INTERVIEW (Audio): Illustrator Len Peralta

Len Peralta is a geek treasure, and someone you definitely want to keep on your radar. You may or may not have heard of him before now, but after checking out some of his work I’m sure you’ll agree. (Wired magazine even listed him on their 100 Geeks You Should Be Following on Twitter.) I had a chance to chat with Peralta last week, and we’re posting up the full audio on the BigShinyRobot podcast feed for the pleasuring of your earholes.

Direct link to the audio right here.

Or sign up for the BigShinyRSS right here.

Peralta is a talented guy, and a pleasure to speak with. He works with some of the funniest people in the geekosphere including Storm DiConstanzo of Paul and Storm, and MST3K alumni. For instance, he’s working with Bill Corbett on the comedy graphic novel Super Powered Revenge Christmas. A few years ago he also started his own project to immortalize famous geeks—and, presumably, to have an excuse to talk to these famous geeks on the associated podcast—it’s called Geek a Week and is in its third iteration. After the successful Geek a Week 2.0 project, Peralta decided to focus the theme of this round on Legends of Video Games—be sure to watch the video for the project, it’s hilarious. You can also follow Peralta on twitter @jawboneradio.

Peralta is a busy guy, some of his other projects are 50 vs 50, where you can commission your very own hero or villain illustration based on criteria you submit. In a similar vein you can cough up some dough for an original monster illustration at Monster by Mail which was originally run by Peralta himself, but now employs a stable of hand picked illustrators.

I hope you enjoy the interview, let us know what you thought in the comments.

[Connor Cleary is an author, video game columnist and critic, and a freelance web-slash-graphic designer. He is a reviewer at GameShark and an occasional opinion and analysis columnist at Gamasutra. His freelance design business is Four Stair Multimedia and Design. You can follow Connor @The_Blue_Key, or at fb/TheBlueKey, or check out his writing archive on tumblr, The Blue Key.]