A New Look for NYMG: Meet the Artist, Alyse Allred

This week we are revealing a new design for NYMG. The all-new and very apropos characterizations of the staff have been drawn by the wonderfully talented artist, Alyse Allred, so we thought this would also be a great opportunity to introduce the NYMG community to Alyse as well. You can find more of Alyse’s work online at FireflySummers and contact her about doing commissions of your own.

NYMG: Tell us a little about yourself. What are your career goals and what do you do for fun?

Alyse: My name is Alyse Marie Allred, and I’m a Biomedical Engineer from Purdue University. I enjoy art, writing, and travel.

NYMG: How and when did you get started drawing? Do you have any training or educational background in art or visual design?

Alyse: As an engineering student, I have very limited free time. Despite that, I run a small webcomic called This is Engineering, which records some of the more humorous exploits of the life of engineering students. I have very little artistic training, but with passion comes experience. Inspiration comes and goes, but I enjoy taking the opportunity to express my likes and interests and frustrations through my art.

NYMG: What are your favorite things to draw?

Alyse: I enjoy drawing fanart, because it’s an easy outlet for the topics I am currently passionate for. However, I find a lot of fun in commissions and original work as well. While doing commission work, I often have photos and very limited descriptions to work from, and it’s a fun challenge to take the small bits of information and put them together in a caricature that captures both the obvious and subtle parts of a person or character’s personality. Original work is fun because it’s raw creativity, with very few boundaries. The returns are usually far less than that on fanart and commissions, but it’s still a lot of fun. I don’t really have a favorite piece or work, because I try to focus all of my talent and pride into whatever piece I’m currently working on. That way I can always try to improve without getting too caught up on the past or future.

We would like to publicly thank Alyse for all of the amazing work that she put into capturing the personalities of the individual staff members (along with the flavor of their favorite games!). We hope that you enjoy the characters that Alyse did for NYMG as much as the staffers did, and since we’ve turned Alyse’s art into our new branding, you’ll find it all on other NYMG-based sites as well.