Tag: digital art

Mixed on Campus #5 – Maeve Lucas

Alice Conner Leave a comment

Name: Maeve Lucas
Mix: Transnational Adoptee
Major & Year: BCN; Junior

Q: How has being mixed affected your campus experience?

A: It definitely took me some time to find my place on campus freshman year. There were certain groups I didn’t fit into as well because I was mixed and didn’t fully identify as one ethnicity. Mixed@Michigan has really given me a community that has allowed me to grow into myself.

Q: What do you wish more people knew about the mixed experience?

A: Almost every mixed person has gone through some type of scrutiny. While everyone’s experience is unique, mixed people often face what most minorities experience. Though we can also be scrutinized by our own cultural group. It’s a very “in-between” feeling.

Q: What kind of person do you aspire to be / who is the most influential person in your life?

A: My mom. Sometimes people feel like transnational adoptees feel like they were “saved” by their adoptive parents, and I think that terminology is flawed. While my mom is my best friend and biggest supporter, she is not my savior. My mom is my mom like your mom is your mom. I aspire to be a mom like her. If I could even be half as great as a mom she is, I would be happy with that.

Mixed on Campus #4 – Andre Nandi

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Name: Andre Nandi
Mix: Bulgarian & Bengali
Major & Year: Computer Science; Sophomore

Q: How has being mixed affected your campus experience?

A: It has put me in a unique position to look at situations from two very different perspectives. While it’s hard to find people exactly like me, I’m able to find some commonalities with a large spectrum of identities

Q: What do you wish more people knew about the mixed experience?

A: Being mixed means you are in a very interesting middle ground between identities. Every mixed person has a very special relationship with the cultures that make them who they are. While some embrace one and look like the other, others may embrace both and look like outsiders in both. Everyone navigates these complexities and finds a home in very different but beautiful ways.

Q: Who is the most influential person in your life?

A: My parents are the most influential people in my life. Whether it’s coming from poverty to living through the end of communism in their country, they took massive risks to come to the US and make a life for themselves. They constantly teach me very vastly different perspectives, and while I don’t always agree with them, these two sides make me who I am.

Industrious Illustrating #35 – Mecha Design

Robin Leave a comment

While I’ve posted mecha art and mecha designs here a few times before, I haven’t posted an actual mecha design sheet akin to what would be used on a project such as a video game to guide 3D modelers and other artists further down the production pipeline when replicating the designs that will appear in the final product. As such, I fleshed out and designed Toshiaki Mizushima’s Oyoroi mech “Bhairava” to demonstrate my mecha and character design skills in a portfolio-ready art piece.

While I referenced several different mech design sheets (such as color guides for gunpla and design sheets for fanmade Gundams) to inform what visual information I needed to convey with this design sheet, I took heavy inspiration from the information conveyed by this mech design sheet made for Honkai Impact 3rd.

Also, if you’re on campus on Saturday, April 1st, you can come see me and buy prints from me at the What the F Art Fair in the Kuenzel Room of the Michigan Union from 12:30-4:30. Yes, it’s on the same day as Hash Bash, and no, it’s not an April Fool’s Day joke! You can also come find me tabling at Con Ja Nai in the Modern Languages Building on April 8th from noon to 6pm, so there’s plenty of opportunities to come find me!

Mixed on Campus #3 – Alanna Grace-Marie

Alice Conner 2 Comments

Name: Alanna Grace-Marie
Mix: Black, biracial (German & Nigerian)
Major & Year: Sociology – Afro-American Studies; Junior Transfer Student

I am a visual sociologist and multimedia artist. I use my art to tell my unique story as well as share Black history and culture to uplift my community with positive representation. My business instagram is @equitable.arts

Q: How has being mixed affected your campus experience?

A: Being a Black presenting biracial woman at a predominantly white institution, representation is hard to find. So I create my own! And I collaborate with others who have intersectional identities to share their stories too.

Q: What do you wish more people knew about the mixed experience?

A: The mixed experience is unique for every individual and it can be complicated in unique ways too! This isn’t always a negative experience, we can use our unique perspectives to brighten this world. So please, refrain from placing us in stereotypical boxes.

+1: I will write an autobiography one day soon to show the world how being both Black and biracial has informed me and shaped my experiences in this world. I was raised to act a certain way and certainly, society put more pressure on me to conform. But now, I reject this! I am all of my ethnicities and identities, uniquely me! No need to pick a side.

+2: Blair Imani is an educational inspiration of mine. She also rejects stereotypes of her identities and lives an authentic life to uplift all marginalized individuals.

Mixed on Campus #2 – Indira Sankaran

Alice Conner Leave a comment

Name: Indira Sankaran
Mix: Indian, White-American
Major & Year: PitE and EEB; Junior

Q: How has being mixed affected your campus experience?

A: It has definitely been an experience! I have always had difficulty understanding where I fit into society and coming into a new environment, without any strong cultural foundation, is hard. Especially with so many ethnic and cultural organizations, I always have a difficult time joining them because I did not have a similar upbringing or experience from others. However, being a junior and meeting so many new people from many backgrounds, I have cultivated a community where I feel safe to express myself.

Q: What do you wish more people knew about the mixed experience?

A: That my mixed experience is soo different from others who identify as mixed or multiracial. We should not be defined into a category and everyone expresses or represents in so many different ways!!

Q: What is your proudest moment?

A: My proudest moment was recently when I realized that my school or academic success doesn’t define me or my future.

Q: What are you most anxious about right now?

A: Presently I’m nervous about internships! But overall, I’m anxious about leaving college and my safe community in a year.

Q: What kind of person do you aspire to be?

A: That is a hard question but i aspire to be a kind and grounding person. I want to be the person that is independent and kind to herself and others 😌

Q: Who is the most influential person in your life?

A: Would it be narcissistic to say myself haha. I’m proud of myself and how much i have grown these past two years! I aspire myself to work on myself and I think that is the most influential thing a person can do.

Industrious Illustrating #33 – Character Turnarounds

Robin Leave a comment

Apologies for the lack of a post last week. I’ll make an extra post to make up for the gap.

Recently I realized that I’m lacking character design work, specifically turnarounds, in my portfolio. As a result, I decided to make more detailed character sheets for my cast of original characters for my cyberpunk/post-apocalyptic story idea “Blade of Seafoam”. If I were to one day make “Blade of Seafoam” into a video game or a comic where I have other artists assisting me (e.g. 3D modelers or character artists on a video game, art assistants on a comic) I would need to have these design sheets to pass along to other artists as a reference for how they should depict the characters. Even if I don’t end up doing anything substantial with the “Blade of Seafoam” story concept, I can still use these in my portfolio to apply for character design jobs with larger companies.

What I want to do next is work on turnarounds/orthographic (internal/detail) views of the mechs in Blade of Seafoam to better establish the world that these characters live in as well as demonstrate my ability to draw mechs when applying to video game art jobs. Stay tuned to see those!

Also, if anyone is interested in seeing me in real life, I’ll be selling my art in the Artist Alley at Con Ja Nai at the MLB on April 8th, and I hope to table at more conventions pending results! (I’m still waiting on artist alley application results from Anime Central and Dokidokon in particular).