T. V. show? I have several. One is Californication starting soon; again, the sixth season! I like Mad Men, Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, and Boardwalk Empire. Those are my favorites right now. I’m am actually watching Archer right now. It’s like a cartoon but for grownups. I get some inspiration from that series.
