Michael Correia

2021 Senior Exhibition Artists

Michael Correia

Art + Design: Animation + Game Arts

About Mike Correia

Mike Correia is a concept artist who uses his passion and knowledge of the natural world, as well as all things dark and obscure, to create cliché busting, yet believable creatures and characters. He has a BFA in game arts and animation. He began his art career with a main focus on illustration, but later found great joy in digital sculpting. Mike quickly learned that working in a 3D space was much easier for him to grasp. In turn, the experience with 3D work began to make illustration more comprehensible to his tiny lizard brain. Now, Mike utilizes his skills in both dimensions to realize his dream of making monsters. He has a great appreciation for the “low arts” and firmly believes that its total bullshit to give the “high arts” more respect and admiration just because some snobby rich people can derive meaning from it, whether it was the artist’s intent or not. “Oh wow look at this red canvas with a few different colored vertical lines on it, it represents the metaphysical experience of meeting another person. So amazing, so profound!” No. Shut up. Show me a drawing of a dragon instead please.

Statement

Most kids tend to get over their dinosaur phase, but for me, it ended up shaping a majority of my interests for the rest of my life. If it was big, scary and had sharp teeth, chances are you could find me drawing it in the margins of my coloring books and on the napkins at restaurants. From a very young age, I knew that I wanted to make monsters.

I’ve always had a passion for toys and collectibles, and much of my artistic preferences have derived from the toys and games that I grew up with. Not to mention my other major creative influence, metal music. Once I started getting into the realm of digital 3D art, I realized the perfect way to harness my greatest creative inspirations and express myself artistically in the purest way I could imagine.

M.E.T.A.L (Musically Empowered Titanic Abominable Lifeforms) is a line of toys which I designed and sculpted to represent my gratitude for the things that have shaped me as an artist thus far. Each character is inspired by a major genre of metal music and the major themes and clichés that come with it. I hope that metal and monster fans alike will find joy in the homage filled design choices; and for those who don’t get the references, I hope they at least think the designs look badass.