We spoke to famous Eastern Europe art director and illustrator Sorin Bechira.
Sorin Bechira, Vladimir Tomin and Mago Dovzhenko at OFFF 2011
SORIN BECHIRA
Art Director, Timisoara, Romania
Website: http://www.bechira.com/
Project: Visual Freaks
What is your project about?
I would like to talk about Visual Freaks, a very dear project of mine. I always had a heart for illustrations, experimenting with various digital techniques in order to get something spectacular.
Designcollector 7th Anniversary Wallpaper
That is why the Visual Freaks story actually kicked off with a huge request for tutorials related to some digital artworks that I have been doing. Mostly surreal, these artworks were combinations of mixed techniques: random photographed objects, built in 3D programs or drawn, put together so that the result would capture a surprising style and would generate a unique visual language.
Anyhow, that was the moment when I thought it would be even better to provide designers with more than just simple tutorials about how to make these artworks, but also graphic elements. They could, eventually, customize, adjust, combine these elements as they wish and, with a minimum knowledge, get amazing results. This is how the idea of making resources for illustrators actually came to be. The project itself was started as a new approach for design and artwork stock and resources. I felt like there is room for an alternative in the stock imagery industry. Art can be packed and delivered to suit very specific needs, as well as have personality and not be generic just for the sake of it. So, I teamed up with my colleagues, shared with them my vision, knowledge and personal work-flow regarding illustrations, and we got to work on this project.
Every month we prepare vigorously for the launch of a new pack containing unique elements. Each pack has a theme and its content is our own approach to the said theme. Among the themes we approached so far I’d mention: Organic, our first pack, all about life and living beings, FineCut, the reverse of Organic, a take at inorganic shapes, Graphite, a pack with pencil drawn elements, Folkore, a pack with ornamental elements and our latest, Steamphunk, a new take at the all so classic steampunk sub-genre.
The themes are chosen with the purpose of creating unity between the elements, to create visual affiliation. Nevertheless, we try to diversify our products by offering a various selection of themes. Thus, in order to have a pack ready for the public eye, 3 designers work for two or three weeks, during which the 25 elements that are included in the pack are crafted, along with 4 illustrations with very different styles, while respecting the packs’ theme and using only elements from the said pack in order to demonstrate the pack’s power, illustrate what can be done with the elements, and show how they can be integrated in amazing illustrations.
It goes without saying that the designers that will later use these elements in their own illustrations can mix them with personal elements in order to add a more personal touch. Also, we took these themes further and made font packs with our elements so that not only illustrations but also words, headlines, phrases could be powerful, unique, and catchy. We now have a strong product that is of great help for young designers that are just getting acquainted with illustrations. Even more experienced designers find Visual Freaks elements inspiring. Our elements help anyone create artworks of great quality, customized, and in record time.
The elements that we deliver are in essence abstract, because we want those who work with them to be able to reinterpret the elements of their choice as they desire. We also shared a tutorial on how to create an illustration using our elements on PSDtuts. You can check it out here. You will notice how by using just a few basic techniques, such as Transform & Rotate, you can get amazing results.
You can see them all on our Flickr account.
Have you client, you and the audience got a satisfaction from it?
The main satisfaction of this project is that people like our stuff. We’ve received great feedback from the folks who have bought our products, which we also find inspiring.
Some examples:
I like the Visual Freaks idea, I never bought any stock around the web since I met VF. I’m really happy about your products. I’m working on several projects and I’m using a lot of VF elements :-) - L.I.
It’s a different kind of stock material, and I like that. It does really inspire and helps in the creative process more than a raw vector or PNG/JPG element would. – M.K.
I really dig the vibe and style of graphics that you offer in your packs. – K.A.
This kind of feedback keeps us going on. In the near future we are planning on releasing a new version of our site which will include more purchasing options as well as integrate a community of designers interested in sharing their artistic view.
For now, the packs contain PNG files but once the new site version is released we will be providing the source files as well. This comes hand in hand with the fact that elements will also be sold individually, not only in packs.
So far, after 8 months since we launched the project, we have 8 image packs (two of them are free), 4 font packs, and 2 motion packs. All of them have one thing in common: quality. We have reached, and will be able to keep this quality standard, only trough the proficiency of the designers who have worked on these elements. Their competence has been acknowledged and rewarded with several international prizes at design competitions and contests during the 9 years of existence of the studio we all work under: X3 (http://www.wearex3.com).
We also have some free wallpapers that you can download for free from our mediakit section.
Sorin’s artworks
Visual Freaks project
P.s.
You can also read our interview with Sorin Bechira made earlier this year
http://designcollector.net/interview-sorin-bechira
