Leo Natsume is an award-winning Brazilian Designer and Illustrator who works on innovative projects focused on UI/UX design, advertising, and visual experiences.

Leo works with different visual styles, which adapt to clients innovative proposals.

Leo style are full of grotesque and playful feelings with unique and colorful illustrations.

He only not won the love of Dribbble and Behance fans, but also the numerous orders of top companies such as Google, Instagram, Adobe, Facebook and Uber.

Let’s deep dive to learn, how he is working and what are the essentials for his workflow. Also, don’t forget to check out his personal portfolio!

You work with both 2D and 3D tools. How do you choose a medium for the projects you are working on?

Yes, I love to work with 2d and 3d design.

I started working with 2D and hyper-realism, so the basis of drawing, illustration, lighting and color helped me a lot to enter the 3d scenario. 3d work is still recent for me, and usually the process starts with ideas and 2d concept.

But commercially, I like the 2 techniques and it depends of the project. 3d is currently in great demand in the design industry.

Was it challenging to make the transition to 3D?

I think it was a natural process of experimenting with some styles that I had been doing in 2d.

When I was a teenager, I liked to study the principles of 3D, renderers and shaders. But I had never tried it, I just tried to observe the workflow of other artists that inspired me at the time. So at the end of 2019 a project for Google Partners came up, which was in 3d, and I accepted the challenge and studied hard to create it in 3d.

The project ended up becoming a successful case and became a design trend.

How do you find inspiration for your characters? Do your clients influence you on the style?

My characters are inspired by real people, fashion, pop culture, technology and a touch of minimalism and fun.

I always seek to bring inclusion, diversity and representation to them. My clients usually let me have creative freedom to explore the character’s style.

Which render engine do you use? Any specific reasons?

I work with Blender for personal and commercial projects.

To render, I use Cycles and Octane Render Engine, depending on the project. I like both!

Cycles is good because I use Optix technology for extremely fast rendering with RTX Cards. About softwares, I recently started some experiments with Zbrush for sculpture.

As Vagon team, We really inspired from his story and works! To learn more about creatives all over the world, follow our blog and social media.