The Real Michael Pradier


My name is Mike, and I am a humble illustrator who lives in Richmond VA with my girlfriend Elise (who is herself a fine artist but denies it). I am 24 years old-come this May-, my hair is black, relatively short and curly/nappy; my eyes are brown and my skin is raw umber (redish brown). I stand about 6' even and weigh about 165. My hobbies are illustrating, rollerblading and general outdoor recreation, making music, watching anime and spending time with my beloved mate. I'm also into Dance Dance Revolution (a fairly recent favorite pasttime) and have been developing my groove busting skills for about a year and some change. Great aerobic workout, that!

I would technically be considered a college senior at Virginia Commonwealth University, and have plans to return in the fall if I'm able to procure better employment. Currently, I work at Tower Records and Video, for 10 months now, but that will soon change. My goal in life is to be one of the finest illustrators and animators the world has ever known, and perhaps a critically acclaimed actor/comedian as well. I've had quite a bit of stage experience, acting in class productions of plays like Medea, A Mid Summer Nights Dream, Othello and Bram Stockers Dracula, where I recieved an award for best actor for the role of Prof. Van Helsing. Man, what a trip that was!

The technique I use to illustrate is fairly simple: I begin with a pen and I end with a pen, and sometimes a colored pencil as well. I hardly ever, unless doing a commission or otherwise very important project, lay down a preliminary sketch in pencil. I'm very choosy about my media, I mostly prefer it to be crisp and clean. I do paint a little and have several oil works on canvas hanging on the walls in my house, though I don't believe they're very good. I've promised myself that I would start painting again someday, because my girlfriends painting skill with watercolor is phenominal and inspiring. It has been a while since I've practiced, but I can also illustrate in ink print, lithography and silkscreening. I have several class portfolios with various examples of my work which I may choose to put on my page later. I'm much more proud of my simple hobby work and doodles =^_^=. As far as computer editing goes, I'm still experimenting. My most recent work in Photoshop was my Igailyf family photo, while I think the Xei-plus pic is my first (you can definitely tell). My pifolf pic WAS slightly edited in Photoshop but only for the eyes, which were so small that I could not finely detail them enough with a prisma color pencil. The rest of its Photoediting was for the blue background. The original picture is 8 1/2 by 11, I had to blow it up a bit to capture all the detail. My Wal-kun No Chikara pic was done in one night on a school computer. The process I used was drawing each individual cell with a mouse in Photoshop, saving the picture as a cell, partially making it transparent and then drawing the next cell over it. It was a total of about 200 cells in all, quite a bit of work. Hey, it was due in 12 hours, I had to hurry!

The manga I've been working on for about a decade now is my Wally story. It's about a werewolf boy raised in the city by his grandfather (posing as an uncle, for he looks far too young) who, with the help of his talented friends, fights crime and a host of supernatural bad guys. I'm hoping to, one day, turn it into a professional thing, most definitely a -decently- animated series. I've been working on a new series of Wally shorts in my spare time, and getting better everyday. I'm also refining my writing skills, as my girl and I have a major storyline brewing between the two of us called Astral Syncron, where my Akeluus persona is one of the main characters. When I'm able to scrape enough of them together, and finish a few more, I will post my Wally comics up somewheres on my web den for all to see.

Another one of my big, yet time consuming, hobbies is making game characters for a program I've obtained called M.U.G.E.N. (don't ask me what it stands for). Essentially, it is a program that emulates a fully customizeable 2D fighting game, not unlike Marvel vs. Capcom or any of those popular button mashers. If you can draw it or photograph it or film it and make it into a PCX file you can make a playable character. So far, I've made 2 1/2 (Xeiun, Gemgat and Nougit) Gemgat being my first. I draw upwards of 200+ animation cells and program about 50+ pages of simple game code for each of them. However, the new process I've been using for character creation has been to design pieces of the characters (hands, feet, legs, tail, wings, etc.), make copies of each piece and assemble multiple cells at once using these pieces. Making each piece (perhaps 100 + per character) can be a bit difficult, but it's worth it in the end, as the pieces are already proportioned correctly and the animation can be as smooth as you like. I'm using this process for my most recent character, Nougit, who is still in developement. I also make all of the voices and sounds for my character, using my mad phat beat-box of a mouth. It turns out pretty convincing, for the most part. At some point, when all of my characters are finished in my estimation (will probably be a while), I will make my characters available to the public.

For music, when I made music (I'll make more in the future), I used the program Fruity Loops. Yes, wacky sounding indeed, but it yields impressive results, even as a demo version. My songs last anywhere from 3 to 6 minutes long, depending on my inspiration. I've made 4 original works and 3 remixed replications of some of my favorite game music. These include Gates theme from Mega Man X 6, Relic Beetles theme from Mega Man X 6 (or 5, I can't remember) and Jedahs theme from Dark Stalkers, Vampire Savior. I've been told I can sing fairly well (I know I can sure as hell wistle like a bard) but, as of yet, I've done no singing in my songs, which are mostly hardcore techno and demonically upbeat instrumentals.

Well, that's me in a nutshell. I'll provide a pic of my portrait at a later date. You can send me an email at [email protected] if you have any questions about my art, requests for commissions or if you just wish to contact me.