Inspiration

Over my years of study I had always looked into entertainment and popular culture, such as comics, games, films and animation, as my main area of interests and inspiration, as well as artists who worked in the fields of storyboarding and concept art. The one that I always had looked into the most was, perhaps video games. I don’t just play games in general; I usually pick up games that involve an in-depth story filled with a variety of characters and an expansive lore. Most of the games that I play are mostly role-playing types, where you play as the main character and you follow a journey through a narrative, as well as free roaming where you get to explore the world yourself and to find many hidden details that is outside of the main story.

The videogame that I find the most inspiration from would be “The Legend of Zelda” franchise. This may be a biased opinion, but this was the franchise I had grown up with, as well as being a big inspiration for stories and characters since I was little. Another videogame that I also liked was the “Final Fantasy” franchise that offers different stories and has an expansive lore for each game. Each entry (game) from the two franchises is entirely different to one another (although the narrative maybe somewhat similar to previous titles, which acts as a skeleton to create a entirely different story) and despite having similar qualities to their previous title they still offer a lot of content. Fantasy and Sci-Fi Fantasy are the two genres in videogames that I’m always interested in, since they offer so much imagination and story telling. Role playing games in particular are the types of games that I do find inspiration from, as it puts you into the shoes/perspective of the main character and feel more involved and connected with the story and characters. 

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD (2013), one of the many titles in the franchise. The game stands out from the rest due to its cell-shaded Toon style.

Final Fantasy 15 (2016), the upcoming latest entry to the Final Fantasy franchise.

Within the entertainment industry of videogames I am currently following a few artists to help with Photoshop and digital painting. In today’s industry for entertainment, digital painting is becoming a skill that you would need and I wanted to continue to improve. I had only started digital painting back at the beginning of 2013, so it’s only been a little over 3 years since I had begun my journey to master the various methodologies of digital painting and to find my own voice/style.

Concept artist Feng Zhu is one of the digital artists I follow. He owns a school in Singapore, known as “FZD School of Design”, and has a YouTube account where he demonstrates techniques, ideas and Q&As on various topics and subject matters within the field of entertainment and storyboarding. He focuses on mostly games and sometimes films, but the knowledge he shares on his videos are very interesting and discusses his approach on his artworks, which I definitely find it essential to someone like me who is pursuing digital art as a professional practice. Most of the stuff I had learnt about digital painting is all self directed study and practice outside of university hours. While I may not learn digital painting on my course, I felt the need to spend time outside to learn it and at the same time I can incorporate the skills I had obtained and implement them into the projects in the course to help develop my skills ideas further. 

Concept art by Feng Zhu

Storyboard artist Ilya Kuvshinov is another digital artist who I had followed just a little over a year ago. He is known for his female character portraits and I followed him for his style. The simplicity of his works captured my attention and I had explored his methodology on digital painting which turns out to be very simple and not that hard to follow. He has helped me to be more open and to not over complicate things with heavy detail and to approach things simply in terms of colour. 

Art by Ilya Kuvshinov