Working as an Illustrator in the Game Industry

Introduction

Hello! My name is Edward Chee. I am a freelance illustrator/concept artist from Malaysia, and I am also one of the mentors at CGVerse Online School. Throughout the years of my career, I have worked on a variety of projects such as Legend of the Cryptids and The Elder Scrolls: Legends, Warcraft 3 Reforged. 

Drawing has always been a hobby of mine for as long as I can remember. It has always been my dream to be able to make a living out of it, so being where I am today, I always feel very grateful that I can spend my day-to-day life creating illustrations as a full-time job.

I mostly learned how to brush up my artistic skills from various books and online resources. I believe there are not many educational requirements for illustrator jobs in the gaming industry. As long as you have a good basic artistic foundation, it will be enough to kick start the career.

Career

Like most artists, I started my first job in this industry as a novice artist at a local studio. From there, I received guidance from more experienced co-workers and thus, I gained a lot of insight into how to improve the quality of my work and how the pipeline works in a real game studio – which gradually led me to where I am today. It was also there that I got the opportunity to work with most of the bigger well-known industries such as Blizzard and Bethesda.

I worked at that local outsourcing studio for 4+ years (since 2015) before I decided to quit and start my career as a freelancer. Most of the clients that I have worked with (during my freelancing career) are on long term contracts. 

Working in a Team

Generally, the art directors and creative directors are the ones responsible to ensure that every single artwork, although produced by different artists, is on the same track according to the specific art direction that they have planned for the project. Working as concept artists, we must understand that we are not working alone. There is a pipeline to follow and a schedule to adhere to in order to complete the project on time. This is when effective communication within the team comes into play, to avoid any misunderstandings that could hinder the overall production schedule.

Since everything has been set by the art director, we should put our artistic egos aside and comply with any amendments that are requested by the clients as they are the ones who make the final decision, based on what is best for the production of the project. What we can do is to collate all the information (requirements and instructions) given by the art director (client), visualize, and then mold them into something presentable. 

Is 3D/Photobashing Bad for Traditional Concept Art?

I believe most commercial artists will find themselves asking this question at some point in their life. Before answering this question, I would like to first give a brief overview of how working in the game industry is like.

When you work in the game industry, you will come to realize that it is a very fast-paced environment. All artists are given tight deadlines for every stage of development, which is why clients would prefer to work with artists who are efficient with good time-management skills. As artists, by being effective in our job, we can come up with more ideas within the given time and thus get a higher chance of producing a better concept.

Hence, this is why I do not think it is necessarily bad for professionals to integrate photos or 3D into their work. Personally, I have used 3D and photobashing techniques to support my drawings as well. I do not think that having these additional skillsets is extremely bad for the art community because at the end of the day they are just a collection of tools and skills to help the artist complete their work. In the end, it is always up to the artists to decide what kind of visual experience they want to create for the clients/audience using all these tools and which workflow is more preferable for them.

Character Art vs. Environment Art

For me, there are no significant differences between these two types of art as the basic requirements, such as the perspective, color theory, and composition, are still equally important. The only difference is that I usually use a 3D base for my character art, whereas, for my environment art, there is no 3D base at all. 

However, I am currently learning how to use Blender. By using this software, I hope I can build 3D bases for my environment art in the future to get a better visual understanding of the correct perspective for the drawings I have in mind.

Working on Drawings in Photoshop

I always use Photoshop to work on all my drawings and illustrations. When I work on a drawing, I usually prioritize the overall finishing and shapes in the drawing instead of just focusing on the effects. For personal drawings like the Ghibli series fanarts, it is more fun for me to just paint it stroke by stroke similar to how traditional paintings are done.

Before I start to work on my drawings in Photoshop, I will gather various background scenes and close up shots of the materials to see how they are drawn for the film, as references for my drawings. From there, I will have enough information on what kind of lighting is suitable for the scene and what color temperature I should use for the drawing. Once that is done, I will start to work on my drawing by nailing down the bigger forms and lighting with larger brushes in Photoshop and slowly making my way down to the smaller forms.

As for the brush settings and effects, I generally do not use any specific brushes for my drawings. I only use default brushes for my drawings, but, if I must add any fancy effects to it, I usually paint them with default brushes and play around with the brush and layer modes until I get the most satisfactory result.

• This is the first progress after I have blocked down the bigger forms and lighting of the drawing by using larger brushes in Photoshop:

• Then, by referring to the style of the references I have gathered, I will slowly add more and more details into my drawing:

Note: I do not use special brushes for this kind of drawing. Most of the time I just use a basic chalk brush like this:

Advice for Artists

Spend more energy and time in the early phases of drawing: explore more possible ideas by creating more sketches, and also find a good composition that you love and apply it to the drawing. By doing so, you will save up time and energy spent on fixing tedious mistakes as you keep adding more and more details into your drawings.

Although there are a lot of tools that we could use today, the fundamentals of art should not be neglected as they are one of the keys to a convincible drawing. Different types of art require different basic skills: perspective and composition are crucial for environment drawing; anatomy, form, and gestures - for character illustrations and so forth. However, these are skills that we cannot rush to learn overnight. They are mastered little by little through constant and consistent practices.

Nowadays, there are a lot of social media sites that we can use to stay connected with the artist and keep ourselves up to date with the current industry. Artstation is one of the best social media sites to use because not only does it allow us to stay connected and updated, but it is also a great platform for us to showcase our work for the world to see.

Edward Chee, Illustrator/Concept Artist

Interview conducted by Ellie Harisova