Who are you?
Hello! My name is Michael Fugoso and I am a designer/illustrator from San Diego, CA. I appreciate both skeuomorphic and flat/minimal designs so much that I tend to incorporate both in my work. I am currently a Vampiric freelance designer and illustrator, which means I sleep almost entirely during the day and end up working all night… not a very good thing for my personal life.
What are you working on?
I am working on a ton of stuff! First off, an article illustration for ADWEEK that has nothing to do with robots in which I managed to pitch a robot character (which i’m incredibly psyched for). I’m also currently designing a brand for an upcoming local restaurant in San Diego, and working with a small UI team in designing apps for some of the local breweries as well. Lastly I’m working on a pretty big update to my website where I’ll be selling personally designed lapel pins/t-shirts/posters.
Choose a favorite shot of yours. Why is it a favorite?
This one is my favorite mainly because it’s one of the most obvious visual representations of the way I like to illustrate. I love the combination of skeuomorphism and flat design, and creating the lighting depth to separate the two. I’ve done a few more shots like this with different subjects but the SR-71 is just the most awesome jet ever that I had to pick this.
Tell us about your setup. What tools did you use to create the shot (e.g. hardware, software, pens, paper, blowtorch)?
I’m mainly on a Macbook pro using Illustrator as my main tool. I am on-the-go a lot so I definitely need a mobile kind of setup. When I am at home I simply plug in my laptop to a 27” monitor… which I actually find more distracting since I end up streaming Netflix with all the extra screen real estate. Most people think my illustrations are done in Photoshop but they are about 95% done in Illustrator and remain scalable as a vector smart object. You can see in a few of my shots that I like to incorporate photography with my illustrations, so lately I always have a Micro 4/3 camera on hand. I don’t like lugging around big objects with me all the time so I feel these type of cameras are the closest thing to DSLR-like photos while still being compact/portable. It’s definitely a goal of mine to do more photography/illustration mash-ups!
Choose a favorite shot from another Player. Why do you dig it?
It was really hard to pick one shot since there are a ton of other Dribbblers I admire, but Karolis Strautniekas’ Artificial Intelligence shot is an obvious choice that struck home to me. It’s the perfect balance of extreme detail and minimalism, and my obvious fascination with robots and retro noise sealed the deal.
Find Michael on Dribbble, on Twitter, and at fugstrator.com.
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