Artist Spotlight

Crop-out of "Koi in a pond", digital painting.

Can you tell us a bit about your background?

Mafalda always liked to draw and to paint. Honestly, she doesn’t remember where this passion came from but it was probably the influence of her grandmother who painted as a hobby and her grandfather who was an architect.

When she was still a child, every time someone asked what she wanted to become as a “grown-up” the answer was always “a painter”, and almost everyone would say you can’t make a profitable career of it, to just keep it as a hobby.

At that time, a child wouldn't understand the necessity of having a job so the young girl just kept painting and drawing without much of a thought; offering almost every piece to her mom, and occasionally as a Christmas present to the rest of the family.

Around 10 years old, she found about Japanese comic books and anime (Japanese animation) which got her even more interested in the topic. She started researching and trying to imitate the particular style until she found one of herself.

To Mafalda, drawing was a form of escapism, a way to become happy.

When entering high school and having to decide between taking Languages and Humanities, Science or Arts, Mafalda chose Humanities. It wasn’t what she wanted, it was almost forced, and because of her unhappiness on studying something that she wasn’t interested, her grades weren’t good and finally after 2 years she decided to go back and pursue Arts. Not liking the teaching method for Arts in the normal schools, she then got into one of the only 2 Art schools in Portugal, having to travel almost two hours every day to get to school since it was in another city. It was pretty rough, many times she thought about giving up but in the end, everything she learned in art school has helped to build herself into a better artist.

Childhood drawing done at age 12.

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Where do you find your inspiration?

Mafalda gets easily attached to topics she likes which conveys a form of hyper fixation helping her with inspiration for her pieces of art; it can be an animated show, comic book, music or just simply an aesthetic, a colour palette.

To her, incorporating things she’s passionate about is one of the most important parts of the process of creating art.

She finds that most people think art is something meant to express themselves but to her, art is a way to achieve happiness, being that the reason she takes inspiration from whatever makes her happy; it’s a way to cope with some of the burdens of daily life.

One of those ways is to draw fan art of her favourite types of media, just like animated tv shows or comic books. It's a way to practice art skills, as well as a way to communicate with other fans of said topic, participating in a community, contributing to it and building friendships.

Fan art of three characters from the chinese series, "Mo Dao Zu Shi".

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What has been one of your biggest challenges to overcome as an illustrator or animator?

Being a person who is not likely to talk about what goes inside her head, having to do an illustration that had to convey feelings and thoughts was particularly difficult. It was an assignment in her high school days.

Mafalda doesn't like to expose herself, often her thoughts are not positive and she doesn't want people to perceive her as vulnerable, that's why having to express said thoughts into a piece of art and then presenting it to the entire class seemed terrifying.

After considering what she should paint, trying her best to not do something which would expose her too much, she came to the realization people perceive art in their owns different ways, not everything has to be precise and people can take what they want from observing a piece of art. Reaching that conclusion, it felt safe to express her feelings through art and did a piece which really exposed her weaknesses.

Mafalda still has a long way to go to be able to overcome this fear of vulnerability but that assignment was a big step into it.

Illustration for the assignment mentioned previously.

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What type of work would you like to do in the future?

The young artist would love to just do freelance work, work on commissions here and there but mostly live her art career as an independent comic artist. But that's something that is not easy to achieve: it takes a lot of time, work, and the need to have a big following who engages with the artist.

For that reason, Mafalda has second plans. She would like to do character designs for video games as well as work in animation both as an artist and as a director.

Since starting using the 3D software Blender and seeing many artists doing amazing animations, both in full 3D or 3D with a hint of the 2D aesthetic, working in an indie production is the next step the artist would like to take. With her background in 2D animation, film production and scriptwriting and now initiating in 3D, Mafalda wants to work in a small company full of new artists aiming for success.

But in the back of her mind, creating comics by herself is still her dream.

3D model done in Blender.

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How do you motivate yourself to keep pursuing an art career?

Having almost no confidence in her art, Mafalda tries to keep motivated by thinking that the only way to start feeling confident and happy about her art and therefore become successful it’s to keep practising every day. Most people say artists have a talent and that's why they are successful but in reality, success comes with a lot of work and practice throughout many years, no one is born knowing how to draw, the so said talent comes with blood, sweat and tears.

She also finds motivation in her friends who are artists as well; seeing their hard work makes Mafalda want to keep working and achieve new goals.

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Why did you decide to become an artist?

As said previously, Mafalda is always trying to find ways to feel good and happy about herself, being an extremely negative person. She always tries to find passions, trying to keep her mental health stable. Those paths to achieve happiness comes mostly from her love for drawing. Transmitting her love for tv shows, comic books, music, colours, into an art piece is her form of immortalizing the happiness she was feeling at that moment.

So that's why being an artist, not just as a hobby but as well as a career was the best choice she ever made. Being able to pursue a university course that focuses on what she loves the most, illustration and animation, is a blessing.

Art piece for a fanzine, dedicated to the japanese animated movie "Promare".