Interviews with Artists: Zi Xu

Author: Seth Burn

Editor: Samantha Ferreira

Anime Herald: What is your origin story?

Zi Xu: I am an illustrator who was born in China. I came to the US when I was five years old. I’ve been here ever since. I do official movie posters, alternative movie posters, comic covers, [and] concept art for film and games.

Anime Herald: I feel like we may have we skipped a step. How did you first get interested in art?

Zi Xu: I feel like I’ve been drawing ever since I was born. It was very natural for me, it was the only thing I ever did as a kid. I remember drawing on the walls of my parents’ home when I was just five years old. That blossomed into me drawing nonstop.

In middle school, I watched a lot of anime and cartoons. I decided to take art seriously around middle school and high school. But it wasn’t until college that I went to an art school. That is where I developed a passion for film. Since then, I started to delve into the world of movie poster making. I found out there was a whole community for that.

Afterwards, I was lucky enough to immediately start getting clients after graduation, because I had already built up a social media following. I eventually got an agent to represent me, as well as several mentors in the field. Now I do this full-time.

Anime Herald: How did you build up your social media following?

Zi Xu: I think much of it was an accident. I was on it since I was young. This is not the way I would recommend other people do it, but I was always posting on social media. DeviantArt, Tumblr, and eventually Instagram and Twitter. I think by posting a lot, I got a lot of followers. I don’t think I’m one of the most followed artists, but I constantly tweet a lot. Not only art. I show a lot of my other interests. In these posts as well.

I think with social media, there are a lot of people who have made a science of it. “You have to be posting at this time.” or “You have to be posting XYZ.” I think that works for a lot of people, but I prefer to post more organically.

Anime Herald: What school did you go to?

Zi Xu: I went to Maryland Institute College of Art. It’s an art school in Baltimore. I studied illustration and art history there. The school heavily focused on pushing out illustrators to work in the editorial field. I personally don’t think there’s a lot of money in editorial. The money there is really poor, so I shifted toward the advertising field. I think that’s where the movie posters came from.

Anime Herald: Did you choose these pieces because they were your favorite movies, or because they were some of the things you wanted to draw?

Zi Xu: I chose some of them because they were my favorite movies, but a lot of them were commissions from clients. The stuff you see at Lightbox (Expo) is just a snippet of my whole portfolio.

I was selling a lot of these things at New York Comic Con 2021. With Lightbox, I had just moved to California, I decided I wanted to sell off my remaining stock from Comic Con last year.

Anime Herald: The Hustler, that’s a classic film. Was that a client-commissioned piece or just something you wanted to do?

Zi Xu: That was a client commission. I had already liked that movie. When I first started getting into alternative movie posters, I got a lot of private commissions for old movies, and then they would commission a printer to do a screen print version of my piece. They’d then send them to me to sell off the remaining artist’s prints. A lot of my pre-2020 stuff came from private commissions, or they were passion projects of mine.

Everything you see on the table, I screen-printed them myself. They were all kind of my passion projects. They were all personal work.

Anime Herald: So, Casablanca…

Zi Xu: Yeah. All original stuff. What happened was that I had access to a screen-printing studio when I was in college. I had taken a screen printing class. I illustrated all of these posters, and I would then screen-print them myself. It was super fun. I wish I still had access to a printing studio of some kind, but I don’t, for the time being.

Anime Herald: You said you moved to California. Where did you move from?

Zi Xu: I lived in New Jersey for most of my life. I was in Maryland for college. Afterward, I moved back to NJ for a while. I think that, art-wise and industry-wise, there was nothing really there in New Jersey. There was New York, and I was super close to New York, but I wanted to be closer to the film industry, where everything was happening. I saved up for a few years, and this April I made the move to Burbank.

Anime Herald: We have The Seven Samurai, was that also a commission?

Zi Xu: No, that one was personal. That was one of the first screen-printed posters I did. It actually sold out already. It’s one of those pieces where everyone is like, “Do you have that one? I would buy that one.”

I’d say, “No, the screen prints are already sold out, and I don’t know when I’ll make more.”

Anime Herald: What are you working on now?

Zi Xu: I’m working on several things. A lot of them are under NDA. I’m working on some stuff for Lionsgate. It’s an upcoming action movie.

I just finished work for one of my dream clients. I did a piece for them for the 10th anniversary of Dishonored. It’s my favorite game of all time. When I got to do the piece, I was freaking out over it. I was like, “okay, I can retire after this.”

I’m doing something for the tenth anniversary of a web series.

I’m working on the first chapter of my graphic novel. It’s a comic set in 1970s Hong Kong, called “Blood of the Gambler.” I hope I can finish it soon. I’m not really interested in comics as a medium. I’m only working on it as part of a client project. I don’t know if I’ll continue making comics in the future. I had never done comics of any sort, so I decided to try it and see if I liked it.

I love free stuff. I love Lightbox (Expo) because I’ve gotten so much free stuff from here.

(Editor’s note: We had an intermission where someone came and gave Zi Xu a free marker.)

Anime Herald: How did you first get involved with Lightbox (Expo)?

Zi Xu: I’ve always been very active in the art community online. I was following the big name artists like Bobby Chiu, who had already made a career and a name for themselves. In 2019, they announced the first Lightbox Expo. I was in New Jersey at the time, but I knew I had wanted to move out to California. I had heard Lightbox was an “all art” convention.

There were a lot of recruiters coming here. Adobe and Procreate were here. I wanted to come see what everything was all about. I went here as an attendee in 2019. I absolutely loved it. It was so well organized. I met so many people I knew online. I got a lot of free stuff. They were giving away art books and stuff like that. This was kind of the event that made me realize I really did want to move out here, for the industry.

Come 2020, I had applied and gotten in as an artist for the Artists’ Alley, here. But, because of the pandemic, Lightbox Expo was moved online for two years. This year, they asked “Hey, are you still coming as an artist? We’ll give you a discounted table.” I’m here now. I’m an artist.

Anime Herald: Did Lightbox Expo influence your career?

Zi Xu: I think that coming here in 2019 influenced me… it was a small part of me moving out to California. In terms of my career, I think it really started right after college in 2018. I am one of those people who loves applying to stuff. I was applying to grants, mentorships, all the time. I wanted to see what I could learn from people. Eventually, I was the first mentee in a program called “We Create” by Tracie Ching.

She was my first mentor into the freelance field, especially with movie poster design. She taught me the ins and outs of the business, as well as how to be an effective freelancer. It was under her guidance that I was introduced to bigger-name clients, as well as eventually the people who would be my agency. It really helped me jump-start my career. Now I know this person, so I got introduced to some other people. It was a domino effect.

Anime Herald: What did she teach you that changed you as an artist?

Zi Xu: Art school taught me how to draw, the fundamentals of everything. The unfortunate thing is that it didn’t teach me anything about business, at all. We had one business class in art school. I think the teacher tried her absolute best, but… business for artists, it needs to be all four years.

I think that college left me woefully unprepared for the business side of art. When I graduated, I had a few minor clients, but I didn’t know how to work with clients, I don’t know how to get clients. A large part of what Tracie did was take the next step of introducing a lot of those clients to me, as well as telling me “This is how it works in this business. These are the rates you should be pushing for. This is how to market yourself. This is how silkscreen printing goes.”

It was a lot of the things [that] I wish I knew but didn’t know beforehand. I think that really helped a lot.

Anime Herald: If you were to be a visiting professor for one semester, teaching the business of art, what would you want to teach current students?

Zi Xu: Oh my god! I’ve thought about this a lot. I think that in the current state of art education, everyone learns how to draw, but no one learns how to be a businessperson. I think artists need to be businesspeople. I would teach them what the current rates for freelance artists are, if they want to be a freelancer.

I think so many people underprice themselves. It all stems from, “we never believe we’re good enough.” A lot of artists are super insecure. I would first tell them everything I know about rates, and what they should be getting for their work. I would also teach them how to market themselves digitally online. Sometimes it’s not an easy thing to talk about. I think with marketing yourself and being a businessperson, a lot of the time I feel kind of like a snake oil salesman. “Hey, you can get a free mini print if you buy one of my…” I feel like a grifter almost. That’s the insecure part of me coming through.

I think a large part of it comes from doing it a lot, and having the confidence. I think with an art business class so much of it is speaking up for yourself and having confidence. It sounds very motivational. Sometimes, I meet amazing student artists who are so well beyond the professional level of artistic skill. But, in terms of professional presentation, they need a lot of help. I think a lot of what current students can learn is business skills and marketing skills.

Anime Herald: Would you be interested in doing a panel or a talk at Lightbox Expo 2023 about the business of art?

Zi Xu: If they asked me, sure. I think the difficult part is that October is a busy month for a lot of freelancers. I would do it, and then I would probably regret saying “yes,” because I’d be running behind on everything else I have to do.

I’ve given talks to college classes and schools before. I’d be happy to give a talk at a convention as well. I say this right now, but at the time I’d probably have bad stage fright, so when the time comes I’ll probably be like “Oh my god, why did I say yes?!”

Anime Herald: Anything else you would like to add?

Zi Xu: I love doing this, so thank you for asking me for an interview.

Zi Xu’s work can be found at https://www.zixu.art/.

Zi Xu is also on Instagram and Twitter.