We were asked to research 3 Artists this week, each from different areas of the industry. The three types of Artists were, an Environmental Artist, a Character Artist and a Visual Effects Artist. The main aim was to find out more about them, learn more about how they work/their process and finally, for us to find new artists that might inspire us.
Environment Artist – Andres Rodriguez
Andres Rodriguez – (Image sourced from ArtStation.Com)
Andres Rodriguez is an amazing Environment Artist currently working at Naughty Dog. As I have said before, gaming is one of my major influences. So, when searching for an environmental artist, naturally that is where I started my search. Initially, I struggled to find an environment artist, as for most games it is a team effort, not just down to an individual.
However, after a little persistence, I came across the work of Andres Rodriguez… He has been working in the industry with Naughty Dog for around 5 years now. It is difficult to find the exact process of an artist. However, within this interview, he shows a rough process of how he goes about making an environment.
He speaks about quickly roughing out shapes in his structures and designs to get a rough idea of how it looks, getting an idea of space and managing it. He then adds more and more detail until he has a pretty much finished looking design for a base structure (for example a column of a building). Then using repetition he slots it in his design to build upon the rough scene. He adds shaders and “quick UVs” to get a better idea of how it might look.
In order to avoid the repetitive look, he adds a mixture of minor and major detail changes to make the scene, this is a process that is done throughout the creation of the piece, making it look more realistic and of a higher quality. He goes on to rough out the rest of the area, blocking off particular areas that he wants to add something into like a blockade or a structure. This is in order to get an idea of the space, to see whether it would work before going to the effort of building/making the structures. Once he has an idea of what he wants and where he wants it he begins to make the structure or blockade for the area. He makes more changes to his work making sure that it looks interesting, non-repetitive and effective. He then creates/uses foliage, plant life and whatever else that might need added to finish the piece.
Uncharted 4 – (Sourced from ArtStation.Com)
The last of us – (Sourced from Artstation.Com)
His ArtStation link is here – https://www.artstation.com/artist/arodz3d
Character Artist – Arnold Tsang
Arnold Tsang is an employee of Blizzard Entertainment and is the Assistant Art Director of Overwatch. He is responsible for the incredible character designs shown below.
Overwatch Character Lineup – (Image sourced from ArtStation.Com)
He obviously can’t be given the sole credit for coming up with all of their concepts and designs. However, designing these finalised concepts and designs can be entirely credited to him. He was very much involved with the design process (being Assistant Art Director and all that).
Overwatch Art Concepts – (Image sourced from ArtStation.Com)
Unfortunately, I was unable to get very much information on his process. (Mainly due to it being for Blizzard, one of the best and leading online multiplayer games companies in the world). However, from his work, we can see he clearly has a particular artistic style that can be learned from.
More of Arnold Tsang’s other character designs – (Image sourced from ConceptArtWorld.Com)
His knowledge of the human anatomy and its proportions has clearly aided his process greatly. The extreme detail and accuracy of his pieces against their white background is incredible. I would say that the majority of his work is a mixture between a realistic and a cartoony art style. This obviously suits the style and design of almost every Blizzard game perfectly. The realistic detail with the cartoony/formalist exaggeration.
Take Reinhardt for example (image below), the size of Reinhardt’s head in comparison to his massive buffed up body, or even his ginormous weapon that he can just hold with one hand. The proportions are not exactly accurate to a regular human being. However, it fits perfectly within the context of Overwatch and him being a general badass.
Reinhardt – (Image sourced from ArtStation.Com)
Tsang’s ArtStation – https://www.artstation.com/artist/arnistotle
Tsang’s ConceptArtWorld – http://conceptartworld.com/artists/arnold-tsang/
Visual Effects Artist – Stephane Caretti (and team)
I was researching VFX Artists, and I genuinely struggled to find individual Visual Effects Artists. I then came across this video, this didn’t aid me in my hunt for this perfect VFX Artist. I just couldn’t find one that was half way as impressive as a team. This definately makes sense, I don’t feel that the Visual Effects industry is not one for the individual, it must be a group industry. Therefore, I looked into some of my favourite films, one being Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy.
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