Stefan Stankovic

Review

Tell us about yourself: Who are you, what do you love to do and where are you from?

Hey everyone!

My name is Stefan. I am a concept artist and illustrator from Belgrade, Serbia, currently working in the entertainment industry. In the past, I had the privilege to work on diverse projects from video games, movies, book covers, and card illustrations, to real-world products.

When I was a kid in the 90s, we didn’t have many resources, but I remember watching a lot of cartoons as every other kid and having a lot of comic books and Legos, which sparked my interest in creativity. It was the first time that I noticed that art affected me differently than my other friends. I was constantly drawing my imaginary worlds and characters no matter how bad they looked. They were vivid in my mind, which inspired me to draw more without thinking about the quality. Later in primary school, I started chasing girls, so I enrolled in a folklore ensemble without much thinking. It is funny, but this allowed me to travel the world and see different places and cultures. In that period, I completely neglected my art, but those experiences inspired me and provided me with an amazing visual library due to my constant observation and curiosity. It was one of the most important periods of my artistic journey.

At that time, I started playing video games as well and from that point, I knew I wanted to do something artistic, but it didn’t quite click with me yet. I remember unlocking every artwork chest in Prince of Persia games and copying those drawings and paintings. Warcraft was also very influential and every other game I could get my hands on. It was a lot of fun copying those pictures and characters. Then I found out about online forums like conceptart.org and other sites where people from the industry posted their artwork. It changed my perception completely and I started drawing and painting my concepts and posting those images to my deviant art page. That was the eureka moment for me.

Why did you choose our mentorships and not other schools?

What really got me into taking the mentorship was the works of the teachers that I saw on Artstation as well as the works of the students. After sending an email to get further information, Chris and his team were really helpful, describing all the different parts of the mentorship to be sure it was really useful for me and if it really was what I was looking for.

Persian City

This work was done as the final concept for the 2D mentorship using perspective grids, photobash, and painting.

What did you do during the mentorship and what helped you on each task?

I think the most valuable things that helped me were how to organize my paintings from start to finish and the power of deconstructing different elements from the reference images, adjusting them accordingly, and applying them to my conceptual idea.

We also worked a lot on understanding the perspective to make the image believable. I think these concepts changed my thought process behind the chronological order in which I make the pictures. It is important to have the general idea in mind before you start the painting, it can save you a lot of precious time, and with few right techniques and decisions, you can accomplish much more than scribbling around in the software and not knowing what you are doing. The other thing that helped me was the dynamics and professional approach to feedback sessions. It was all live and easy to follow and understand. I could ask any question at any time.

How was the mentorship for you?

It was a very different way of learning in comparison to following any tutorial.

I learned a lot of things that helped me in my professional career, it was not just about how to make a good-looking picture, but actually how to work in the industry and how to set yourself apart. I highly recommend cgverse to anybody who wants to reduce the number of years searching for the right information. It is all in one place, you just need to be open-minded and curious enough when you decide to learn new techniques.

What would you say when you recommend us to an artist?

Go for it if you want to learn many techniques that are used by industry professionals. It will save you years of researching and practicing on your own.

There are many resources out there, books, tutorials, and schools, but mentorships like this are a very rare opportunity because it goes straight to the point of what is important, and besides, it is oriented to each individual separately. It will be one of the best investments in your future to get to the professional level very quickly, it certainly was for me.

Roman Triumph

​This work was done at the end of the 3D mentorship using Blender and Photoshop. I created all the assets and textured them to be able to create my final scene.