Biography:
Mike Corriero
Colonia, NJ USA
www.MikeCorriero.comMike is a Freelance Concept artist and Illustrator for the Video game and Film Industries living in NJ, USA. Currently Mike produces assets as a Freelance artist for various companies including everything from creatures, environments, structures, illustrations, icons and wall tile designs.
His work has been featured in a number of promotional outlets including Advanced Photoshop Magazine, ImagineFX, Ballistic Publishing series Expose 4 and 5, Painter Book, 2DArtist, Corel Painter X and Design 360 (China). Some of his clients include Radical Entertainment, ImagineFX and Liquid Development to which he has contributed work for projects delivered to Flagship Studios and Ensemble Studios through the art direction and outsourcing of LD.
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On behalf of CGPAD.org we’d like to thank you for taking the time out to give us this interview. Mike is a seasoned freelancer and takes time out to share some personal thoughts and experiences. For readers that don’t know of you could you tell us a little bit of background info?
My name is Mike Corriero, I studied and obtained my bachelor degree at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NYC. Shortly after I started freelancing as a concept artist and Illustrator. I spent more time after college building up my portfolio than getting paid for work but in the end it worked to my advantage.
In order to obtain the type of jobs that made me happy it was necessary to beef up my portfolio with specific subject matter and types of concept art. In a lot of ways this is still something that is on going. New companies require different types of art and the only way to get a job with that company is to show them you can produce what they are looking for. When I’m not working most of my time is spent creating personal art for pleasure and for my own studies. Other than art you’d probably catch me watching a movie or playing games since I have an extensive DVD collection.
I grew up and still live in Northern New Jersey, which isn’t exactly a very exciting place. In some ways I guess I could be thankful for growing up in a place where the most exciting thing to do is go to the local Malls. I’m sure that contributed to my growing as an artist at such a young age.
What’s a typical day in the life of M Corriero?
I’ll try not to put you guys to sleep but it’s either all about work or all about relaxation. My days usually consist of me pulling my lazy butt out of bed and pretty much getting straight to work after a little breakfast. If I don’t have any work lined up for the day, then I consider it time for promotion or time for portfolio development. I’m constantly online checking art related website’s and forums or posting my work and hanging around places of business and inspiration. There is very little time I spend on the internet where I’m not networking, promoting and researching job related subjects, so when my network connection is down I usually go crazy.
Seriously though, in my spare time I’m usually working out, visiting family and on occasion when I have the time I head into the city. That being New York City; to check out the museums, zoo’s or anything else of inspiration. Having gone to school in Brooklyn opened my eyes to the biggest resource and playground for any artist.
Ok now for what every ones waiting for, questions on your art. Could you explain the evolution of how you arrived at your current art style?
When I was younger I experimented with a dozen different mediums, everything ranging from pen and ink, to markers, coloured pencils, watercolours, acrylic and oil paints, graphite, charcoal, pencil and even chalks on pavement. I did my fair share of traditional studies, including still life’s, drawing friends and family or live nude models in classrooms and studying works from the great old masters to more modern art like marvel comic characters.
During this time I was learning a lot on my own just by collecting art books and studying how other artist drew. I came across one artist in particular who for some reason really captured my attention and was one of the biggest influences on where my art had headed for about 6 years or more. It consisted of a pen and ink, watercolour and coloured pencil style, which stuck with me up until I really discovered the digital art realm. I always had issues with acrylic or oil paint, I was constantly wishing there was a medium that made it easy to work in a certain manner. Once I acquired a Wacom tablet and Adobe Photoshop it was quickly understood that this was a medium had what I was looking for.
In terms of my actual “Style” this was something that didn’t necessarily change a whole lot from childhood, it really just evolved in fixing problem areas and learning what I could do to better my art. I do owe a lot to that one artist who I will name later in this interview, since his designs did mold my thought process and concepts during that period of my life. In the end where my art is at now became a mix of inspiration from this artist and a few others while constantly learning from my own mistakes and studying the basics of art.
Would you mind talking about your ‘painting’ process and techniques, how you go from idea to final image?
All of my art more or less ends up having a similar final presentation in style and structure but I do go about creating a painting in a couple different processes. One process I use is very simple starting off with a few small thumbnail drawings in pencil or pen. I’ll scan the one that appeals to me most in composition and design and once it is scaled up to the full size I’ll correct or change any necessary elements before anything else.
A quick base colour or wash is laid down beneath the sketch on a separate layer. In order to preserve the sketch it is kept on its own layer and set to Multiply so the colour below will show through.
During this process I’ll continue to build on the base colours until it’s time to start working on top of the sketch. The moment I’m happy with the colour scheme, lighting and overall flow of an image I’ll create a new layer above the sketch. In a gradual state the original pencil sketch will start to get erased as I build upon the base layer and begin rendering details and textures of each element. It’s some times done by working from background to foreground and other times it’s by finishing the most complex element first or the complete opposite.
In retrospect the end result is usually the same no matter what brushes I’m using or what elements or subject matter is incorporated. Once the details are just about finalized, the image is flattened and then some values are adjusted and last minute elements refined.
Are there any artists that inspire you and drive your artistic goals?
Yes, of course as I’m sure any artist is inspired by another. To name a few traditional and digital artist there is Aleksi Briclot, J.S. Rossbach, Jon Foster, Alan Lee, John Howe, Tony Diterlizzi, Keith Parkinson, Larry Elmore, Michael Whelan, Gerald Brom, Justin Sweet, Donato Giancola, Erik Tiemens, Ryan Church, Jeff Easley and Todd Lockwood. I could name a long list of others but a lot of these guys some of whom are more recent and others from my childhood have really helped inspire me as an artist and in furthering my goals.
Are your works purely digital based?
Aside from my pencil and pen work, yes all of the work I produce these days is purely digital. I’m sure once I can afford a large enough studio you’ll start to see the old watercolour and pen technique pop up and make an appearance again. However for now it’s all Photoshop and some Painter.
What is your current setup?
If I understand the question right, I work in Photoshop CS2 with a 9 x 12 inch Wacom Intuos 2 drawing tablet out of my bedroom/studio. I work on a Dell PC because I’ve never really caught on to the whole Mac frenzy and not sure I was comfortable with the setup there. I have a big old 17 inch monitor that’s probably much larger in depth than the actual screen. I haven’t gone out and bought a fancy flat panel wide screen monitor because what I have works perfectly fine for now and most flat panels I’ve seen give off a bad representation of values depending on how you’re facing the screen.
If you had to do it all again, what choice of career decisions would your make?
This is probably the easiest question to answer. The first thing I would do is go to a community college and obtain an art degree just for the sake of having a college degree. All in all I wouldn’t have wasted my time and money on a school like Pratt, at least not given my chosen career path considering they didn’t really offer classes that helped much in the concept art field. I would have also saved myself a fortune in money and I would have stuck to learning what I know now from the internet art forums which are free.
What or who are your main sources of inspiration?
My main source of inspiration came from the artist I mentioned earlier in this interview a couple times. That would be Tony Diterlizzi, the man who really helped shape my imagination, my style and the type of subject matter I enjoy painting the most which is creature designs. His work is where I learned that watercolour, pen and coloured pencil technique from. There are other inspirations that come from places outside the 2d art realm.
Movies and Television provide a huge source of inspiration, especially watching programs that serve as a great source of reference like Animal Planet and Discovery Channel. The same goes for places like Zoos and or uninhabited scenes of nature when I used to go camping as a kid. Nature in general from the woods to the animals is a great source of inspiration in more ways than one.
How do you feel about the praise you receive for your art?
It feels good when people let you know they enjoy your work and respect your talent. I won’t say that I deserve as much praise as some people have given me because I really need to fix so many mistakes I make in my art but the praise and compliments are a real source of motivation. It feels good to share my art with others, whether they be fellow artist or just fans in general.
What has been your most memorable gig to date?
This is hard to answer but I’ll say having produced creature concepts and environment designs for a
Flagship Studios game title. The work itself was done for an outsourcing company called
Liquid Development but what was memorable about it and fun was that I got to see the creatures I designed come to life from sketch to cg model to animated actions. It was one of the first times I got to really see the progress happen in that manner and even provide a bit of my own ideas and advice on the movement and actions of the animation. The game is called (Mythos) and will be available for free download in the near future. I designed approx. 10 of the creatures, all of the environment wall tiles and 4 boss concepts.
How did you come about to be a professional freelancer?
I first tried to obtain a full time job with an art studio and just being out of college that didn’t go too well. Time was clicking and student loans were about to kick in, so it was either working a part time job at some food store or pushing harder at an art career. I put a bunch of my work up on an art forum and just started submitting to jobs made available online. The first job I ever got was for a card game company and oddly enough after that work started to flow in more rapidly. Word of mouth seems to have gotten me pretty far and sticking with promoting my art through the internet and working freelance has worked out better than I expected.
There are flaws such as working paycheck to paycheck and hoping that work comes in on a steady basis, though I love working for numerous different clients. I can set my own schedule more or less and focus on personal art whenever free time pops up. I can push for the type of art jobs I want and I can push for the type of rates I want to agree on. So freelancing does have a lot of perks. Some advantages can be discouraging like having no insurance, paying a bit more when taxes are due and spending a lot of time promoting but if you know the business and you can deal with what comes with the territory you’re either going to love it or hate it.
Do you have any advice for our readers on going the freelance route?
I’ll provide a couple personal tips, insight and advice. This isn’t to say this is the right way to go about freelancing or that it can’t be done another way, this is just based off of my personal experiences.
If you don’t have a very strong portfolio that consist of things like full colour Illustrations, environments, creatures and items, you may have a hard time getting work that is worth your while. The more versatile you are the more opportunities there will be. If you were a full time employee it doesn’t have to be that way, they can teach you whatever they need to teach you on their time. However as a freelance artist you’re on a hunt for one job after the next and if all you can do is paint environments you’ll be missing out on a ton of other prospects.
On the flip side, don’t go building a portfolio consisting of a ton of mediocre work by trying to tackle 10 different subjects. Focus on mastering maybe one or two at first, then open yourself up gradually to other areas. There are hundreds of people out there looking to take advantage of young artist who have some skill and no experience.
My personal take on this is that the inexperienced artist shouldn’t settle for selling their work at a cheap rate. Don’t feel like you need to sell yourself short because some random guy can’t pay you a reasonable amount of money. I would personally take the time to produce personal work that I have complete control over than selling work to some small time client for a few dollars. In the end those X amount of dollars aren’t going to be worth the effort if the guy controlling the art direction hasn’t a clue what he wants.
This is more often than not the case with clients who can’t afford to pay much. It’s usually high hopes, big dreams and little know how or budgeted backing. Stay away from those type of gigs, they’re just dead ends that will steer you away from a profitable freelance career.
My reasons for this is that in the end it hurts the industry as a whole and it just encourages small time clients to try and take advantage of artist who don’t know what their art is truly worth. Stick to art forums where you can learn and grow in both skill and as a business man. I’ve been working freelance for about four and a half years and not once has a client asked what my educational background was like. It strictly comes down to what you can do, how well you can do it and how fast you can provide what is needed within the limits of their budget.
And finally
Lastly, what has been the most influential piece of advice you’ve been given and by whom ?
Could you make that question any harder haha, that would take some real thought. Wow, hmm I guess I would have to say the best and most helpful piece of advice I’ve been given is in creating lasting relationships with clients who do good by you.
What I mean by this is, don’t just produce a job for a client who pays you well and praises your work and walk away never to contact them again. If you find clients like this, even if they can’t provide you with work right away, always check in to share your latest batch of art or to see if anything is available. I can’t for the likes of me remember who it was that gave me this piece of advice but it’s something that will help keep you busy on a steady basis without the hassle of working with clients who are new to you.
It can be fun to work on brand new gigs and meet new clients and companies but some times certain art directors and clients even reputable well known names can be a real hassle. There isn’t always a perfect click between artist and art director and if it’s avoidable, just steer clear of any disagreements and arguments.
It will only hurt your reputation and career, so if you find a client you get along with, keep up to date with what they are working on and keep them informed of you contact information and availability.
Again many thanks from myself and everyone on CGPAD.org for allowing us this informative interview and we wish you continued success with your art.
Interview Mike Corriero
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