My art usually starts with a vibe before it ever becomes a sketch or a concept. A song, a movie scene, a creature design, a color mood — something that grabs me by the face and says, “draw me before you go to sleep or I will haunt you.”

Once the spark hits, I start messing around with rough ideas directly in Procreate. And when I say rough, I mean it looks like a jumbled mess of sketches/references/pictures/etc, all slammed together in an unresolved format. But that’s the point — I’m not necessarily chasing super hyper realism anymore. I’m chasing energy, gesture, attitude. I’m trying to catch the character before I clean up the lines. What I typically do first, is gather enough references that I need to make sure I get the idea down (if I didn’t sketch out the idea first…which truthfully isn’t what I typically do anymore). I will then piece the fragmented references together to get the forms, shapes, and basic ideas I need to fill out the composition in my head. This process is typically somewhat chaotic, but it helps my brain visually get a grasp or glimpse of what I want the design to present itself as. This means Ill take the hand position of one reference, the bust from another, a beautiful tree I spotted in real life and dropped the photo into Procreate, and kind of Frankenstein a sketch together before I begin finalizing anything permanent.

After the gremlin sketch phase, I go in with thick line work. Heavy, bold, comic-inspired inks that make the character feel strong. I want everything to look like it could jump off the page and start giving unsolicited life advice. I learned for years how to be precise, realistic, and careful — and now I use that control to make something stylized, expressive, and loud. Thick lines are confidence. Thin lines are detail. Shadows are attitude.

I’ve always loved the way that thick inking looks on digital illustrations! It’s something i’ve always been drawn to and something I believe I will do for the entirety of my artistic work. In my opinion, it’s so freeing to just make your outlines and then fill them in with color; kind of like a coloring book format. That’s why finding the perfect shapes, angles, posture/poses, and composition is a must before the coloring and effects happen!

Color comes next — and this is where I treat every piece like it’s a comic cover or an album poster. High contrast, saturated shadows, dramatic lighting, bold shape language. I don’t just want the character to exist; I want them to announce themselves. Every highlight, every gradient, every glow is placed like seasoning.

When doing my coloring, I typically start with a straight monotone shade and then progressively build up from there! After i get my colors situated, I start focusing on how im going to apply my typography and logo/font. Because I grew up obsessed with physical media — album covers, VHS tapes, graphic novels — I design each piece like it’s meant to be held. I add custom text, logos, shapes, background elements, and framing to make the finished art look like it belongs on a shelf, a shirt, or a poster in someone’s room covered in LED lights and questionable life decisions. This (most of the time) involves me deleting certain parts and redesigning to accommodate the name and typography I end up creating for the character or scene.

Once im finished with everything, Ill then go over every layer with a specific colored-texture overlayed so it gives the colors and shapes more pop and feel. Then I add my current favorite final touch - halftone or noise. I think adding noise and/or halftone to the pieces brings them to life and adds that final umph!

I typically don’t like to make “just drawings” or standard illustrations. I like to make covers. I like to make moments. I like to make art that has a deep lore or vision behind it. I’m never really liked to just make art unless it has a bigger picture and meaning behind it. This is why im so stuck on doing things that aren’t just one offs, but things with an entire collection and story behind it. It starts with a giant plan, and then eventually becomes an illustration, a full novel and a design envisioned all into one.

The Oridrami style is basically a mixture of comic book bones, metal fantasy album attitude, video game energy, and the emotional resilience of someone who has definitely fought a printer before. I want bold. I want dramatic. It’s sometimes cute, sometimes creepy, sometimes both; but it always carries a little bit of humor — because life is weird, and art/design should have fun being alive too!

My first artistic influences have to come from my love of video games. Gaming was a major staple of my life. I grew up playing all the classics (like Pokémon, Legend of zelda, Legacy of Kain, Drakan, etc), but my ultimate favorite franchise is Resident Evil. I have 1000s of hours in those games; Resident Evil 3 OG: Nemesis being my favorite. My close second is the From Software games; Bloodborne being my favorite! But what inspired my artwork the most, funny enough, was the gorgeous artwork of Hearthstone. The moment I laid eyes on that fantasy portrait type style of art, I was addicted. The shading, the beautiful colors, the stylized realism but with that flowy look, just made me want to draw in that style. This ultimately lead me to the YouTube channel of the infamous Dave Greco. Dave Greco can easily be considered the reason I became a digital artist and the reason I wanted to try my hand at those unique techniques and digital styles of artwork. He’s brilliant! Aside from that, I have an abundant love for comic books & graphic novels. The thick and gorgeous line work just clicked so perfectly for me. It’s the main reason why I use a comic brush for all of my line work. My love for Japanese kawaii has also made a huge impression in my artwork. The cute designs and shapes has always been so cool to me. Lastly, I have to add my love for horror, folklore & spooky things. They’re the things I love drawing the most. When you mix everything together, you get a glimpse of what I see in my brain when I plan out my next piece!

iPad Pro + Apple Pencil 2 + Procreate + Hundreds of Digital Brushes (With around 5 being my ultimate favorites = 2 comic brushes for line work and coloring, some airbrushing for shadowing and shading, and some effects brushes for lighting/speckles/blood/etc.) + Dr. Pepper + Metal Music / Podcasts + My car (where i do all of my artwork).

Because I grew up watching and consuming as much horror media as i could, I absolutely love most anything that has to do with monsters, creatures, folklore, tales of old, etc. Monsters are pretty much just emotion with teeth. I like the imperfect nature of them, and have such a blast making things associated with them. It just scratches that forever itch!

When I started my art journey, it was primarily pen and pencil sketches. As long ago as I could remember, I was consistently drawing. My first ever memory of drawing was when I was probably 5 years old and my teacher was freaking out because I drew a T-Rex in a 3-dimensional shape. She glorified it to my parents and begged them to have me get more serious about art. I truthfully was just able to draw what i see. This eventually had me perfecting realism. I was able to draw anything and everything as long as I could see it. I had countless sketchbooks filled with trees, street corners, buildings, people, flowers, etc. If it existed in front of me, I could draw it. But after a long while, it started to get a bit boring for me. It was no longer giving me that artistic freedom that I strived for; I just didn’t know what I wanted. In my opinion, being able to replicate something wasn’t challenging or special for me personally. I didn’t start taking art seriously again until my senior year in high school. Since elementary school I was always in band. I’m a drummer, so that was typically my main priority. I wanted to be the best drummer in the world. But symphonic band just wasn’t cutting it for me. I wanted to be in an actual band and play a drum set for my career. So I decided to get out of band and go into art classes my senior year; which ultimately meant I had to start in “Intro to Art”. Falling back in love with painting and art, I knew immediately that this was something I wanted to continue. I wanted to go to art school! But at this point, I didn’t have the educational experience to prove to a college that I had the skills. So i convinced my art teacher to try and bump me up to a higher level art class my next semester to try and get into SCAD. The main art teacher was extremely hesitant. She wasn’t just going to let me jump up several classes just because I wanted to go to art school; I had to prove myself. After doing a few tests, she decided to give me a chance. I went from “Intro to Art” my 1st semester senior year to “Drawing & Painting 2 AP” the next semester. I passed the class with high grades and wowed my art teacher. I legitimately even caught her taking a picture of an acrylic realism painting I did of a pair of converse. This gave me the confidence in which I knew I had something special. Sadly, art school is extremely expensive, and I was unable to pay for school, so I wasn’t able to attend SCAD or any art school for that matter. Knowing that I wasn’t able to get a degree in art, I honestly just gave up on that dream. I was always told a starving artist isn’t the life I should strive for. This made me put my art on th back burner. I had almost no drive to create art and just started working full time. Years went by where I just dabbled on and off. I would do a mural for someone here, a free commission for somewhere there; but never really landed on anything that I could take seriously. This all changed one year while i was moving apartments. I legitimately accidentally threw away all of my traditional art (including most of my books, cds, movies, clothes, and many more) thinking it was trash. I call this moment in my life “The Great Garbage Compactor Tragedy”. I didn’t even find out until a week later after unpacking all my stuff and realizing that I didn’t have like half of my belongings. I have lost many possessions in floods, a house fire, theft, your name it; so im not a materialistic individual, but that shit hurt! That was honestly a turning point for me. I wanted a change. I knew at that point that i wanted to switch to digital art. I was already a huge fan of Dave Greco / Hearthstone and wanted to start adapting that style of art into my own personal work. Because traditional art supplies were so far out of my budget and I didnt want to have to keep getting my stuff damaged…so I began learning art….again. I started with an old MacBook Pro that I had. I did all of my art using a software called Pixelmator on the Mousepad. I didnt have the money for a Wacom tablet or the Adobe Suite, so I just had to make it work. I did this for years. Teaching myself countless hours of different techniques and learning the best I could from YouTube tutorials. This was during the time when I did all the artwork for Flesh Orchard, the Pixel Horrors, and countless other things I had laying in a hard drive somewhere. But I couldn’t get my art to where i wanted it. I had to advance from that damn Mousepad. So I started saving. I eventually was able to get myself an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil 2. I was so excited, that i bought several hundred different brushes for Procreate. I had finally unlocked my potential to be able to start drawing how I used to, but now with the stylization that i longed for. To this day, I am still using the same iPad Pro, Apple Pencil and Procreate. Truthfully, I’ve only been taking my art seriously for the past 5ish years. I work everyday to get myself out there and to hone in on my style. My dream is to eventually be able to get into major conventions and share my art with a community that I fit into!

Besides my two loving parents, I actually had a fairly rough childhood / life. I wont go into the gory details, but it’s been quite the ride. This has ultimately lead to my car being one of the places I go to to be able to get a lot of my work done. It may seem weird, and yes it is a problem for my back and posture, but it actually helps me stay focused and in solitude. I’ll typically drive to my favorite spot with my fully charged iPad, a battery pack, some cold Dr. Peppers, a pack of cigarettes, play some music / podcast / or YouTube video and start creating. It’s ultimately turned into my workplace, and with my ADHD I can actually focus on what I need to do!

Somewhere between “20 minutes of hyperfocus black magic” and “a week of screaming into the void.” Theres really no in-between. It typically comes down to how well i’ve thought out the design beforehand. Sometimes I have a full flushed out idea in my head and it comes together really fast, and others where I sit and struggle with a compositional pose for days. My brain works in a weird way. I visually see what I want to do in full flushed out detail, BUT that doesn’t mean I have the skills to illustrate it. So there are definitely times where I struggle to call something finished because it never lives up to what I feel it could ultimately be!