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Interview with Album Art Designer – Shørsh

Anirudh Singh

In Designers Posted

Jorge Luis Miraldo (a.k.a. Shørsh ) is a Creative Director based in Argentina. He has worked in the advertising industry for many years and currently runs his own studio. Jorge is a passionate artist and loves everything about images. His style ranges from photo manipulation to CGI, tied together by vibrant color schemes

Shørsh has recently gained experience in the album art industry and has made gorgeous artworks for artists like Markquis, Monochrome Echo and Ødyssey

Interview

My first question is definitely going to be about your workflow & how you got into this field. Your artworks inspire me as an artist and you even put out new quality artworks every week! That’s super efficient, how do you manage all that?

For many years I worked in the advertising industry as an art director, so I started my journey into digital art using mostly Photoshop and Illustrator. Back then I learned to do almost anything using those two programs. 


At first, I did mostly photo manipulation of pictures for graphic advertising and then I started to focus more on Illustrating using those tools, and getting more experimental from time to time as I added a new app to the mix. It wasn’t until about four years ago that I started experimenting with 3D softwares.

I’ve always wanted to incorporate the third dimension to my workflow and I did many attempts with different pieces of software in the past, but everything felt way too technical and boring. I remember myself back in 2009 watching LightWave3D tutorials, feeling like I needed to turn myself into some sort of math genius to fully understand it… and that wasn’t ever going to happen. Until I finally found Cinema 4D and felt in love with it and also with After Effects to do some post process of the stuff that I render out from Cinema. 

This was fascinating for me because it gave me a whole new range of possibilities in terms of what I can do now. And I’m still learning to animate within this workflow. All these tools, and particularly 3D softwares are constantly evolving, new amazing things come out and you feel the need to know how to integrate them into your way of doing things, and this puts yourself into learning mode almost permanently. 

So a few years ago I decided to start an “everyday” on Instagram, sharing visual experiments and new things that I learn, it soon became a healthy habit that also gave more visibility to my personal work making it possible to be in contact with other artists and clients around the world, with whom I created some awesome stuff. But soon I found that because of my busy schedule I wasn’t able to produce and share imagery as good as I wanted it to be on a daily basis. 

I just felt that forcing me to finish something decent just for posting it within a day, while having various projects ongoing, for me was detrimental to the quality of the work. So I started to take a little bit more time to focus on enjoying the creative process and then share the result as soon as I felt truly good with it. There are times in which I’m able to produce something I really like within a day, so I share it more regularly. But I think that being patient and giving to each piece the time it needs to fully develop, really pays off at the end

Shørsh did a Process video with Wacom. Check it out to get more insight into how he makes his artworks

I’m blown away by your response! I didn’t expect such a detailed reply, it’s almost a goldmine of knowledge! A lot of these will help me course-correct my career as well. Thank you for that

I´m glad you found my answer that inspiring, thank you also for giving me the place to talk!

You mentioned you started working on 3D just 4 years ago? That’s unbelievable because your work looks like it took a lot more experience! And your insight into the “daily” artwork series was extremely helpful because even I struggle with putting out content daily. I’m sure there are many other artists out there who need to hear this, and know it is okay to slow down a little 🙂

As you say, I have many years of experience working with images and I think that in fact looks reflected somehow on my final 3d renders. Although I’m relatively new to 3D, there are many things in common between its workflow and photography for instance – like lighting & texture. I took advantage of that to make better renders despite any limitation I found along the way.

I totally agree with you- knowledge translates across mediums.On a similar note, when do you consider an artwork “complete” or “finished”?

It’s really hard to determine when a piece is fully complete, but for me there is something like an inner voice or a gut feeling that tells me that I should’t touch it no more, that is finished. Sometimes it’s not a rational answer, it’s more like a powerfull feeling that I have the need to obey to. 
Although I like to think that things can evolve over time. Sometimes I’ve revisited my artworks to create new versions and they turned out great!

You’re pretty experienced in the album art industry, do you have any specific train of thought when you translate a piece of music into visual art?

Regarding my album artwork experience, I always loved music and I feel deeply inspired by sound. I like the concept of sinestesia, artists along history aplied their knowledge widely to translate music into shape and color, I always believed in this connection between both and I currently feel that my visual work is constantly evolving in that particular, way mixing itself with sound, bending the boundaries between visuals and music. 

I’m very experimental in my way of working and my most valuable improvements came from there, sometimes I let my self go trying something new and trying to see where it takes me. I think most of the people in the music industry like this fact about my work and they feel a conection with it, so that turned out well for me and I can work for them while I’m enjoying what I do 🙂

I’ve got just one just last question. What advice would you give an artist trying to make into the album art industry, or to become a good cgi artist?

Well the most important piece of advice I could give to them is to follow their curiosity to the end, no matter what. Hear that inner voice and feed it whith whatever is craving. At the beginning I felt curious about making art digital art, I knew how to draw and paint, I was also ino photography, but I wanted to learn CGI and improve and expand the possibilities of my workflow. 

How can you do this? By paying attention to the style you like, and trying to copy that with your own knowledge and resources. Giving yourself a limited timeframe to create and finish this small projects no matter what, and over time you´ll reduce the gap between those masterpieces that you admire and the things you are capable of creating. 

For me, it’s all about being tolerant and patient with your own limitations, and embrace that humility to be able to learn and improve. And of course, when you do something you particularly like, make time to enjoy it  🙂

This is great, thank you so much! Really grateful to you for taking out the time to answer these questions

My pleasure, thanks for asking them!


Make sure to follow Shørsh and me on Instagram to keep updated with more such content.

My Discord server:  https://discord.gg/F6TVZAc


1 Comments

Leave a Comment

  • Leonal
    July 7, 2019 at 8:36 pm

    Yo dude! This was really helpful, I was looking forward to do dailies, but after reading I felt like I should slow down…
    Thanks a lot for sharing it 😊