A New Artist in the Team – Devlog #06

To welcome him to the team, Vincent caught up with concept artist Michael Fiore for a conversation about his path into art, the projects that shaped him, and what excites him most about building the world of Trailblazers: Into the March.

Michael D. Fiore - Elven Migration

Hey Michael, for people meeting you for the first time—what do you do as an artist, and what pulled you into concept art/illustration?

Hi, thanks for asking, as for what I primarily do as an artist now a days is deliver and communicate ideas usually through concept. Whether its in 2D or 3D, the consistency with my job has been helping visually convey the ideas of people who might struggle with that. As for what pulled me to concept/illustration, I was lead into taking art more seriously because of my TTRPG home game where I was the game master. I ended up wanting to draw items, maps, creatures, and characters for my players to better convey my own ideas, all those skills perfectly lined up with what has become my career.

Where are you based these days, and what do you love outside of art?

I am currently based right outside of New York City in America, its where I was born and raised so its very familiar to me, but I do hope to move possibly outside of America in the coming years. Outside of art I love playing board games and videogames, TTRPGs are still a love of mine, I still run Dungeons and Dragons games for my friends when I can, but I also love playing card games like Magic the Gathering. I also love painting plein air, going to the gym, and usually biking around when I can, its something I really value having in my daily routine.

Michael D. Fiore - Sunken Keyple City

Before Trailblazers: Into the March, what projects have you worked on—games, TTRPGs, animation, anything interactive? What was your role on them?

In the past 3 years I was at schooling, and during that time I worked on many animation films usually doing background design, with prop design scattered throughout. I attended the School of Visual Arts in NYC, so there were many animation majors who needed a helping hand with backgrounds. Right out of school a couple months ago I was the 3D look dev on a project that is unfortunately still trapped in NDA, but I am very happy with the work I did, and what I learned there. But overall, I have been working with multiple smaller companies in the TTRPG space to illustrate mostly magic items, covers, and characters for their books, those were actually the first jobs I got before deciding to pursue art full time and attending SVA, so I also love doing more work in that space when I can.

Adrien set the overall art direction—what were the key ‘rules’ you had to match, and where did you have room to push your own taste?

Honestly me and Adrien have a lot of the same influences in our personal art direction so I had to make the adjustment to let myself work closer to my natural style. We both love a lot of similar media like Nausicaa, Mobius, and more so I have been fortunate that Adrien has encouraged me to push my ideas and influence from those genres into this game. I think the interesting and fun part has been seeing how much we can push perspective and design in a topdown environment. It brings me back to