Editorial is open for submissions: [email protected]

Hi, my name is Flavio Carvalho. I’m a Brazilian designer from Sao Paulo, I currently live and work in San Francisco. Throughout my career, I’ve specialized in generating creative strategies and visual concepts with cultural significance and commercial application. In my professional work as an Art Director, I create branding and design strategy. I have a passion for minimal design, modernist aesthetics, and 3D, all of which are themes that come together in my own ideas and visual experiments. My personal work has been featured in international exhibitions, including in the US, Canada, Europe and Brazil. In 2016, I created the IG account @FLVIOCC where I shared some of my explorations in design and animation. 

Tracer Experiments

At the startup where I worked in San Francisco in 2016, the engineering team bought a small CNC machine to cut wood for our physical prototypes. The CNC machine was mesmerizing; I spent a lot of time just studying its movement. The CNC, combined with a trip I took to Tokyo, made me want to start an animation series that I could use as a sandbox to test new visuals. This is how the Tracer Experiments series started.

Tokyo Night Series

For the next stage of the Tracer Experiment series, I wanted to produce an image against a contrast background. Endeavoring to capture the energy of the Shinjuku neighborhood in Japan, I used neon light emitted by the tracer and post-rain asphalt to create the feeling of being in a city at night. 

Spaces and Sports

I began this project in 2020 when there was concern about the future of live sports events due to the pandemic. This anxiety, coupled with the experience of leaving my house to discover SF had turned into a ghost town, inspired the work. It is almost like all the sports materialized by the balls that went out to invade the empty space.

Smiley Devices

I created this series of Smiley animations by combining 3D modeling and procedural animation. Each smiley was developed using different techniques from Cinema 4D Xpresso to particles systems. I really enjoyed building the screen with different properties and materials, such as plastic, acrylic, metals and ceramics.

Soft Bodies

I created the Soft Bodies series as part of my continued exploration in 3D. The intention behind these surrealist basketball animations is to explore the behavior of the balls by applying different forces or simulations, like 3D cloth or inflation. I’ve always been interested in how we can our perception of materials purely based on what they look like.