Rafael Antunes | Visual Arts

Rafael Antunes

Bachelor in Visual Arts

“Rafael Antunes, Visual Arts, 22 years old. I always liked drawing, telling stories from illustrations and, therefore, I thought that Visual Arts was my path. I had been looking and saw that Lusófona had a degree in Visual Arts and I thought it was the best path for my academic and professional path. I thought that since I wanted to take a course, it's Lusophone and I got here and I was surprised. In the degree in Visual Arts, we go to a little bit of everything in the Arts, so it helped me to understand. I already knew that I wanted to do comics, but from then on, as I tried a bit of everything, I saw that comics really was the path I wanted to follow. In 2021 my first book came out, in 2022 my second book came out and I went to the Amadora Comics Festival and signed autographs, presented the book, had that contact with the readers. Then, when I gave the presentation, I still had an audience full of people and being there talking about my book, with my art behind me, was an experience that I really enjoyed. My teacher, Professor Margarida, already knew that I liked Comics and had a friend who wrote Comics. So she talked to him, he came here to give us a masterclass, I showed him my portfolio, he liked it, he was interested, he wanted to work with me, he invited me to do a five-page story and it went well. It was soon edited and since then we started writing more books, however this one left the festival and now we are already working on more books for the future. My future plans are to continue on this path, editing books, if possible, getting to work in a bigger company, for example, Marvel, DC, therefore those more well-known comic book companies, where later the books can be released by other means, for example, create a character, then go to the Cinema and go to the Games. My tip for those who want to study Visual Arts is, now Lusófona has opened more courses, but if you come to Visual Arts you will understand a bit how the world of the arts works. They will be able to work in everything that has to do with the arts, they will go into painting, illustration, sculpture and I think that for those who are not sure what they want to do in the arts it is a good path.”