Hi I’m David Villegas, or better known as Deiv Calviz. I’m a freelance concept artist and illustrator for games and animation.

Notable Project Involvements

League of Legends – West Studio (Splash Art Illustrator)
Mobile Legends Bang Bang – Kajika Art Studio (Splash Art Illustrator)
The Last of Us – Naughty Dog (outsourced concept artist)
Uncharted 4 – Naughty Dog (outsourced concept artist)
Sims 4 – EA (outsourced lead character, concept artist)
Dance Central 3 – Harmonix (outsourced concept artist)
Zombie Apocalypse: Never Die Alone – Konami (Illustrator, Motion Graphics Artist)
Fifa Street – EA (Environment Artist)
Zems – Impulse Limited (illustrator, art direction, UI designer)
Metin2 – Splash screen illustrator

For a more detailed work information, please see my RESUME.

For work and business inquiries please use my contact form or send an email directly to deivcalviz@gmail.com.

BIO

Since I was a child, I’ve always been fascinated by cartoons, fantasy movies, and even dinosaurs. These stuff that doesn’t exist or are inaccessible to my day to day living are what inspired me to explore art.

Art naturally became my favorite subject ever since and I started experimenting with the different media. When I was about 14 in high school, I discovered Photoshop. It opened my eyes to the digital medium. I started doing anime wallpapers back then and eventually became good at it using “Kenzuke” as an alias. I only considered it as a hobby except when I was deciding on what to study on college. Thankfully, my parents and relatives where all supportive and allowed me to pursue art as a career so I chose Multimedia Arts as my course. After college and a few freelancing gigs, I realized that the pre-production stage is still one of the most important, fulfilling, and creative part in the entertainment industry so… I started “Deiv Calviz”.

There’s still a lot to experiment with and to discover so I’ll keep learning. Hopefully, you guys would learn a few or so as I share my creative journey through this site. Thanks for visiting!

F.A.Q.

1. Why Deiv Calviz?

– My real name is too common for marketability.
– Deiv is supposed to be pronounced like “Dave”, my real life nick name.
– Calviz is actually a mixture of my middle name and surname with a “C” and a “Z” at the beginning and end just to make it unique.

2. Did you have any formal training in arts?

– My digital illustration skills are actually all self taught thanks to the internet especially those artists I linked at the sidebar of my blog.
– I studied Multimedia Arts in my college that’s why I know a lot of basic stuff like coding websites, animating in Flash, modeling in 3D, and even compositing in After Effects.

3. When did you start working in the industry?

I actually started working in post production companies as a freelancer when I was 21. I thought that visual effects was what I really wanted but then I realized that it wasn’t as fulfilling and creative as I thought. By this time, I was decided that I wanted to do concept art but I had no idea where there were any decent job openings so I decided to jump to the next thing doing either graphics or 3D work for games since they were in demand in my area. After sending my portfolio to various companies, on November 2010, I got a job as a 2D generalist at a game outsourcing company where I eventually worked as a graphic artist to an illustrator. Thanks to that company, I was able to work with various international clients like Naughtydog and EA.

4. What tools do you use?

2008-2020:
- Wacom Intuos 3 6″x8″
- Samsung T190
- Intel Core i7 3.50GHz, 16GB RAM, Windows 7
- Photoshop CS6, DAZ 3D, Alchemy
2021:
- XP Pen Artist 24 PRO
- Dell UltraSharp
- AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core, 32 GB RAM, Windows 10
- Photoshop CC, Daz 3D, Zbrush, Maya
- Force Series Gen.4 PCIe MP600 500GB NVMe M.2 SSD (this is important for faster everything)

5. What is your workflow?

I usually start with a gray scale thumbnail where the lighting is already set. Once I decide on one, I colorize the grays as soon as I’ve determined all the elements or details that I would like to put. I paint the lighting and details just like normal using various brushes that you can find at my links. I try to keep layers as neat as I can. Having said that it’s usually just 1-3 layers for the background, 1 layer for each character, and separate layers for effects like fog, dust, fire, light spill, noise, etc. You could learn more by buying my tutorials here or watching my youtube videos.

6. What advice can you give to someone who is starting out?

Imagine yourself doing this type of job every single day. If you think that it makes you happy, then go for it.

To be honest, I got to a point where I got too lazy to do art. I began to question myself if it was really what I wanted. It got to a point where I was doing something I didn’t like for months. That’s when I realized how much I took my art for granted. That’s also the time that I did lots of time management too fit in some art in everyday.

When it comes to skills, the information that you need is in front of you already. Take advantage of the internet and put in the hours. Just don’t forget that you MUST study the basics first before jumping into any advance stuff such as custom brushes, action scenes, lens flares and what not. You should also be honest with yourself and compare the quality of your work with those who are already in the industry and constantly push yourself to be as good or even better than them. Have a list of artists that you like and study how they work. Never stop learning.

In the end, just like anything in life, it all boils down to how much you are willing to sacrifice to get what you want.