5 Questions for Iuri Araújo

I have the opportunity today to chat with Iuri Araújo, the digital artist and illustrator behind Provincia Studio to gain an insight to his latest digital art project - 'Josh Journey'.

Qn: Can you tell us more about yourself?

My name is Iuri Araújo, I'm an illustrator and animator and I have a Master Degree in Visual Arts. Also, I have some experience in Game Art, having participated in the RPG project Pier Solar and the Great Architects in 2013. I have participated in Animamundi – an International Animation Festival of Brazil, producing short films like “Why girlfriends” and “Masks’s Battle”; and i also specialize in Character Animation, having studied at GOBELINS, l´école de l’image (Paris, France). Together with my brother, Guilherme Araújo, we contribute animations to TED-Ed (New York) and The School of Life (London), for educational lessons.

As artists, we are always pursuing new skills and techniques relating to animation. We try to bring new elements, visuals to the videos. We think that artistic skills are honed through a lot of hard work and tests you encounter every day being an artist. You have to push it harder, think about what you want to execute and practice a lot. References is a good method to improve if you are a beginner, but you have to pursue your personal style and you achieve this through persistence.

Qn: What is your website – Provincia Studio about? And what are your visions for your website?

Provincia is a studio based in Brazil, which specializes in illustration and animation. Provincia was created by me, Iuri Araújo, and my brother Guilherme. We offer services in Concept Art, Character Design, Background Design, Storyboard and 2D Animation. We illustrate for newspapers, magazines and books as well.

Besides, Provincia Studio produces independent projects like illustration books and animated short films that participates in many festivals over the world.

We want to make our website a platform for clients who wish to see an artistic animation/illustration project go live and to showcase our personal short films/series based on our lives as artists.

Qn: Can you share with us more about your new Animation/Game Project - 'Josh Journey'?

Josh Journey is our project inspired by classical games that was an important part of our childhood: The Legend of Zelda and Chrono Trigger. As the creator of the project, it took me 10 months of production. I made the storyboards, concept arts, character designs, background paintings, animation and composition. My brother was responsible for the editing process. The soundtrack was done by a friend Dênio de Paula and the Sound Design/Mixing was another friend Thiago Camargo.

We used digital resources like TVPaint Animation, Photoshop, After Effects and Digital Composer to produce the short film.

Qn: What is this 'Patreon Campaign' that you are seeking to launch? (What are your objectives for this?)

We'll be offering the source files of this first trailer, to teach animation and background painting techniques to animators and artists! The backers will receive shots and background arts of the project each month, and until the end of the year, they will have all the source files to revise and continue studying. Only our backers will have access to the Source Files of the production and will be able to learn from this animation production.

If we reach the Milestone Goal of U$3,000 per Month, we'll immediately produce new animated episodes to distribute it online, via our Youtube channel.

For the Josh Journey Game, we establish that with U$ 5,000 per Month, we can bring programmers to the team and start the code functions of the 2D Action RPG Game.

We hope to incorporate elements of classic games like the real time action battles from The Legend of Zelda: a Link to the Past, quests and challenges from Chrono Trigger, and collaborative skills from The Lost Vikings.

Qn: Where do you get your inspirations and ideas from for the above mentioned project as well as campaign?

Inspirations come from all the things around you. Books, games, short/feature films. The inspirations/references for Josh Journey came from our childhood memories of playing console games.

For the crowdfunding campaign, we are always looking at websites of this category: Catarse, Kickstarter, IndieGogo and Patreon as we noticed how many projects are being funded by fans through these channels.

Josh Journey is a project that seeks to invoke empathy in people, and its underlying message for its viewers is to learn how to become a better person.

Qn: How do you fund your art project and campaign?

Josh Journey is our first crowdfunding campaign project. We are learning how to manage this at the moment.

So, we invite people to join us on this Journey to be a better artist and animator. Make your pledge at https://www.patreon.com/provinciastudio and get the resources you want!

As artists, we always dreamed of bringing this project to life, producing an animation and a game from the best memories of our childhood.

So, any support you can provide to this project will be invaluable for us. Share in your social networks and spread the word! We thank you in advance for helping us produce this project.

We thank all the people at Parka Blogs for the opportunity to talk about our project, Josh Journey!

We thank Iuri Araújo ‏for sharing with us his art ventures and experiences. For more of Iuri's project, please visit his website