{"id":2534,"date":"2019-03-20T16:18:47","date_gmt":"2019-03-20T13:18:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/subsign.co\/stories\/?p=2534"},"modified":"2019-03-20T16:18:49","modified_gmt":"2019-03-20T13:18:49","slug":"spotlight-084","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/subsign.co\/stories\/spotlight-084\/","title":{"rendered":"Subsign Spotlight #084."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Discovering talented people from our own city is something that never ceases to amaze us! This week we have Leo.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leo<\/span>: Ola, my name is Leo and I was born in a small city called S\u0103veni (it\u2019s more like a Winterfell but not from Westeros, from Romania). <\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m currently live in Ia\u0219i where I work as a Graphic Designer and Illustrator. I\u2019m also a second-year ph. D. Student at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology from the same town. Besides design and illustration, I love my wife, comics, video games, books, movies… and the list continues.<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Subsign: What was your childhood like? Do you think your experiences from childhood have influenced your present creative endeavors?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leo<\/span>: I had a very fun childhood, was always surrounded by toys and colored pencils. I wasn\u2019t a big fan of sports, the only thing that I enjoyed in this direction was playing badminton whit my dad or my friends.<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Because of this, I had a plenty of time for drawing, or better said, doodling on gridded math paper, various types of planes (was a big F16 fan), cars (NFS: Underground influence), and of course, Batman, Spider-Man and the rest of the Marvel and DC superhero team. When I wasn\u2019t doodling, I watched a lot of cartoons. I was very fascinated and tried to redraw every Cartoon Network character. <\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The sad part is that I didn\u2019t liked to keep the drawings, but still, my grandma managed to save some from the kinder garden period and stock them in a dossier. After my 4th grade, I discovered the fascinating world of video games. After this, I didn\u2019t draw that much as before but my creativity got better. Maybe the cartoons and video games influenced me the most in who I am today as a creative.<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Subsign: What did you want to be as a grown up?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leo<\/span>: First I wanted to be a Power Ranger, that was until I got 5 or 6 years old. Later, after I have discovered Counter-Strike, I wanted to be a part of the special forces, the S.A.S. or the S.W.A.T. Team. Later, when I was in high-school and started a rock band as a lead guitar and singer, guess what!? I wanted to be a rockstar! I still didn\u2019t quit dreaming on this\u2026haha.<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Subsign: How does your workstation look like?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leo<\/span>: Although I\u2019m a huge gadget fan, my workstation isn\u2019t that amazing. I still got my old PC Desktop (i5 6600k, 32 GB Ram, GTX 1050, 2xSSD, 1xHDD) which needs some video card upgrade and a new CPU, thinking on switching to a Ryzen platform.<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The best part is that I have kind of three workstations, depending on what project I need to work. For the bigger ones I work on my PC, for the smaller ones I use my laptop (Acer Nitro 5, a very powerful machine but poor display) and for the illustrations I work on my 11\u201d iPad Pro 2017 (Procreate beeing my weapon of choice).<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Subsign: Do you have a work style? How would you describe it?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leo<\/span>: I tend to switch my work style a lot. I always try to experiment with new styles and search for better ways of doing illustration. You can see a big influence from comics and cartoons.<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A few years ago I loved to draw only in black ink, this harsh medium that allows no mistakes. Jake Parker\u2019s Inktober had a big impact on me as an illustrator. Now, I enjoy drawing and illustrating in a simpler way, with vibrant colors and as clean as possible.<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Subsign: Can you share with us how your creative process works?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leo<\/span>: It starts with an idea that get\u2019s written or drawn in my sketchbook. If it\u2019s a good one, I take a photo of the sketch with my phone, send it on my PC and then work on it in Adobe tools, or Procreate if I decide to use my iPad. It\u2019s the classic way, I guess.<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Subsign: What is your favorite work you have done so far?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leo<\/span>: Tough question. Usually, artists say that their more recent work is the best. If I have to choose, I would say that my favorite one is Princess Leia that was inked and colored with grey tone Copic markers on a special blank cover Star Wars comic, as a commission for a friend. I was very excited for the opportunity to draw on a real Marvel comic, Star Wars beeing my favorite Sci-Fi universe.<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Subsign: Who do you follow for inspiration?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leo<\/span>: I follow a lot of Youtube artists and also watch a lot of tutorials on the Skillshare platform. If I take a short look on my subscribed list, I see names like James Raiz, Jazza, Proko, Jake Parker, Stoica Alex, Mark Crilley and Ryan Puntham.<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Subsign: What advice would you give to someone starting out in the creative field of work?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leo<\/span>: Always be creative!<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Subsign: If you would have a superpower, what would it be?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leo<\/span>: The power to stop time, so I can learn all the Adobe tools! Hehe. Don\u2019t know what power would I choose, maybe the one that could finally made me a Power Ranger?<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Subsign: Can you recommend for our readers a book, a song, and a movie?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leo<\/span>: Does a comic book count as a \u201cbook\u201d? In this case I would recommend Judas by Jeff Loveness, the song would be Twenty One Pilots \u2013 Chlorine, and the movie Life Itself (2018).<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Subsign: If you could throw any kind of party, what would it be like and what would it be for?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leo<\/span>: Hmm\u2026 I think it would be a party where I could sing once more with my high-school band mates (cheers Emi!). We had some crazy fun songs. I guess it would be for good times and friendship. <\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Subsign: What famous people would you invite to the party and why?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leo<\/span>: Definitely I would invite James Hetfield (he is a childhood hero), Jean Giraud \u201cMoebius\u201d (he is a comics-art hero), Jason Momoa (because my wife, haha), Mark Hamill (because of Star Wars), Steve Jobs (I like Apple products) and Ed Sheeran (so I can sing with him). The list would be bigger but I don\u2019t think my house can fit everybody!<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you Leo for being a part of our Spotlight!<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you know an artist that should be in the spotlight, contact us at jojo@subsign.co<\/a>.<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more of\u00a0<\/span> Leo ‘s work, you can follow his work on the links:\u00a0<\/span>Leo on Instagram, <\/a>Leo on Artstation, <\/a>Leo on Facebook.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Discovering talented people from our own city is something that never ceases to amaze us! This week we have Leo. Leo: Ola, my name is Leo and I was born in a small city called S\u0103veni (it\u2019s more like a Winterfell but not from Westeros, from Romania). I\u2019m currently live in Ia\u0219i where I work […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2561,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spotlight"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/subsign.co\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/subsign.co\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/subsign.co\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subsign.co\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subsign.co\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2534"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/subsign.co\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2571,"href":"https:\/\/subsign.co\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534\/revisions\/2571"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subsign.co\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/subsign.co\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subsign.co\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/subsign.co\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}