Erik Natzke

You may or may not be familiar with Erik Natzke. I mentioned him the other day in a post about Shiftspace, but prior to visiting OFFF last weekend, I hadn’t heard of him. Once you see his work though, the only question that comes to mind is how the heck have I NOT heard of this guy before? My speculation on that point is that Erik is just a quiet guy.

His work, however, speaks volumes. Erik is pushing the limits of Flash beyond what even Adobe ever expected the program to be used for – Erik even mentioned that he’s driven the development team nuts by pushing them for further functionality. Lately he’s been working on a “paint by numbers” approach that combines his interests in photography with his expertise in flash to create amazing images like the one we’ve shown here.

Something else to note about Erik is his willingness to help others understands — or at least try — what he’s doing and to explain his process. At OFFF, Erik was passing out CD’s of his work so that people could deconstruct it and his Flickr feed contains lengthy discussions about his process with anyone willing to ask a few questions. So Flash gurus, go forth and ask. You couldn’t find a better teacher if you searched for a year.