I've had the honour to interview the very talented designer Pearlnet for this Designer Appreciation. It's been a pleasure to get to know her a lot better and I hope you all will like it too. She was super kind and left us some gifts, can you find them? Remember to thank her for the lovely sets and for getting to know her better.
- Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? (age, where you're from, hobbies besides designing, any fun facts about you that you want to share)
My name is Mada, I'm 16 and currently live in Germany but was born in Portugal. My main hobby is and always has been drawing, but I've had other ones such as eg. Video/Photo Editing or HTML (which I completely forgot how to do lmao). I discovered Virtualpopstar in an ad back in 2016 when I was visiting Dollzmania for the nostalgia because I had played the game multiple times in 2008. I joined with 2 of my friends who have moved on from the game and somehow I'm still here!!
- Do you prefer digital drawing?
I like both traditional and digital drawing. I feel like I sketch a lot better on paper, but with digital drawing I can adjust things or ctrl+z, plus I have an unlimited color palette which with traditional drawing I would have to buy. I think I like digital drawing a bit more.
- How long have you been drawing digitally? For 4-5 years now, as before I only drew traditionally (which I have been doing for almost my whole life, with a lot of breaks in between lol).
- Do you have any art you have done you would like to show us? Here's my most recent art:
- Why/How did you start designing for VP? The reason to why I started designing for VP is because I wanted to see certain items in game that weren't or simply because I'd enjoy seeing my own creations in game, but I do it mostly for fun. I started designing for competitions just for fun, and soon I joined ET as a designer.
- How long have you been designing for vp? My first design submitted was in 2016, but I had only done two designs (a whole set, which I lost the image of and a pair of shoes). I then started designing again in 2019. LE F: NTxPearlnetAppreciation
- How long do you approximately spend on designing one set? I spend 2-5 days on a set, depending on how much time I spend on the computer. My longest time designing in one day would be 12 hours (with a lot of breaks in between) and my shortest would be 3 hours.
- How long do you spend on designing on a weekly/monthly basis? It depends on how busy my life is or how motivated I am. I don't design weekly, rather monthly. As school has started, I can only design 2 sets per month, an amount I definitely plan to increase if I ever have enough time.
- Do you have a set that means something special to you or that had a special story behind it when you created it? Can you tell us why / what that story is? I think my first set in game, I barely even use the items in the set but it definitely holds meaning for me. It being in game and having a good amount of people like it is what made me design further in the first place, it motivated me a lot. LE M: DAPearlnetXNT
- Where do you get your inspiration? I lurk around instagram and design inspo threads for set inspirations. As for the design style itself, I get inspired by various designers like Encrede, Phyx, Rat, etc.
- Show us your first design and your latest design! I couldn't find my very first set, but here's my first design:
sets (second set done [first not found] || latest)
- What program do you use for designing? And do you use a mouse or a drawing tablet? I use Medibang Paint Pro and sometimes adjust things on Photoshop. I use a Wacom Intuos Draw but in 2016 I used my laptop's touch screen.
- Do you wish to be a badged designer in the future? At the moment I don't see myself committed enough to become a badged designer, but if I ever change my mind, get more time to design and become more secure about my designs, maybe one day I'd like to join the team! I've definitely fantasized about it though, but it's not a wish of mine right now.