Mike Winkelmann is a 28-year-old self-taught graphic designer who makes short films and “other little crap in his spare time”, meanwhile doing graphic design as a day job.
“In terms of my own work, I don’t really have a paid model for the digital assets I create. All of the paid work I do is custom (freelance) work. At the moment I like having things be a but more cut and dry like that.”
Charleston-based graphic designer Mike Winkelman has been doing a digital illustration everyday for the past 10 years. Currently on his eleventh round, the purpose of this project was to help him “get over the fear of starting a project, but also the fear of finishing one” and “to get better at different things” such as photography, drawing, and computer modeling.
“Lately I have been doing some VR and AR work that has been really exciting. These are obviously very new formats that don’t have a lot of set rules so people are sort of discovering these things as they go along. I am also continuing everydays, VJ clips and working a short film. So working across a pretty wide range of medium which in itself has been a lot of fun since I get bored pretty easily doing the same things.”
Using Cinema 4D and mostly Octane, Winkelman focuses on fundamentals such as color, composition, value, etc and posts the results online so that he is “less likely to throw down a big pile of ass-shit even though most of the time I still do because I suck ass.” Ever self-deprecating, his illustrations vary in subject matter and sort of reminds me of Simon Stalenhag‘s dystopian art.
See more of Mike Winkelman’s work on Behance, Instagram or at his website.
