WorkArt & Culture

Cute, pop cultural icons reimagined in alternate dystopian nightmare

I don't know about you, but I find the combination of retro icons, including Pac-Man and Hello Kitty, set against a backdrop of pure, nightmarish dystopia, slightly unnerving.

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A weathered, oversized Hello Kitty head with red bow sits abandoned in a desolate desert landscape beneath a dramatic cloudy sky

The handiwork of digital artist Filip Hodas, the series has been created for Instagram. His main goal is to learn how to use the Substance Painter tool, implementing it in texturing workflow. All of the textures are made procedurally in Substance Designer, with some added detail from Illustrator and Photoshop.

We've featured Hodas' work on Creative Boom before, avid fans of his slick, polished style. His previous projects involve candy coloured renderings, geometric gem structures and metallic molecules.

Discover more on Behance.

Yellow rusted metal sphere covered in Pac-Man symbols and retro video game imagery, abandoned in a barren landscape under blue sky
A giant red spherical spacecraft with white circular windows floats in shallow water at dusk, with a wooden dock and glowing orange crate in the foreground beneath a starlit sky
Pac-Man's head constructed from stacked rusted shipping containers with two tower-like structures on top, set in a barren landscape with sparse vegetation
Moss-covered robotic head with glowing circular eyes partially submerged in a forest stream, surrounded by overgrown vegetation and trees
Rusted red cylindrical tank with faded branding sitting tilted in a desolate wetland landscape under a blue sky
A dystopian red train-like structure with glowing yellow circular windows nestled among golden birch trees in a desolate landscape, by digital artist Filip Hodas
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