PN Featured Artist of the week: Michelle Vinall
This weeks PN Featured Artist is Michelle Vinall. She’s a very talented illustrator based in London. She’s worked on a lot of different projects ranging from concept art, animation, t-shirt design’s and she’s even self-published 2 picture books with Amazon. Here’s the link if you’d like to view them http://www.hurricane-lane.com/portal.html. At the bottom of the article you can find her contact information if your interested in hiring an illustrator or just want to ask a question about one of her pieces. Enjoy!
Majoras Mask-Rain
KD: How long have you been an illustrator? When did you realize it was something you wanted to do for a living?
MV: When my family first got the internet in the late 90’s and I began clocking time on a virtual pet website called Neopets, I realized I wanted to pursue art professionally. Seeing there were other people my age, or even younger, doing high-quality drawings that were getting internet recognition really pushed my competitive side and made me discover just how much I loved drawing! I’ve been a /paid/ professional illustrator for only about half a year but I’ve been producing art for professional causes since leaving art college in 2011.
Pikachu’s Rescue Adventure
KD: Do you like sketching or do you prefer creating digital artwork?
MV: Digital! It’s so easy to edit and amend my lines whereas with traditional I’m all over the place! Although, saying that, sketching can bring out some really nice ‘happy accidents’ which I can’t quite recreate digitally.
Legend of Zelda-The Wind Waker
KD: You’ve been involved in quite a few projects, explain a bit about the games you’ve worked on and the 2 books you self published with Amazon.
MV: The first game I worked on was a horror, point-and-click visual novel with my friends called ‘Hungry Whispers’. It started as a university project, then spiraled into a proper demo which will soon be getting a full game release. (The demo is free and available to play online by the way!) Almost immediately after we created the Hungry Whispers demo, I got an internship at a startup studio called ‘Gamar’ in London which focused on making AR-based games for mobile devices. I was at the studio for around 9 months in which time we made our first game ‘Jazzy Jones and the Stolen Toaster’ (also free and available to download online). After this I took a year out of illustrating to QA test at SEGA Europe where I tested the games ‘Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed’, ‘Castle of Illusion’ and ‘Aliens Colonial Marines’. To date, I’m still making games and working in London, now for a company called ‘Mediatonic’ which is an established studio whose games are played by millions of people worldwide, but I can’t talk about those projects since most of them are pre-release! Sorry!
Regarding my picture books, they were a way to pass the time when I couldn’t find work illustrating. The first one – ‘Hurricane Lane’ was an entry for the Puffin Digital Prize competition back in December 2010, I didn’t win, but it led me to explore children’s picture books as a possible professional art outlet. My second book – ‘256 Postcards Ago’ was made for the love of it and I’ve since used Amazon website Createspace to self-publish and make both available to buy as paperbacks from the Amazon website.
Gold & Silver
KD: What is your all time favorite Nintendo game or series?
MV: Zelda! Specifically Majora’s Mask. I love that the dark turn the series took after Ocarina of Time and the different roles played by the same characters. And deku’s are so cute! I’m also a huge fan of Animal Crossing series which I first played as Animal Forest on the Gamecube years ago. It’s my second home :)
Final Fantasy- Crystal Chronicles
KD: Do video games inspire you a lot when illustrating?
MV: Yes! The main character of my first self-published children’s book – Hurricane Lane – was based on a Mii I created of Pikachu. I found wanting to write a story about a character who was as enthusiastic (and cute) as Pikachu excited me, and gave me the push I needed to start drawing! I also wanted to liken the feel of the world in my second book – 256 Postcards Ago – to Termina in Majora’s Mask. Aside from that, most of the fanart I do is videogame related.
Battle On Route 39
KD: Do you ever take requests or do custom pieces for interested buyers?
MV: Occasionally, though not as often now that I have a full-time job illustrating. Try me!
Spliish
KD: Thanks for the interview! Where can our readers go to check out more of your artwork, and how can they contact you if they’re interested in purchasing some of your illustrations?
MV: You’re welcome, thanks for wanting to interview me!
I’m on a few websites;
http://lubrian.deviantart.com
https://twitter.com/Sorbet_and_Rice
http://frayed-symphony.tumblr.com
And for contact, my email address is michellevinall@hotmail.com!
Deku Link
Glitchy Red
Heartless Wood
Nintendorks
Deku Link Studies
July 30, 2014
Wow, beautiful pics! Just gorgeous!