Project: DepthCharge

Back in high school I was obsessed video games, drawing Marvel comic characters, and watching Japanese Animé. Over the past few years, I’ve been looking at a lot of digital illustrators and painters online and was inspired to work on a personal project going back to my roots as a teenager.

A few years ago I met an amazing cosplayer (DepthCharge Cosplay) who further inspired this project after seeing her fantastic Cloud Strife costume. This character was from one of my favourite video games called Final Fantasy VII. There was an immediate connection with our interests in games and animation. A few coffees later, we picked out six of her hand made costumes. We shot a series of portraits over the next few weeks which became the foundation of this photo-illustration project.

I practiced for about 2 months working on my techniques while studying Rembrandt paintings and modern digital illustrators like Sam Spratt. All of the things I learned back in high school and college (brushstrokes, lighting, negative shapes) started to come back and I was able to create my vision into final artwork. 

I shot the project with my Mamiya RZ67 Pro II D medium format camera – which was appropriate for such a hands on and technical project.

Below are the final paintings starting off with Cloud Strife, Maya, Sanada Yukimura, Mikoto Suoh, Akali, and Dark Link.

A huge thanks goes to DepthCharge Cosplay for her amazing costumes and Merytmut Cosplay for her fabulous makeup on Maya and Yukimura.