PN Featured Artist: Renee aka ‘laughingbear’
This weeks PN Featured artist is Renee aka ‘laughingbear’. She creates a wide variety of different things. She has made custom ‘A Link Between Worlds’ zipper pouches, ‘Animal Crossing’ stationary, ‘Earthbound’ origami, Pokémon comics, original fan art pieces and much more. Whew, that’s to much awesome for one sentence. The link to her online store will be at the bottom of this interview. Check it out, there is literally something for everyone!
KD: What’s your favorite type of art to work on? I noticed you’ve done a variety of different pieces.
RB: Oh gosh, it’s so hard to pick just one. I like playing around with different mediums and designs. If I had to pick one, I would have to say making narrative works (like comics or illustrations) the best! Mostly anything that I can use colors, designs, and tell stories with are my favourites, which is why I like to delve into many different types of art.
KD: Is there a specific art program you like to use, or do you prefer drawing with mostly pencil and paper?
RB: For digital work I prefer Adobe Photoshop and Paint Tool Sai, each of them have their strong points (I love the brushes in PS while I like doing linework in Sai) and I like using them for different things. I enjoy drawing with pens, markers, and color pencils in my sketchbook though and I feel the most comfortable with traditional mediums! Using a tablet for too long tires my hands and arms out, so I doing traditional work feels much better for me. But geez do I love digital work!
KD: What’s your favorite Nintendo game to draw from?
RB: Oh man, I like drawing from Pokemon, Animal Crossing, the MOTHER series, and the Legend of Zelda! Nintendo in general is a thing I love to draw (and play!). Nintendo games are very fun to draw from and I like looking at artwork/screenshots from the series for references. I like dabbling in all the Nintendo series though, I really gotta do more and play more games! The atmosphere in Nintendo games are what I love the most they can be lighthearted and deep, colorful and expressive, nostalgic and refreshing. It feels like home!
KD: I noticed that you like to doodle a lot. Have you always been that way?
RB: Yeah! I’ve been drawing ever since I was in elementary school and it’s stuck with me ever since. I still have all my artwork from then including all my Hamtaro, Pokemon, and original character drawings!
KD: Do you have any new projects your working on right now?
RB: I have a bunch, hopefully not too much for me to handle! Of the notable projects I’m working on, I have my upcoming webcomic, the Clover Club, a game I’m doing with Mo called Animal Crackers, and an Animal Crossing art book as well! Other smaller scale projects include various collab books (stay tuned for a Shadow of the Colosseus project!), my stationary and paper star sets, and other merchandise and comics. Wish me luck, I hope I can do everything that I’d like to complete!
KD: Good luck! How long does it take you to complete an average piece?
RB: It usually depends on what I’m working on, plus I take lots of breaks inbetween what I’m working on! For doodles, speedpaints, and small comics it might take less than a day to complete. Paper stars, illustrations and stationary are usually done within a week or a couple days, it all depends!
KD: Thanks for the interview! Where can our readers see or purchase some of your pieces?
RB: Thank you so much for interviewing me and featuring me on PureNintendo! My art blog is laughingbear.tumblr.com feel free to drop me a hello or follow me there, I post all of my artwork on here as well as posts about my life sometimes. I have my Storenvy (laughingbear.storenvy.com) where I sell my art, too! Some things are unavailable for now (such as the acrylic charms) but I hope to have them up and more in the future! I also am starting to sell at more conventions, I’ll be posting when I’ll be selling at any of them.
KD: Can people send in custom orders to your online store?
RB: Yep and it depends! Feel free to ask me any questions about anything I have up in the store. If anyone would like a paper star pattern, stationary design, an illustration, or anything else from me, I’m open to commission and freelance work! Please email me at alaughingbear@gmail.com to discuss what you’d like. Thanks!
July 11, 2014
LOVE your work Renée. I’m amazed you manage to make Nintendo artwork even CUTER!