From the cool indifference of Enigma to the manic intensity of her Pop-Up Window alt-art, Liiga has helped define the cyberspace of Netrunner. She agreed to answer a few questions from the Sneakdoor crew about how she imagines and creates the digital world we love.

By Eric Ditloff

Some of your recent art is especially intriguing, like Mganga, SYNC BRE and Veritas. On Reddit you talked about Archangel, Apex and the Fairchildren a bit, and those briefs were very interesting though we’re even more interested to learn about the thinking that goes into how you interpret those ideas.

They [briefs] range from elaborate ones, to elaborate ones with a ‘or just do whatever you like’ sidenote to ‘this is the subject, just make it cool’.

Funny you should mention Veritas – it is one that came with an unusually elaborate art brief (long enough that I hesitate to include it here), complete with visual references on various stylistic elements and such. And all of that was accompanied by a remark that the whole thing was intended to be super flexible and “basically: Angel of Truth, go.”

Mganga and SYNC BRE were a lot more straight forward. Mganga went like this: “A boney hand reaches out in cyberspace, holding a needle dripping with digital poison.” It was also mentioned that the piece should have a psychedelic, magical feel to it, which is why I went with the oil slick palette. SYNC BRE was just as short: “High overhead, a big red disembodied eye sweeps its gaze balefully around the net.”

Since I draw things that belong in cyberspace, there is room for ambiguity, most frequently when the descriptions invoke things like “net” and “cyberspace”. What does cyberspace look like? Bonus points when a creature is doing something to it, such as trying to eat it (looking at Darwin here).

The briefs always come with a note: “This piece takes place in cyberspace and is not limited by the laws of physics or reality.” As such, I lean towards something that might not be out of place in a dream, as since the elements of cyberspace require some level of interpretation by the user to create this imagery, the process is in some ways reminiscent of dreaming. Elements that aren’t part of the focal point quickly become murky, and things have a certain tendency to float.

In more practical terms, the process also involves a certain degree of compromise between what seems like a good idea for the image and what actually works with the template. For instance, an eagle trying to look like an imposing wall feels like a landscape type of deal, however ICE is, of course, portrait shaped.

Veritas seemed like one of the more enigmatic pieces. There’s a lot of work everyone did during the Flashpoint cycle that looks like deep thought went into it. The brief was huge but which elements did you pull into the Veritas piece? How weird and specific does it get? Or did you create your own angel of truth mostly from scratch?

I guess I’ll just go ahead and paste the full brief for Veritas afterall. Brace for impact:

Illustration Type: Sentry, Tracer | CYBERSPACE

Faction: Weyland Consortium

Art Brief: An Art Deco winged goddess radiates the golden light of TRUTH, and you are not judged worthy.

This piece takes place in cyberspace and is not limited by the laws of physics or reality. Use a limited but vivid color palette, as if all the elements of the composition were comprised of light.

Detail: A security program takes the shape of a winged Greco-Roman goddess in cyberspace. This is the goddess VERITAS, Lady of Truth. She sees through lies and deception with blinding white-gold light, and she will uncover your true nature and purge the lies from your being. If you are truly impure, beware. She will destroy you.

Have fun designing her hair and greek-style garments. She is beautiful, but her face is hard-looking and strict.

Please avoid: Alphonse Mucha–style Art Nouveaux. No “Justice is Blind”/”Justice with Scales” pose, please.

Ideas/Suggestions: A restored version of Victory of Samothrace evokes the general feeling for this card. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PFUVaWNl4DE/URfQKaeOlfI/AAAAAAAAJaU/zTiWX-v9QAU/s1600/Winged+Victory+of+Samothrace.png But feel free to give her your own pose.

Her eyes might be the source of the blinding, radiant light—whatever is most terrifying. Remember the Sphynx scene from The Neverending Story? It’s like that. http://www.cinema52.com/2013/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/laser-eyes.jpg

References: Here, have some art deco people art:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Cochise_County_Courthouse_Bisbee_Arizona_ArtDecoDoors.jpg

https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5050/5369328353_38e10eedb7.jpg

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/37/55/f0/3755f0900be36b564ac8bcafabafe508.jpg

As you can see, a lot changed. In fact almost everything did. I did originally entertain the idea of keeping the art deco elements as requested, but pretty much all that remains of that is a stylised approach to wings, having them be more implied than anything else since afterall, a cyberspace creature doesn’t require a means of transportation that makes any sort of physical sense. Instead, I decided to focus on the eyes. There are floating orbs above the scrolls, the angel’s entire lower body is just a trail of eyes, and even the halo together with the shape of its head come out to something similar to an eye. To add a bit of contrast and make the figure feel more alien and inaccessible, the place where eyes normally actually go only has a single orb, eyelids not included. And to drive home the feeling of judginess, I gave it an excessive amount of scrolls and elevated it a bit so it appears to be looking down upon the viewer.

Were there any briefs you found especially tricky, or particularly enjoyable?

The trickiest brief to date was probably The Network: “A netrunner avatar studies the “landscape” of the network as Zotabytes of data flicker and flow past in gleaming pathways.” The brief went on to add:

“Inspiration: Jack in. A rush of perception shifting, rising towards the flowing lights of the network like rising through water, breaking through the surface and into a world of light and data.” As a description, this evokes a great deal of feeling, however, translating it into something visual was a challenge. There was a stage of staring at the sketch that was finally picked out after a bit of back and forth and thinking that it looks like a mighty onion. But in the end it all worked out and I am to date very happy with some of the surreal bits that came out of the sleepless final stretch before the deadline.

As for the extra fun ones, there are a lot of those! The Red Herrings were amazingly relaxing to draw, Owl gave me a lot of thought about how utterly adorable puffed up owls tend to be, and I got a fair share of giggles out of working on Pup and Little Engine. Oh and of course also Marathon – that cheeky little thing.

What are some of your thoughts on cyberpunk culture?

It might be worth noting that the majority of things I’ve been drawing have not been distinctly cyberpunky in appearance, except for the occasional wire-like elements here and there. That is probably my favorite thing about Android:Netrunner – when I was initially contacted to produce art for the game, the genre was of course mentioned, and I was unsure if I had the right thing to offer for the gritty setting I was expecting it to be. However, ADN manages to put a lot of extra layers into the game’s world by having the bright, shiny and exciting things right there in contrast with their often brutal applications and the cold reason that governs them.

Your work before Netrunner seems to have a dreamlike, surreal and fantastical quality to it as well. Where does that come from? Who are your influences both within and outside of visual art that come into your work?

Oof, good question. The thing is, for a while (before the magic of the Internet) I was a huge fan of illustrated encyclopedias of all sorts. Naturally, any sort of art history books became a major part of that as it doesn’t get much more illustrated than that. And it just so happens that we had a lot of books about zoology, entomology, botany etc. at home readily available. As such it’s probably no coincidence that I particularly like drawing various creatures, but artistic influences are much harder to narrow down to any particular ones.

What kind of process gives your art such a luminous quality?

The luminous effect, on the other hand, is a lot more straight forward. For Netrunner illustrations in particular I place bright, saturated lights at the edges of things – sort of like drawing a backlit gummy bear. That together with cunningly placed sparkles (which is to say I generously sprinkle them absolutely everywhere) makes things look radiant and as if they do not possess much weight.

Finally, if we wanna get cool stuff with your art on it like playmats and prints, what should we do?

As for prints and the like – I have made a number of prints available through my deviantArt account (which can be found at https://liiga.deviantart.com/ ). New things get added as they get spoiled. Some of the older ones are unfortunately not suitable for printing as they were drawn a lot smaller than the more recent works. As for things printed on other, er, things, I am open to commissions, and have done several in the familiar Netrunner cyberspace style in the past. You may reach me either through deviantArt notes or by e-mailing straight to smilshkalne@hotmail.com. Timely inquiries are most appreciated.

Thanks Liiga!