He wanted to become a writer but he started drawing and couldn’t seem to stop. Ilya Kuvshinov is a Russian illustrator and a storyboard artist based in Yokohama, Japan.
Ilya’s illustrations are influenced by video games and films. He loves drawing beautiful female characters without sexualizing them. He’s drawn famous characters such as Mia from Pulp Fiction, Mathilda from Leon: The Professional, Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games trilogy, Mystique from X-men, and Hermione from Harry Potter.
He trained as an architect but eventually quit to work as a concept artist for video games. He is the art lead for a famous social game developer called Game Insight. He also worked as an art lead for Knights of the Void, a visual comic developed by NARR8 which he directed, drew the storyboard, and did the character design and color grading.
“I want to create stories that will make people happy. Open an animation studio? Open a game development company? I don’t know yet, but I’m glad that there are so many ways to tell stories,” he said.
Today, he communicates with his fans through Patreon, a crowdfunding platform. Currently, he has 830 patrons and is raising a fund of $2, 726 per week. He posts video tutorials on photoshop painting and explains his working process on this platform through Youtube and Vimeo.
Kuvshinov quotes, “even if you think you cannot do something anymore, just keep doing it. If you love what you do, you are sure to achieve great success.”
Illustrations by Ilya Kuvshinov
More of Kuvshinov’s works here.
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