Country: United States
Medium of Art: Digital
@Josh_mrtz | 
Jmardesigns.deviantart.com
Artist Josue Martinez started “doodling” at the age of 12, and over the past 15 years has found his style in crisp vector-inspired visuals. Modern and commercial art are his two biggest inspirations, which frequently manifest in tributes to his childhood.
“I either try to depict one of my favorite moments in the game, or try to include as much about the game as possible into the image,” detailed Martinez. “I reference screenshots of the game and stock images for certain poses. I’m not a fan of drawing characters in their most popular poses or directly copying official game art. Even if it’s fan art I do my best to make it my own.”
His unique visual touch has lent itself well to a variety of slick Super NES-inspired pieces, including homages to Star Fox and F-Zero.
“For this one I took cues mostly from art deco posters and colors from 1980s graphic design,” said Martinez, speaking to the creation of “Big Blue”, which complements a second piece called “Mute City”. I also wanted to use gradients to make the vehicles look shiny.” For the Star Fox ensemble, “I was mainly inspired by modern Japanese designs of animals and clean vector graphics, so the aim was to simplify the designs of the Star Fox crew.”
Music seems to be the recurring theme in Martinez’s work, which gets him in the right headspace to capture a game’s nostalgia. “When I create something based off a game I usually have that game’s soundtrack on repeat.”