My name name is Mike Winterbauer and I have been a working artist for thirty years. I am most notably known for my work in illustration having done a string of classic computer game covers in the 80's and 90's. You may have seen some of the covers I painted which included Might and Magic Clouds of Xeen and Darkside of Xeen and interior maps, Wing Commander, Solstice, WolfChild and Power Blade to name a few.

The best responses to my work have been in the last couple years since I have been promoting Winterbauer Arts. I realized that I created alot of artwork that had been seen by people all over the world. My work had appeared in magazines, movie posters, and game boxes but people didn't know that I had painted the art. Having retained most of my original artwork I was able to sell these pieces as collectible artwork twenty years later.

My free ebook Classic Game Covers, Confessions of an Art Junkie really brought to light my story as it was featured on many sites worldwide. I was very happy to see the nice response the book got after working in the shadows for decades.
Here are just a few of the comments my book received:

"Mike Winterbauer is the artist behind some of the most fondly remembered retro box art from gaming's golden age, including covers for classic titles such as Might & Magic, Wing Commander and Spaceward Ho!. Okay, maybe that last one doesn't count. If you ever wanted to know the process behind those classic video game covers, you can download a free .pdf from Winterbauer's website in which the man himself tells us how he did it.
Mostly, it involved lots of heroic posing in his underwear. Winterbauer couldn't afford to hire models, so he had to get his friends to photograph him in the pose he wanted to draw. Enough childish giggling, though, the fact is that his work rate, particularly in the early 1990's, was astonishing."

http://www.gamewatcher.com/news/2014-...

"Veteran game artist Mike Winterbauer is a crazy person. He’s written a book showcasing (and telling the story behind) some classic examples of PC and console cover art, and instead of charging a premium for it, is giving it away for free.
OK, so it’s not exactly to the design standard we expect from publishers like Titan (he published it himself), but the art and processes we get to see here are just the best."

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/07/how-...

"Artist Michael Winterbauer has self-published a free book with stories about his life in the game cover art business.....You can download the complete "Confessions of an Art Junkie" here (90 megabyte PDF). Pages 26-28 on Wing Commander are below. Retro also published an interview with Michael recently. Both the Q&A and the self-published volume are fascinating reads for anyone interested in breaking into the industry or learning about its old school roots."

http://www.wcnews.com/chatzone/thread...