Thanks for stopping by–
I’m Michel Bohbot, a freelance illustrator and graphic designer, using a variety of digital and traditional media to produce art for gaming, books, advertising, and design. Each assignment is different and demands a unique approach to telling a story. Let’s get started on yours.
I have been featured in several Spectrum Annuals, and garnered awards from the San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles Societies of Illustrators. I'm a former President of the San Francisco Society of Illustrators, and now teach in the Bay Area.
In addition, I co-created Zintara and the Stones of Alu Cemah, a fully illustrated 200 page fantasy novel with my brother Dom Bohbot. You can check it out at zintara.net or look for it on Amazon.
If you have a question, want to discuss a job, or see more samples (yes, there are more) just send me an email.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who have you worked with?
I've had the pleasure to work with:
Lucas Arts
Zynga
Avon Books
San Jose Sharks
Clive Cussler
Sony
Electronic Arts
Puffin Books
Ariba
Penguin Putnam
Kensington Pub.
Juniper
Intel
Holt Rinehart
The History Channel
Activision
Amblin Entertainment
Jowood
Woodfin Hotels
Kaiser Permanente
Wells Fargo Bank
UCLA
What about AI?
AI is everywhere these days and it seems that you can get whatever you want just by typing in a sentence, but that could bring you some costly headaches.
The first and most important thing is that while your prompt is copyrightable, the art it produces cannot be copyrighted. That means that anyone can take your image, logo, movie character, etc. and copy it to use for themselves. But what if you altered the art, you may ask? The alterations would be copyrightable, but not the rest.
AI can be used to generate ideas, compositions, color schemes, and the like to give to the artist as reference, but that also has a downside. Years ago when I worked at an ad agency in New York we created our comps in a loose style to present to clients. We did this because when we created realistic comps, the client would often lock on to that exact image and that was often not reproducible when we had to use our own models and sets. The same goes with the AI generated art. We tend to fall in love with that specific image and unfortunately that’s the one we can’t own. So what can you do?
Talk to a real artist about the needs for your project first, and perhaps show them samples of a style, composition or color treatment you like, then the artist can create something new, original, and copyrightable just for you.
