Charlene, the artist.
Charlene grew up watching cartoons. Specifically, Disney cartoons and movies were (and still are) her favorite, with her most treasured being The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and The Lion King. While watching a clip at the age of five on T.V. of Walt Disney drawing Mickey Mouse from simple circles and swirly lines, she thought that she too could draw the mouse. The end result was anything but, though she still kept trying to draw. A boost of motivation came from Charlene’s mom who drew her Flounder for good luck. It wasn’t before long that those lines and circles that she once drew were starting to transform into the characters that she thought were impossible to create.
Middle school and high school exposed Charlene to other artists. Digital art also became a new curiosity for her where it seemed hard to imagine that people would create their drawings on the computer. At thirteen, she attempted her shot at it with her only tools being Photoshop and a mouse. She continued to try, however her art interests slowly starting moving from digital painting to publication design as she joined her high school’s yearbook and newspaper.
Being involved in newspaper allowed her to expand on journalistic writing, while being an editor for yearbook showed her different techniques in layout design, typography, use of color/white space, and photography. This laid her foundations in learning applications such as Adobe Photoshop, PageMaker, and InDesign. Charlene discovered that some elements could be carried over to web design, as well. For three years in high school, Charlene was involved in numerous newspaper publications and three full-fledged yearbooks.
Her interest in publication design carried with her into college where she had joined Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s newspaper staff, The Avion, and The Phoenix Yearbook staff. In 2006, she became the Science & Technology Editor for The Avion as well as becoming the Editor-in-Chief for The Phoenix Yearbook, in turn becoming part of the Student Government Association. She also created publications for other clubs that she was involved in, such as creating advertisements for In The Game’s first annual Brawl tournament.
Her desire for digital painting had not waned, however. After graduating from college, she purchased her first Wacom tablet. Charlene is largely self-taught in digital painting with Photoshop learning mostly from trial-and-error. She plans on creating a digital art series called “Meet The PANDA’s”, inspired by Team Fortress 2’s “Meet The …” series. Her goal is that hopefully by the end of the series, she would have honed in our her art techniques and find her own style.
Charlene is also the digital artist and musician for Solid Concept Studios, a small independent company focused on Android applications.