Meet Saige Levett

Saige Levett is a self-taught autistic digital illustrator specializing in graphic, angular styles influenced by comics and video games, creating captivating fanart and original characters since she was a child. With a passion for storytelling, Saige's work captures the essence of characters and narratives, blending bold lines and airbrushing techniques to create a visually striking experience for art enthusiasts.

The limitations and expectations of reality have always disinterested her. For as long as she could remember, she has lived in fiction, conjuring countless stories and characters to escape it. Whilst she is an illustrator, her heart has always lied in the narrative. She absolutely adores writing and pairs that passion with her love of drawing by illustrating characters and the world that they live in. Whether it be a fanart from a video game or a tale of her own creation, behind every character she draws is a detailed, rich history or narrative. As a writer and artist, creativity, authenticity and believability are the foundations of her work. Similar to how her literary characters are grounded by extensive research, every illustration is coupled with hours of study and observation. She feels that as an artist and writer, her job is to make the unbelievable conceivable.

Since she was a child, she was drawn to western comics and animation as well as video games due to their bold, exaggerated expressions and whimsical worlds and legends. Having struggled with depression all her life, she found herself, time and time again, finding joy and solace in the limitless realms and stories of video games. She's always written and sketched incessantly, and gaming has become her chief inspiration.

Saige's Artistic Process

Capturing Characters

Having originally been an ink artist, Saige has always been drawn to the sharp lines, crunchy shapes and bold colours of graphic art, western comics and animation. However, as the years passed, the more she felt the limits of the medium and transitioned to become exclusively a digital artist.

She finds that there are a lot of misconceptions with being a digital artist. Words pulled straight from science-fiction often come up in people's questions, such as generation, AI, or tracing, but her digital process does not differ all that much from her old, traditional one despite using a computer and tablet. All her art is entirely created from scratch and hand drawn by herself and herself alone.

To begin a piece, she spend hours pouring over a character's story and narrative, jotting down ideas and interweaving personal and special details in with loving care. Then, when it's time to begin drawing, she collects a ludicrous amount of references, thumbnails potential poses and brainstorms some colour schemes. Once She's established the size and narrowed down her poses, she get started on her larger sketch. This phase could either be very quick or slow depending on the complexity of the piece, as she spends this time figuring out forms, angles and direction, cobbling myriads of references together to achieve not only accuracy, but unique character defining details. After she's tidied it up, she begins her line work, which is virtually identical to inking with a pen. Next comes colour. Blocking in colour is relatively simple, like using a marker, but shading and lighting often isn't. She spends ages airbrushing to create shape, texture and depth. Once she's established form, she adds her signature, crunchier comic effects atop. Afterwards, she colours her line art based on neighbouring colours to soften it and make it blend seamlessly. Finally, she creates a backdrop using geometric shapes filled with patterns or environments, often contrasting the colours of the character to make them pop.

Many of her pieces take days to weeks to create, sometimes even a month or more, as she values every scrutinous detail, but in the end, it is always worth the struggle and emotional chaos. Upon seeing her work printed on paper, she feels a certain elation and fulfillment - that she created that - and that is the best feeling in the world.

Living in Fiction