From Architect to Illustrator: A Conversation with João Felix
April 26 2023 | 10 min read
Detraform’s creative director sits down with Brazilian illustrator João Marcus Felix to discuss their unique creative process.
Interview by Joel Blair | Illustrations by João Marcus Felix
With a childhood spent in Brasilia, the iconic city designed by modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer, it is no wonder that João pursued a degree in architecture before transitioning to a successful career in illustration.
Joel Blair: ChatGPT suggested I start by asking what inspired you to become an illustrator?
João Marcus Felix: Ha. I've been drawing since I was a little kid. That has been my main hobby since forever. But once I got older, I had to choose a field of study in college. I chose architecture, because at the time, people told me that was the only job where I could continue to draw professionally. And luckily, I fell in love with architecture, at least in college. You know, studying architecture is really cool. It's a really vast thing to study. But once I got to work and had my own agency, I saw that my passion was really in illustration, in drawing. So I wanted to do that for a living.
Joel: So while working as an architect you discovered that illustration was what you were drawn to the most?
João: Definitely, the part that I liked doing the most was architectural visualization and 3D work. And of course the actual creative process, the part where we can design, but that's like, 10% of the architect's job. The other 90%, budget, construction, dealing with clients and clients money, it's just too much for my anxiety. So it became something difficult to deal with every day. So I decided to migrate, to slowly change my profession to illustration.
Joel: And when did you start changing your style because we've never done architectural style illustration, per se. It's more like the style of comic books, classic Disney or science fiction book covers.
João: Well, I don't think I've changed it.
The kind of drawing that I did in my spare time for a hobby was comic books, anime. I loved anime when I was a kid. I always loved comic books. And so the architecture thing came later in my life.”
It's just that my work was not very polished. So I started to study figure drawing and fundamentals painting. And that paid off I guess, because it was very, I wouldn't say amateur because my level of drawing was always above the average when I was a little kid and teenager. But once I started to make a living out of it, I had the chance to study more intentionally. And I think it paid off because now we can do a variety of styles, right? We've been working together for a while now so you've seen that I can do a little cartoony Fox, yes, and shift to another style if necessary.
Joel: Right.
I love to do these illustration heavy websites, and I'm always working to introduce a style of illustration to the web that we don't often associate with websites or blogs.”
Most of the work we see online is kind of flat, digital art because it's fast, and it's cheap. Detraform has worked to create this process where we can do very detailed illustrations that are more often associated with print publications and we can do that for the price and the speed that we need to for client projects
So today, I wanted to talk about one of our favourite projects that we did together which was for Mike Ganino, who's a public speaking coach, and Mike came to us with the idea to feature a fox character with her woodland friends. We ran with that idea and developed her story. So like most projects, we started with my lengthy creative direction where I'm sharing my ideas for character design, content and composition. It's often inspired by old movie posters, scenes from movies, and vintage book covers and then you kind of take off with that and come back to me with your own concepts and ideas to make it even better. For Mike Ganino, we started looking through inspiration from old Disney movies. We took inspiration from the wonderful illustrator Félicie Haymos, who did the character design for Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox. And I also loved the watercolour over unfinished sketch style from the credits of Disney's movie, The Jungle Cruise.
So tell me once you processed all that, how did you approach the character design, and what was that process like for you?
João: Yeah, so the starting point was the main references, which is Fantastic Mr. Fox and some Disney work. Robin Hood is a film that I loved as a little kid and I thought about that immediately once I started drawing a fox, and also some newer work from Pixar, like Zootopia. There was a lot of study of animal characters like anthropomorphic characters, which I hadn’t really done before. So there was a lot of studying, a lot of reference research. And once I started to draw my idea was to do as many variations as possible. You saw my favourite character studies but in my sketchbook there were another bunch that were really loose, so I didn't share those. I tried different heights, some different outfits, some with a casual jacket, along with some more classy stuff.
I just tried to make her like a real character, where we could imagine her in a movie or a cartoon. The other characters in the story came to fruition after our heroine took shape.”
Joel: Nice. I really wanted to focus on the fashion and even took inspiration from my friend Erin Willet's real-life style and what she's worn on stage. When you shared this character work I was really blown away at how sophisticated the fashion work was, that felt really special.
João: Yeah, the fashion was really something that I enjoyed working on, because you had a lot of input to give me. So I guess when I started to draw her little face or figure and add it to the clothes, she became a real character.
Joel: I love our fox character so much I gave her my favourite name, Zoë. I remember after we shared the first sketches with Mike, he gave us some input on her body language. In the first illustration on the website, we meet this character who is failing to connect with her audience. And her body language reflects her feeling shy, insecure and trying to be covered up. And then as we follow her journey, Zoë's body language is more open and dynamic and confident. So it was really fun to integrate all those details into the illustrations.
On a Detraform site, we clarify the message with clear and concise copywriting. And this is where the feeling of professionalism and persuasion comes through. So having established that, we have room to really play with the illustrations and tell a complementary story. (I think using the illustrations to reflect each specific title on a website is kind of amateur hour.)
So when we meet Zoë she is on her soapbox failing to connect with her woodland neighbours. Next we see her learning to connect with a small group and then she goes on to command attention and confidently share her story with an excited audience of her peers. Later, she goes on the road and gives her TED style talk internationally.
Tell me more about the illustration style decisions you made.
João: Yeah, sure. I think one of the ideas was to make this watercolour, sketchy vibe really come through the illustrations. And that's something that I really liked to do. Because as a little kid, I always drew with crayons and coloured pencils. And later on with watercolour. Once I started to work professionally, I always attempted to reproduce the effect of watercolours in my digital work. So that was not really a challenge, but a goal to achieve that watercolour look by the end of the project. And I think it was successful. I really liked how it turned out. Because it has this really done-by-hand vibe, which is particular to children's book illustrations and our references.
Joel: Yeah, I think the final work is as good as anything I've seen published.
In my memory, everything went really smoothly with this project from copywriting, illustrations and design. And the client loved everything we did. As you know, we usually define the style and get that approved, with sketches and character design. We'll do one sketch, get it approved, and then finish it with the colour with the textures. So now the client has seen and approved one finished illustration. Next we move on to produce all the sketches for the rest of the website, and then get those sketches approved. So the client sees the content of each illustration but then the approvals are over. So there's a bit of a leap of faith from those remaining sketches to the finalized artwork. So they may be surprised by the results, but hopefully, those are only happy surprises. We learned this is the right process to include the client in illustration work and get the confident approvals we need, while still being able to move at speed and finish the project on schedule.
For this project I think we went through four rounds that I pushed you to do for the last image on the homepage, because I wasn't happy with the fire light or the sunset. I never decided if the revisions you made were an objective improvement or were just different. But I know you did a lot of work on the lighting in that scene.
João: Yeah, the first version, I used pastel colours to match the colour palette of the whole project. But the lighting in the shadows wasn't matching the sunset. So you pushed me to try something different, make it darker, and bring more contrast. And I think it worked better.
Joel: Yeah, and the client certainly wasn't asking for that extra work. But putting my heart into these illustrations, and making sure that you and I are happy with them is where I find joy in these projects.
João: Yeah, definitely.
So joyful to draw these little animals. I really loved it. I remember this project with real joy.”
It was my first Detraform project and a real milestone in my career as an illustrator because you are actually my first foreigner client.
Joel: Was it a big deal to have a client outside Brazil for the first time?
João: Oh, definitely. Because, you know, getting paid in US dollars! Also in Brazil, we don't have many opportunities to work as illustrators. People usually do the same thing. As we were saying, for web design, it's always with the cut out design with flattened characters that you see everywhere. And when you try to sell this kind of more intricate illustration with a lot of details, it's harder to do. And it's also more expensive. So clients don't want to commit to that or if they do, the timeline is like, absurd. They want it for yesterday. Always Yesterday, yesterday, is the timeline.
Joel: Yeah, you can't produce this style of work unless you give it time.
João: Exactly.
Joel: And there's so few people producing websites with this approach, or where there’s a creative director like me who is the one driving the project.
João: Exactly.
Joel:
It was also really fun on this project to do some pretty realistic portraits of the client. So we have one illustration where the client is talking to Zoë and so we're mixing the anthropomorphized creatures with the real business owner.”
We also have Mike on the stage and an audience of animals. And then later on, Mike came back to us when he brought on his business partner Chloe. So eventually we replaced the initial portrait of Zoë with a portrait of Mike and Chloe. I was excited to work with you because you were the first illustrator that had the skill to do more realistic portraits. I don't know if realism is the right word but they actually look like the person. On the second page we added one where Zoë is getting coached through a screen by Mike and Chloe. That was super fun.
Actually on the homepage, Mike recently replaced the illustrated portraits with a photograph. I disagree with that but Mike isn't the kind of client where he orders the website and then it stays the same for three years. He’s revised it and he's tweaked the copywriting and tried different things because he has the skills and energy to do that.
João: Yeah and I think the original website design was different. It didn't have all those lines.
Joel: Yes, we've done a couple updates since then. My skills improved in the meantime so when Mike first came back for an update I was able to execute my original vision for the design more closely.
This website was a bit of a stretch for Mike because in the coaching industry there's a very established design style for copywriting and design but he knew he wanted something different and he was excited to bring in some more storytelling and illustration to his pitch.
What tools are you using when you illustrate?
João: Okay, so I always start with some loose sketches in my sketchbook, like really loose. I don't worry if they're pretty or not. I usually don't show them to you. It's just to use my hand and make my brain work. And then I work from my iPad with Procreate for the sketch phase I share with you and the client. And then for the finalizing phase, where I add colour, is in Photoshop.
Joel: Oh, so you do start by hand initially. It's funny because in all these years working with illustrators, we're never in the same city, so I still don't know what the process looks like. I love it when you share making-of videos on your social media. I'm fascinated by that, and it's weird that I never actually get to see it in real life.
João: I'm fascinated by making-of videos too. I always try to understand the process of other artists that I look up to.
Joel: For our next projects we really went in different directions but I would love to sign a client where we can explore this same illustration style again soon.
Okay thanks for your time João, and say hi to Lula for me.
