How did you get started with illustration and design?
When I was still in college I was already creating pixel graphics for commercial Commodore Amiga games. This gave me a head start in digital art creation.
After finishing college I received an offer from an animation and illustration studio in Amsterdam to work on the first Dutch television series that was completely digitally produced.
There I discovered that you can make a living from illustrating and animating, which has always remained a dream job for me.
How would you describe your style of illustration?
My work reflects my interests, such as retro games, cute characters, films, comics, fairy-tales, nature, science and technology.
I love to alternate between different styles and techniques, and I love simplicity, because it allows you to really perfect an image (composition, balance, rhythm, colours, contrasts), and minimalism gives me a sense of calmness. I’m not a fan of very intricate images that are crowded with details.
What is your main source of inspiration?
— I can spend hours browsing through visually oriented social media such as Pinterest and Instagram. For my 2D illustrations I like to come up with my own visual concept, but for 3D works I like to translate existing concept art to 3D, particularly appealing characters.
What are the main features you find particularly useful in the Affinity apps?
First of all I love the UI clearness of both Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. Unlike its competitors there’s no clutter of tools and functions. I also really love the stability of Affinity tools. I can’t even recall a crash.
I couldn’t live without the many built-in shapes and their flexible controls in Affinity Designer. It really eases my workflow. I also use some of the blend modes a lot, such as the Average blend mode in Affinity Photo and the Erase blend mode in Affinity Designer.
Last but not least I am very happy with Affinity’s optimizations for macOS, such as Metal support.
What is your favourite kind of project to work on?
I like to continue developing a minimalistic vector style that’s based on pixel art. It’s a perfect marriage between Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer: first I create the pixel art using Affinity Photo’s Pixel Tool, then I trace the enlarged pixel art using Affinity Designer’s vector shape tools.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
In my spare time I love to watch films and write short reviews / impressions of them at Letterboxd.
I also love to bike and hike, and try to do that for at least an hour every day, to compensate sitting in front of a computer screen most of the day.
You can find more of Metin’s work in his online portfolio, follow him on Instagram and on twitter