Charlie Wilcher has impressive talents beyond his work for ITS Classroom Hotline. He also creates digital art, including book covers and character illustrations.
UNC grad
“I have been drawing since childhood and dabbled with digital art some in the past, but I got more serious about it in college,” said Wilcher, who won multiple awards for design and art while earning a bachelor’s in studio art from Carolina. “Now I continue doing digital art on the side.”
In college classes, Wilcher created most of his drawing and painting in traditional mediums.
On his own, he “started creating artwork digitally using a graphics tablet with my computer, which is now my primary medium,” he said.
Art for campus
Back when he worked for the School of Medicine IT Classroom Support, Wilcher primarily provided technical support and maintained the meeting and classroom spaces. But he also helped with creating graphics for the room computers, touch panels and room signage or documentation.
Since he’s worked for ITS Classroom Hotline, he’s supplemented his primary duties with creating custom wallpaper art for the classroom computers, room signage for new spaces and custom graphics for the control interfaces of classrooms.
Book covers and board games
Over the past several years, Wilcher has been doing commissions, mostly book covers and character illustrations. He’s also worked with board game designers and people who wanted him to paint their character or create an illustration for their web page.
In Wilcher’s spare time, he also contributes to projects like Fallout 4 New Vegas and Capital Wasteland. These are ambitious fan-made projects worked on by teams of makers who aim to completely recreate and revitalize the older Fallout games in the Creation Engine.
Creating joy
“I just get a lot of joy out of creating things I like,” Wilcher said. “Creating something and trying to get it to the point where I am satisfied with it is often like solving a problem or a puzzle. It can sometimes require a lot of thought and work, but that can sometimes make resolving a piece more satisfying.”
Looking forward, Wilcher wants to continue to improve his talents and gain more clients and opportunities. One new skill he’d like to develop is working in 3D art.