We recently connected with Mauricio Ballerini and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Mauricio, thanks for joining us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?
Here in Brazil, art related jobs have always been frowned upon, people usually see them only as hobbies, parents usually incentivize kids to pursue a higher paying career, though my parents always helped me find what I wanted to do, I believe the whole cultural stigma around the art career kept me from starting right away.
Design was where I started but it was not where my heart was… I got to really enjoy working with art last 2 to 4 years when I started working with pixelart animation.
I think if I’ve followed my heart instead of my head first my art skills would be better and I’d have a bigger audience
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I’ve been doing illustrated work since I was 16, but has always been a side hustle. a few years before the pandemic i was let go from a job and I started working on my art again. did some freelance jobs for a design agency but most of my time I spent studiyng for a way to work with animation or games. It was than that I fell in love with Pixel art. I started doing some portraits, because that was my confort zone in other medias and I just loved it!
I’ve always loved telling stories and i felt like i could improve on my skills if my stuff moved, so i’ve started studying animation too. i’ve always tried to give purpose to my studies so i gathered my scripts and started working.
couple months later i did a fan art for a big podcast here in brazil and caught they’re attention, and now we work together i design all the intros and guest portraits. all in frame by frame pixelart animation
I believe pixelart touches a certain nostalgia on people and has its unique retro vibe that makes it more cheerful. the limited pallet and the stylizations we must do to fit the format makes it “old” but fresh still.
i must say i am pretty proud of how the intros are coming out this season! and i cant wait for season 3!
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
Most people who are not in art careers struggle to understand that in order for us to create things we must absorb a lot of stuff, other than study i mean. everything we consume can be used as repertoire, from the colors in a rainy day to a book or movie, so even though sometimes it seems like that artsy friend or cousin is just slacking and playing video games, it might give him some insight into how to draw something a composition, most art jobs in games today for example come from people who got inspired by the IPs and did something that fit that world.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
stop treating it like a hobbie, its hard enough to learn anatomy engineering physics and make up to understand how to translate that into ink or pixels. give it the proper respect it deserves after all we are everywhere and without art in general people would have nothing to entertain them. i think we all agree we are not catching bullets or saving lives, but we are in many ways helping people connect with themselves, stories and art are there to make us feel… it might be outrage or sadness or compassion but in the end of the day we are just as present as all other professions so treat us as so.
Contact Info:
- Website: balla.art.br/links
- Instagram: oballa.art
- Twitter: @_oBalla
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/@ilustrasessions
- Other: https://www.artstation.com/balla