Today we’d like to introduce you to Jose Borges.
Jose, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I was born in Puerto Rico and lived there until my family moved to Ohio when I was eleven years old before moving to LA in 2015. My father works in aviation and it was due to his work that we relocated back then. When I think about what got me started on the path to become an artist, the first thing that always comes to mind is all the airplane drawings my father showed me that he made when he was younger. Being surrounded by airplanes my whole life and suddenly seeing the drawings from someone so close to me really inspired me to try and draw a lot myself.
I played outside quite a bit, like most kids, but I would say I spent an equal amount of time drawing all sorts of things throughout my childhood. From airplanes and spaceships to characters from TV shows, movies and anime I liked. I even drew people in my life from time to time. I had doodles all over my school books and notes, as many artists inevitably do growing up. It was something that more or less defined what people viewed me as growing up. Since I never really spoke up, to all my peers I was the quiet kid who could draw.
It wasn’t until college that I realized I wanted to do something in my life where art played a large role and during my junior year, I figured out what that was. I aimed to become a concept artist in the entertainment industry. I worked hard to hone my skills to the industry standard. I watched countless Gnomon and YouTube tutorial videos to see what the industry pros were looking for in their artists. I went to game developer conventions where I got valuable in-person feedback from professionals and used it to keep pushing my work further.
Eventually, I was able to start working some small freelance jobs, which allowed me to start building a name for myself in the industry. I ended up being able to work on projects like Wonder Woman, War for the Planet of the Apes, Ready Player One, Call of Duty, Love Death and Robots, Valorant, and others. Looking back on all of this, I realize how fortunate I am to have been able to accomplish these things and how much the support of those in my life has helped me get to where I am today. If it wasn’t for people in my life, most notably my parents, constantly pushing me forward with their support, I probably wouldn’t have gotten this far.
Has it been a smooth road?
No path is smooth in life. There are always going to be bumps and detours along the way. It was no different for me, though if I’m being honest, my challenges might not have been as rough in comparison to others I know of. Nevertheless, my biggest hurdle was growing up in places that did not have many resources or information for aspiring artists. I didn’t grow up in LA, for example, where there are so many art schools and people in the industry to network with and learn the necessary information from. In Puerto Rico, my family grew up in a humble, tiny home in the heart of San Juan without much money. Then when I moved to Ohio, there wasn’t much where we lived other than farmland, so I had to teach myself everything using what I could find on the internet until taking some art courses in college, which only really helped me scrape the surface of what I needed to know and do. I used to get extremely frustrated with myself when I couldn’t figure out why things weren’t working or when I didn’t understand something. It was a lot of research and interpretation that had to be done to make even the slightest step forward in the right direction.
Another hurdle was convincing my father early on that making a career out of art was definitely an option. However, I’ll be honest, there were some times where even I wasn’t sure I could do it. Mostly because of how difficult it is and how much time it takes to actually become a professional artist. Especially with limited resources at my disposal. There was a good portion of time during my last couple of years in high school where I was considering studying architecture in college because that was the closest thing to being an artist, that I knew of, that one could make a living off of. My father was supportive of that because he always wanted us to be able to earn and save for our future families. The unknown challenges of being a professional artist did not help his doubts about that path being financially sound for me.
Please tell us about your business and art.
Well, my business is just myself as a contract/freelance concept artist. I work primarily with video game and film studios on visual designs for their intellectual properties. Whether that be environment, character, prop, mood, or keyframe designs, I tackle anything my clients need a visual representation of in order to build either virtually or in real life.
I tend to focus a lot on science fiction design, which isn’t surprising given my interests ever since I was a kid. Most notably, I would say that a lot of my Call of Duty designs and, most recently, my Love Death and Robots designs define the type of work I do best. There are a lot of concept artists out there who work more loosely, but my designs tend to be more photo-realistic and detailed with real-world lighting, while also preserving that wondrous imaginative feeling that sets it apart from anything that exists in the real world and keeps it new and interesting.
If I were to choose one thing I am most proud of, it is the growing body of professional work I have been a part of. I have been doing this for about six years and for a concept artist to have worked on so many popular IP’s in such a short amount of time is fairly rare. Usually, people build up their names by working for one studio for a number of years before jumping out to freelance all over the place, but I was able to do both from the start, which really helped me grow much faster than usual.
Where do you see your industry going over the next 5-10 years? Any big shifts, changes, trends, etc?
I love working as a concept artist on big-name IP’s, but I also have my own personal goals and projects that I want to see take off. I’m not sure how far down the road this would be, but I would love to build my brand into a studio that works on amazing visual stories, preferably in the form of short films and maybe even some feature-length ones. I know that is quite the ambitious goal, but I aim to take it one step at a time while building up relationships with all the wonderfully talented people I get to work with everyday. Not everyone with these types of ambitions is guaranteed to succeed, but I do think that there is no sense in letting the hard work deter one from trying. There are avenues to take that would help and if I play my cards right, I think that eventually I’ll be able to make it up there. Much like I did in becoming a professional concept artist.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.artstation.com/joseborges
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joseborges117/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheAtomicPencil
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