Interview: Adi Granov

On the 21st of August 2009 LotsofInterviews.com conducted a interview with comic book artist Adi Granov who is most well known for both his work with Iron Man and his numours covers for Marvel Comics. We talk about how he become a professional comic book artist, why he does so much cover work, how he came to work on the Iron Man films and what he did on them and about his future work.

How is it you became a professional comic book artist?

I was working as a video game concept artist at Nintendo

as well as an illustrator on the side. After a few years I left

Nintendo and pursued more illustration work which

eventually led me to a company called Humanoids Publishing. They asked me to do a story for a comic magazine they were publishing, which was my first paid sequential work, and things kept on rolling from there.

You mainly work on covers, why is this?

Well, I've been doing quite a bit of work outside of comics, especially on the Iron Man movies, so doing longer interior stories wasn't feasible at the same time, but I wanted to stay connected to the comics as much as possible hence the short stories and covers.

Are there any books you would like to do cover for but haven’t had the chance?

I've been fortunate to be able to work on any characters I'm interested in within the Marvel universe. I'm currently doing the covers for Black Widow: Deadly Origins, and The Incredible Hercules, which are quite different in theme and general mood, but both feature a lot of guest characters (even some of the same heroes appear in both), so that's keeping me really satisfied at the moment.

  Do you have a favourite character to draw?

  Not really... I try to do my own take on any character I draw to

  try to make it more interesting to myself. The great thing

  about working in comics is that artists are free to do their

  own styles and interpretations of the characters which

  makes it a joy to both work on and to see all the different

  takes. For instance I am drawing the Hulk at the moment

  and I'm really loving the challenge of figuring out the style

  which will influence the look of the whole project.

  How is it you came to work on the Iron Man movie?

  I illustrated the Iron Man: Extremis book, which Warren Ellis

  wrote, and Jon Favreau, the director of the film, liked it

  enough to ask me to help with the look of the movie. My

  involvement was initially supposed to be pretty limited, but

  as things progressed it became apparent that Jon and I worked well together.

What exactly did you do when working on this movie?

I worked on the designs for the Iron Man Mk.2 and 3 suits, as well as the Iron Monger, and did key frame illustrations to set the look and "feel" of the various action scenes throughout the movie.

Have you been working on Iron Man 2?

I did a similar amount of work on the sequel as I did on the first film.

Do you have any plans do work on any interior art at the moment?

I am already working on a short story; I have a one-shot scheduled next to be followed up by a much longer project... so yes, quite a bit of interior work ahead.