Mauro Gatti is an Italian illustrator, now living in Los Angeles. Having spent years working for some of the biggest advertising agencies in Italy, he now works as Digital Creative Director of StoryBots, part of JibJab. He has also created illustrations for magazines, adverts, books and apps for clients including Nike, MTV, Greenpeace and WeTransfer.
To find out a little more about his work, we asked Mauro the following questions…
What inspires your work?
I like the peace of my studio and working very early in the morning with the only the sound of my 3 dogs snorting. I like browsing my library of old and new children’s books while listening to Lucio Battisti and most of all I like good food (I have to thank my wife for that) and scratching the back of my big bullmastiff Cyrus.
Tell us a bit about your process….
Everything starts with a small and blurry idea that needs to be shaped. The first step is sketching on paper until I see something good and later on I assemble a final draft to work as my reference layer in Photoshop. I choose a color palette, the right brush and the kind and amount of texture that I want to add. The final step is painting on the Cintiq until I finally see in full colours and high definition the initial idea.
In terms of time I’d say that the first part of the process (idea-sketching) takes 70% of the time, while the last one (digital painting) accounts for 30% of the time.
