Kai Klimiont — Digital Character Illustrator, Hamburg

With an expressive, colourful and cartoony style, Kai Klimiont is an artist that clients love working with because of his vivid imagination. He’s an expert at inventing characters, rendering them larger than life – both physically and in terms of personality. If you think a cucumber couldn’t possibly have character, let Kai take over and soon your project will be reaching new levels of creativity.

Based in Hamburg, Kai is inspired by both European and American comic books, sci-fi and horror movies, ancient architecture and great painters like Gentileschi, Botticelli and Rubens, as well as the animation studio Pixar. Humour is an important element in his character design process, as he seeks ways to establish that all important connection between the creature he’s working on and the viewer. Clients enjoy the fact that they always get something original when working with Kai.

Approach

Every image begins with sketches, and when Kai has determined his composition he adds colour with paint or digitally, later tweaking the image and adding texture and detail to ground it and draw the viewer in.

Styles

Kai’s style varies depending on the look and feel required by the project, but there’s always an undercurrent of naivety and Naturalism in his art. He paints characters and scenes as he sees them.