Sofia Maldonado: concept artist interview

My name is Sofia Maldonado and I’m a concept artist currently working at a studio based in Lisbon, Portugal. There, my job is mainly working on the production of sketches and concepts to help the 3D department better understand what the client wants as a final picture. Thus, I have to decide on the composition, colors, textures, as well as many other visual things. When needed, I also make moodboards for material approval, storyboards in case of animation or live action production and, of course, 2D illustrations. My love for drawing has been ever present in my life, and being able to unify that with my passion for games is my career goal.

Last year I took a mentorship with the amazing Christopher Schiefer, and my workflow since then is heavily inspired by his classes. He gave an introduction to Blender, taught me how to photobash and choose the proper references to use. I usually start with a 3D base to help with perspective and depth, then I texturize everything and even out the colors. The fun part for me starts with lighting. It’s almost like painting, you start painting lights and shadows with a nice light reference. And, for the final touches, correct imperfections, add detail, mist, depth, reflections, whatever it’s missing to make it look good.

With every new piece, I try adding something new to it, something I have never done before, thus, I can test myself and learn with it. This piece was particularly challenging because it was the first piece I made by myself after Christopher’s mentorship. Until now I had never done classical buildings with this workflow, and I was very ambitious with the amount of characters that took place in the picture. The perspective was the hardest thing to get right, because with so many people and buildings, it’s easy to make the image seem off. It was fun to make all those characters work out well in the same piece.

I mainly use Photoshop for my creations, it’s a very versatile software with many uses, and one can do almost anything with it. Blender is also an amazing tool and I intend to study it in greater depth so that I can consider and use all the advantages it offers in my next creations.

I try to use my spare time to dedicate myself to my personal projects. Although, it’s not easy to make time after normal working hours, perseverance and dedication to work on them always pays off in the end. It’s a very good way to learn new things and evolve as a professional. As for professional work, I post it as soon as (if) I get permission. It’s an industry that usually doesn’t allow you to post your professional projects publicly, so investing time in personal work is important to keep your portfolio up-to-date.

Yes, I use Facebook, Artstation, Linkedin, 3dtotal, among others, to present my work, but it’s on Facebook that I explore the group feature. I find it a nice way to show your work to the world and at the same time see inspirational projects, interact with other people of the same field, and get an educational feedback. My favorite is Level Up, they have a great community and do these livestreams of talented artists explaining their workflow.

There are many! One of them is to keep exploring environment and character design. These are two things I’m passionate about and wish to continue improving. Also, to get a deeper understanding of Blender, as this is a very useful tool for concept art and knowing more about it can only be good. Professionally, I wish to join the entertainment industry, producing artwork for a game or movie has been a dream of mine for years.

It’s a hard question to answer, seeing I have so many. Feng Zhu, Dan Baker, Gilles Beloeil, Gabriel Blain, Dennis Chan, and Martin Deschambault are some of the artists I follow and that frequently inspire me. But the artist that inspired me to choose concept art was Raphael Lacoste. His work always left me in awe, imagining what story was being revealed by his paintings, and it made me want to do such things myself and inspire others. What makes me admire them is their capability to produce images of things that don’t exist, and bend reality to their will.

I’m going to dedicate myself to learning for the next few months to improve my skills and upgrade my art, and will be posting the resulting work for sure! I’m also taking part in some very interesting projects at work; I’m looking forward to being able to reveal them. Stay tuned!