Current trends and artists: search and find illustration

Now that we’ve covered a bit of the history of wimmelbilder illustrations, I wanted to explore the current trends and introduce some fellow artists that also create some pretty busy scenes.

Some of my work as a wimmelbilder illustrator.

Nowadays we see the “where’s wally style” of illustration in a variety of situations – marketing, educational material, hidden objects games (now even digital ones!), editorial content and so on. As shown in the picture above, I love creating scenes with a “miniature world” feeling and fun events going on all around the image for the viewer to explore, while adjusting the style of the buildings and characters to suit the needs of each job.

I want to start with the French illustrator Ugo Gattoni, that was on the news this week with the official posters for the next Olympic Games – Paris 2024! The artist mixes the language of architecture drawings with oniric and surrealist elements, creating worlds that drag you into it to explore each detail.

Poster for the Paris-2024 Olympic Games by Ugo Gattoni

Architecture is also a highlight in the creations of Japanese studio IC4 Design, famous for the Pierre The Maze Detective children’s book series. With clean lines and lots of tiny people filling up the images, the studio creates worlds that almost feel like a game… Which they actually created as well!

Screenshot of the game Labyrinth City, based on Pierre the Maze Detective series.

Games are also part of the trajectory of fellow Brazilian illustrator Mauro Martins, who was one of the artists, along other like Dave Hill and Dan Woodger, who created scenes for the Scavenger Hunt part of the mobile game Two Dots. It just shows the potential of hidden object pictures to be the foundation for some awesome gaming experiences!

Scenes from the game Two Dots

Another Brazilian artist who works with seek and find illustrations is Victor Beuren, who even made a course showing the steps needed to created such detailed illustrations.

Some of Victor's work

Mattias Adolfsson also has a very unique style, working with pen and paper and watercolors - he also publishes tons of his incredibly creative sketchbook pages, definitely worth looking at.

One of Mattias's sketchbook pages

Another artist I wanted to highlight is Marija Tiurina. With characters full of personality and whimsical landscapes, her search and find scenes are one of a kind.

There are many more wonderful artists working with busy scenes and creating hidden object pictures, but I thought it would be nice to highlight some of them and show how you can get such different looks and uses for this kind of illustration.