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MetalLife.com Interview With Monte Moore (artist)
By: Terry Bunch
Date: July 25th, 2010 While at San Diego Comic Con 2010, we visited with and interviewed world famous artist Monte Moore. We talked about his new movie, his art and his previous clients.

Photo by E. Lacey, Metal Life Magazine

1. Metal Life Magazine: Tell us about your new feature film.

Monte Moore: The feature film is called 'End of the Road'. It's a full length feature, a supernatural thriller. It was written and produced by myself and it was filmed on the ranch that I grew up on as a kid. It's in a very remote location in Idaho. It centers around a group of ghost hunters who go to make the pilot episode of a new TV show called 'Spirit Seekers' and things start going awry. There ends up being some deaths and the audience is left wondering 'is the stuff going now being caused by supernatural spirits that have been awakened by the blood that has been spilled in this abandoned ranch that they feared was haunted?' Or is man who is doing all this stuff and there is something else going on all together, the people trying to make their show successful with all the 'events'.

The movie is starring Doug Jones, who is known to fans as the Silver Surfer in the second Fantastic Four movie and Abe Sapien in Hellboy. Doug also played both Pan and the faun in Pan's Labyrinth with Guillermo Del Toro.

2. Metal Life Magazine: Has 'End of the Road' been picked up by a distributor yet?

Monte Moore: No, we began filming in June and we actually only wrapped up filming about mid July. The footage that we're showing here at San Diego Comic Con is the very first that anyone has seen. It's sort of a teaser trailer that's playing. It actually in the editing stage at this point. Probably within a month from now, we'll have a press kit together and we'll be sending that out to potential distributors and/or agents that can facilitate distribution. Aimed at the DVD market, but you never know, if things go well, maybe it could get a limited theatrical release and that would be a hope, so we'll see. I will be happy with a quality product.

3. Metal Life Magazine: Can you tell us about the soundtrack?

Monte Moore: We have a couple of things that are already being worked on. One is Scott Cornella, who is a long time friend of mine and hard rock musician in Denver, Colorado. He has a band called The Threatened. Fans can check out their music on their myspace page at http://www.myspace.com/thethreatened. This last year, they made it to the Top Ten for best bands in Denver in a competition put on by Denver's leading rock radio station, 106.7 KBPI. Scott is also working on two songs for the movie. One is called 'The Savior' and the other one is called 'End of the Road', which will probably end up as the title track or maybe used in end credits. The Threatened's sound inspired by classic rock and the hard rock scenes of the 70's and 80's. As soon as you hear them, you can tell the influences on the band and I think people will love it.

Photo by Eva Jarkiewicz, Metal Life Magazine

4. Metal Life Magazine: Ok, now to switch topics on you, besides working on art, sculptures and such, you also so custom artwork for cars and motorcycles. Tell us about that.

Monte Moore: During the previous 'chopper boom' of the past 5-7 years, I kept getting asked for a while 'hey, I love your artwork, will you paint my bike, will you paint my helmet?' For many, many years, I said 'No, no, I don't know anything about that' referring to not knowing how to use those types of paints. I finally just kind of bite the bullet and I started painting with acrylics and then moved to enamels and within about a two year period, I was painting for most of the top pro builders in the field. So I was traveling the country as builders would fly me out to paint their bikes. I flew to San Diego to paint for David Anthony, PB Choppers out of Iowa, they were doing a lot of Nascar projects. I worked for a lot of pro builders, a couple of other guys and Kiwi Indian Motorcycles. I painted several show bikes for him. SO within that 2-3 year period, I had 7 of my paintjobs for bikes that had won world championships which was really cool. One year I think there were two or three bikes that I painted, just in that year alone. So that was very exciting to have your artwork recognized as generally a higher level of detail than people were used to seeing on bikes. Because as an illustrator, what I was doing was a lot of hand painting. That was a little bit of a lost art in this field, others were only doing airbrushing and pin-striping and I was doing full on illustration and I wasn't only relying on airbrushing. I was doing a lot of super fine detail. Because of the detail, I was doing paint jobs that ranged from $1,000 to over 10 grand for the full on, off the hook, paint everything type jobs. For a while, I was working for some guys who were going to do a bike for Zakk Wylde. They didn't land up getting the job, so unfortunately I did not get to paint the bike, but I was pretty excited about the option (laughs).

5. Metal Life Magazine: Have you been approached for or done any album covers for bands?

Monte Moore. I will be doing the cover for the next album for Scott's band, The Threatened. We're talking about doing something that was more traditional and something similar to a lot of the rock albums that people love but that you don't see enough of anymore. I want to use some hard edged, dark fantasy art. Very Frank Frazetta like, you know, the Molly Hatchet style. I know The Threatened is considering the album name 'Dying Breed' for their next one, so I said that the cover could have a pile of skulls with a warrior type figure on top wearing a guitar across his back instead of an axe or maybe the guitar will be in his hands. You can see a drum as his shield and have all these musical instruments as his weapons. So that's one idea that we're kicking around. I also did some logo work for them as well.

6. Metal Life Magazine: Do you work on any video game art?

Monte Moore. Yes, I worked on both Star Wars Galaxies and Legends of Norath, both for Sony Online. Previously, I have done about seven Playstation covers and I have considered doing artwork for World of Warcraft, but I haven't done anything that has captured their attention at the moment and quite honestly, I have had my hands full being busy with the film (laughs).

7. Metal Life Magazine: Taking a look at your sculptures, you have a dragon table, warrior skulls and the female figures. Is there a new sculpture in the works?

Monte Moore: I am working with a new company called Vougler, they are out of Germany. They have been asking me for several years to do designs for them. One of the first things that we did was some new dark edgier looking Norse gods. Those are coming out as life style busts. We have Thor, Odin, Loki and Freya. I took my inspiration from the Norse designs that were in the Pathfinder movie. I really liked the down-swept horns, kind of blocking a lot of the face and that sort of thing, so I went more in that direction which is much darker than my first series. That series was real popular, but it is sold out. The new series will be out in just a few months and those will have more of that type of influence. There is also about a dozen other gothic type designs that are either dragons, skulls, zombies and other goth-ish, dark fantasy themes.

8. Metal Life Magazine: Are you working any animations?

Monte Moore: I have been asked about but because I myself don't personally know to animate. I have done some digitally based artwork that's created strictly on a computer, but I don't prefer it. I prefer traditional art and even though I know the whole industry is swinging towards digital artwork, I prefer to stick with the traditions unless my client absolutely requires it. Some video game companies want their art to be native to how they're being viewed. That's the only time I really do digital art. For example, all of my pin up art, which I am mostly known for, is all traditional. I want to have that art that not only can I hold and enjoy, but I can also sell to the collectors so they can enjoy it as well.

9. Metal Life Magazine: You entered a Star Wars short into the Star Wars Fan Film Contest entitle TK421. tell us about that project.

Monte Moore: I am trying to move more into the film industry with my art and creativity so I am doing a lot of writing. So I decided to take some film classes at a local film school in Colorado. As my final project, I decided to make a Star Wars Fan Film and kill two birds with one stone and also enter it in the Star Wars Fan Film Challenge, which is sponsored by Atom Films and Lucas Films. They have a set of guidelines that you have to follow as far as how long the film can be and if you can use their music and that sort of thing. So I converted my basement into the Mos Eisley cantina. I built all of the sets myself and I called up a bunch of the 501st guys from the garrison. So we had troopers and jawas and the basic premise is that this rebel pilot is going to get a parking ticket for parking his X-Wing out front and when TK421 comes in, the rebel pilot finds out TK421's been demoted to handing out parking tickets. The rebel pilot realizes that TK421 is this very attractive woman under the helmet so he starts trying to get a date with her and then realizes that he's got competition when Darth Vader shows up, who is also trying to get a date with her. So that's why it's "TK421, Why Aren't You At Your Post". It's now a finalist out of the hundreds that are made every year. Twenty six have been selected by, I'm assuming Lucas Films and Atom Films, not based on just clicks alone or anything. Now, George Lucas himself will view the finalists and select winners like 'Best Comedy', 'Best Overall Film' and there's an 'Audience Choice' award as well which I think is actually based on voting on AtomFilms.com.

10. Metal Life Magazine: Are there any other artistic achievements that you want to share?

Monte Moore: In 2008, I had the number one selling T-shirt design at Sturgis. It was a buffalo type figure riding a bike, giving the thumbs up. He was dragging his heel and fire was coming off it. It was cool because when they were promoting it, my art was on the side of semis, it was on buildings and billboards and I was like 'That's the shit right there' (laughs). That made me feel a little like a rock star (laughs).

11. Metal Life Magazine: Now that you have covered just about every form of art there is, are you going to branch out into music as well?

Monte Moore: (laughs) I took guitar lessons for about three years. I love music and if I ever lost my ability to do art, such as my sight, I know that music would be only thing that would make me happy. As my career took off, I realized I didn't have time to do both art and music. I still have my guitars, but I probably won't pursue music because the visual medium is where my love is at the moment and I prefer to let the professionals do what they do best (laughs).

12. Metal Life Magazine: Anything else you want to share with our readers?

Monte Moore: No, I think you covered everything that I wanted to pimp (laughs)

Photo by Eva Jarkiewicz, Metal Life Magazine

Visit Monte Moore MavArts for more information.