Interview: Denise Dorman and Charlie Athanas of The Devil’s Candy Store
I’m down with the Devil and I like candy, so it stands to reason that The Devil’s Candy Store would be a fun place to shop, no matter what they were selling, so we approached their booth at the Comicon, fully expecting some free Red Hots (because the Devil likes hot candies) or a truffle. Maybe something naughty and edible - it is the Devil’s candy store, after all.
There was no candy available, but founders Denise Dorman and Charlie Athanas explained that for movie studios, video game and toy developers and other entertainment companies looking for concept art, The Devil’s Candy Store really is a great place to shop because, as Dorman puts it, they have “the A-Team” of illustrators on their company roster.
PRG: What is the idea behind The Devil’s Candy Store?
Denise Dorman: In two short words, it’s concept art. But what we’re proposing and what our company does is pull together top artists in the illustration world and our group is really the A-Team. It’s Dave Dorman, Scott Hampton, Chris Mueller, Tom Baxa, Craig Elliot. Right now, Elliot is working on Disney’s The Princess and The Frog. You’ll find him behind almost any animated film in Hollywood right now.
Charlie Athanas: There are a lot of people who are expressing interest and a lot of them are veterans - seasoned professionals who have been around the block and have done a lot of visual narrative work in a lot of different fields. They’re excited about the idea that the group of them can work together on high profile projects because they usually work separately. The Devil’s Candy Store brings these artists together.
DD: It’s a team approach. We’re very careful about who we picked because they’re mega creative, they’re expedient, and they meet their deadlines. The most important thing is these are people who aren’t ego freaks. Their egos aren’t going to get in the way of delivering a good product on time.
CA: A lot of people ask this question - aren’t you just agents? Companies will hire The Devil’s Candy Store as a company and then within the company, the available pool is these seasoned artists. So, they’ll get us and our art directors working with teams that we’ve pulled together that are appropriate for a specific project. So they’re hiring The Devil’s Candy Store, not the individual artists.
PRG:You’re really touting the fact that these artists are veterans and pros who know how to hit a deadline without tantrums in the studio. What disadvantages do they have being the veterans in the field compared to the young kids?
DD: Here would be a great example of that. My husband, Dave Dorman, is strictly an oil painter. He’s actually lost projects this last year with people who loved the look and feel of his work, but when they realized he wasn’t doing it digitally in Corel Painter, they said forget it. He gets it done in the same amount of time, but he’s doing it in an oil.
That would be a disadvantage with Dave - or a similar artist - if someone wanted digital work. But, we also have John Foster on our team who works almost exclusively in digital. He actually did the illustrations for Dave’s book The Uninvited which is part of his Wasted Lands proprietary property.
CA: Here’s the benefit to why you would hire The Devil’s Candy Store. Even if you had artists that you’ve admired forever who aren’t on top of the latest tool set, within our company there are people who are. The combination of the two allows clients to get old school and new school and get exactly what they’re looking for, as opposed to hiring one person who can’t do it all.
PRG: Is it really that important for studios that things are done digitally?
DD: For some. Not all. Everyone doesn’t put a big priority on it, but some do. The job that Dave just lost was through a B-movie studio. It wasn’t anything that anyone had heard of, it was like a horror movie and they loved his work on Alien. He won an Eisner award for that, but it was in oil and as soon as they realized that it is was in oil they called and said “it’s a little too illustrative for us”. Which was their way of saying “sorry, it’s not digital”.
I think that a lot of the art directors who are in those positions right now came up during the digital age, not in the traditional art age. Once that kind of shakes out a little bit, those people will respect traditional art again. It’s a new toy. Remember when MS Word first came out and you’d get letters that had a million different fonts because everyone was trying everything out. Then it all went back to Times New Roman and Arial. That’s how it is with this digital movement. Everyone has to try every tool and they just have to shake it out.
CA: There’s a really good friend of mine named Ray Frenden who I know exclusively through the internet. He lives in the midwest and he’s a great, young, tablet digital artist. The other day on his blog he wrote, “I bought a sketchbook with a pencil,” and he had never done that. And he was thrilled! He thought it was the coolest thing in the world. He didn’t have to worry about batteries or plugging it in - he could just draw on the bus. He thought this whole pencil-paper thing was just amazing. Both sides are learning.
PRG: What are your backgrounds?
DD: Charlie has a fascinating background.
PRG: Does it start with being raised by wolves?
CA: Elves. Keebler elves. I make a mean cookie! My background is predominantly in the entertainment arts so I’ve done everything from comic books - I was an artist on the first CG comic book called Shatter -
PRG (John): I remember when Shatter came out and for all the talk of the CG effects, it didn’t really work for me.
CA: What’s really fascinating about the whole Shatter project was for comic book people, they didn’t get it and most people didn’t like it. Although, they did a reprint and everyone loves it now. But, at the time, people thought it was awful. But, people in the computer graphics world, they loved it. To this day, it’s this iconic first step. It’s all a matter of context.
DD: Charlie has the distinction of working on John Madden II.
CA: The first animated John Madden was created by three of us. Robin Antonick, John Friedman and I all worked on John Madden Football II. When I was doing that I had 32 pixels. 32 by 32 to make a football player and have him run and jump and tackle.
DD: He also did a video game production for U2 that got side tracked about six months in.
CA: About six months in the money people freaked out. But it was a neat thing with Mark Neale who is a filmmaker and Grant Gee who did the Radiohead movie. It was a really cool London project.
PRG: Did you say “U2 video game”? Like U2 with Bono and The Edge?
DD: Yeah, U2 the band. He also did Shadow President and Cyber Judas.
CA: Can you tell Denise works in publicity?
DD: He had video gaming under his belt quite a bit. Other people in our group have different strengths. My husband’s done toy design and he’s also the number one Star Wars artist, so everyone knows him for that. They don’t realize that his Eisner award was for his work on Alien and Alien vs. Predator and all of that.
CA: But enough about your husband. What about your background?
DD: I was in television production. I came out of Northern Illinois University with a degree in journalism and went into production on a program called The Super Chargers which was a motor sports series. After that we lost our sponsor and we just started doing video production.
I started diversifying in my career, went into copyrighting, concept development, anything creative. Then I got into PR, doing PR for some big name people in the art industry, such as Kevin Anderson, who is the co-author of the Dune novels with Brian Herbert (Frank Herbert’s son). He does Saga of Seven Suns and he just did The Last Days of Krypton which is coming out in November. That’s like The Last Days of Pompeii - its the politics and the background of how the planet Krypton imploded. The story has never been told in 70 years of Superman lore. This is an amazing story.
I also rep Pamelina, who is a dream client. Anybody that is anything in rock has a Pamelina guitar. The range is The Scorpions to Elton John. She did drum skins for Ringo Starr. She is the It girl for guitar art and she does beautiful fantasy and sci-fi art. She had her own line of psychedelic guitars with Fender in 2004 - they retailed for about ten or eleven thousand.
CA: And at that point in your career you met the devil. And he suggested you open a candy store.
DD: Because I couldn’t play a fiddle worth a damn!
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