Renan Porto's "The Wide World" is a story app for mobile devices he's currently developing. You have a single story shown from two different points of view: Narrow and Wide. By choosing Narrow, the story is told from a naturalistic/realistic point of view of view; by choosing Wide, the same story is told from a metaphysical/fantastic perspective. The reader can either read one of the versions, or both them, and get his own interpretation of what has been read.

I started by collecting a lot of references from artists I admire, so I could come up with a style of my own to be used in the whole project. The character design part was specially tough, as I find it really hard to stick with a single style - I went from a more realistic approach to a very cartoony one, in the end. After a couple of months focusing on making studies, I came up with a style guide, which I use every time I'm creating a new picture for the project. It has been very useful to make the story visually consistent, and to keep me from changing things every time.
-Renan Porto

This project is an attempt to combine a lot of stuff that inspires me, and that I've always wanted to work with. I'm particularly interested in the idea of parallel worlds and different ways to see reality. At the same time, I'm a big fan of technology. Also, I found out that "supernatural family drama" (!) is my favorite story genre. So I literally put all that together and came up with this story app about mother and child that live in parallel dimensions. Even though it's a drama, that's definitely the project I've had most fun working on.
-Renan Porto

I'd say my style is very story-focused, cause I'm always trying to add some context to my illustrations. In that sense I love to use different light settings that help me guiding the viewer's eyes to the most important elements, and try to make the characters as expressive as possible, in order to make their thoughts clear to the viewer. Some of my greatest inspirations, for various reasons, are Dice Tsutsumi and Norman Rockwell.
-Renan Porto

Trust yourself! It may seem tough sometimes, but it's really a matter of believing in yourself, and, of course, having a lot of patience, as results don't come out of nowhere. Read a lot, get inspired by your favorite artists, and draw daily. That's all you need!
-Renan Porto

About Renan Porto

Renan Porto is a 26-year-old Illustrator from Brazil. He graduated in Industrial Design one year ago, and spent most of his time since then working for a German as a game artist. He recently moved back to Brazil, where he works as a freelance illustrator. See more of his works on Behance.