I am an accomplished game-industry Art Director and professional illustrator. My expertise is with strong, colorful engaging work with a lot of personality (and I especially love working on genre stuff, such as fantasy, science fiction and steampunk.)  I primarily work digitally, and I enjoy developing character-driven pieces, especially humorous ones.

I’ve been working in the videogame industry for over 20 years as an art director and artist. I’ve done character and environment design and concepting, 2D and 3D animation, modeling, texturing, rigging, effects, UI and even voice acting. The highlights of my career include working at Blizzard Entertainment working on Diablo II and Diablo III, and being the Senior Art Director at mobile game developer Kabam, where I grew the art team from 5 artists to ~60, oversaw learning opportunities and growth among the art team, and worked directly on projects including Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North, Arcane Empires, Spirit Lords, and Star Wars: Uprising. I was Art Director of the unreleased AAA mobile game Guardians of Haven at Gree International. My most recent adventure was at Tether Studios, where I developed the look and created all artwork – ie. all in-game assets, UI, VFX, character art, logo, app icon, and all Marketing art – for several mobile titles, including Bubble Cube, Super Blast, Mahjong Solitaire Cube, and some unannounced projects.

My illustration work has been featured in Spectrum, Expose, ImagineFX magazine, and Fantasy Art Magazine among others. My work has been included in Expose (editions 5, 7, 10, 11 & 12), The Future of Fantasy Art, Steampunk: The Art of Victorian Futurism, and Digital Painting Techniques 3, for which I penned the intro to their steampunk chapter. Awards include several CGSociety Challenges, Dominance War III, Comicon Challenge, and the Facebook Character Design Challenge. I was a Chesley Award winner (given out by the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists) for my cover for Peter S. Beagle’s ‘The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche,’ which won for Best Paperback Book Cover of 1997, the first digital piece to ever win a Chesley.

I’ve also been doing a bunch of work on tabletop games. Projects include all of the art for 'Goats’ Day Out' from ThinkFun/Ravensburger, all the art and graphic design on Jellybean Game’s successful Kickstarter of 'Dracula’s Feast: New Blood,' and 'Night of the Mummy' as well as illustration work on Muse Awakenings (QSF Games) and others. I also enjoy indie game development. In the past I worked on a puzzle game called MageMaze and a turn-based strategy game called Dwarfare, and am currently working on a visual novel / puzzle game, Puzzle Spy International. I also run The Trinquétte Challenge, a monthly drawing challenge on Facebook with 19,000 followers.

I live in Oakland, CA, USA, with my wife Talia and our kid Piper.

I am currently consulting and always welcome new clients. E-mail me at mdashow@michaeldashow.com.

You can also find me on many social media sites as @mdashow. Find them all here.