Three Steps to Becoming a Better Artist Immediately

[Music] welcome to gdc 2018 this is three steps to becoming a better artist immediately i'm not that's not my style all right so i was uh listening to npr a few weeks ago because i wanted you guys to think i was smart and i caught this awesome story about this is called the flying fortress it's an airplane that boeing premiered in the 1930s and when they uh showed it off at the first air show it ended in tragic strategy tragedy and uh it wasn't that the super skilled pilots couldn't do some like backflip barrel roll maneuver it was actually something very simple they uh they they didn't check the landing gear properly and from there spawned this idea of checklists so every pilot on every plane that you guys flew here today on they have like a basic ass checklist of like landing gear and close the doors and super super basic stuff like all the hot shot pilots you know when they're zoned they can forget they're human they can forget basic things so a checklist actually can help prevent disaster and that checklist idea actually uh transferred over to medicine and and you know geniuses of medicine surgeons all that stuff they were making very easy mistakes and causing infections by not doing things in the right order overlooking a step here or there so again this idea of a very simple and basic checklist wash your hands then put on your gloves then do the tube thingy then take the plastic off like that basic checklist is what's uh saving lives today so my name is hori odochu that's how you pronounce it horia it's it's romanian and i'm currently the studio art director at arenanet if you're not familiar with arenanet we're up in seattle washington we're about 400 people strong uh lovely awesome freaking amazing place to work for um been there about a decade and um yeah we're known for guild wars uh which is a a uh mmo that's a free it's free you don't even have to pay for it all right uh but i've done other stuff in my 18 years of industry experience i was an animation studio uh animation student at digipen uh i did props for half-life 2 i taught concept art at future poly and i was an art director on second son for sucker punch here's some of my personal work just to get to know me a little bit some concept art um some freelance stuff some of my art for a second sun some old guild wars concept art and then here's a couple week old um life drawing sketch from the figure drawing sessions that we have every thursday at arena net there's a couple hours we block out just to draw and the reason i put these in here is because i want to show off no just kidding it's actually i'm going to look rather bad when i flip to the next slide because i want to talk about the guy who runs the class his name is aaron coberly and he's like an art genius he's been the character lead at arena net for about 14 years and i've known him long before that i attended his life drawing classes way back in high school and um this guy is obviously a super talent right like oil painting watercolor pencil these are 30 second gestures like you wearing like that's insane but here's the awesome thing about aaron he does this stuff three times a week four hours at a time and look what's in his pocket it's a crusty little checklist and i just texted him i was like aaron send me a picture of your checklist because i know he's always got it so just like surgeons just like fire pilots this dude who does it non-stop 24 7. he keeps a checklist of like squint okay like squint is on at the top of this this dude's list so you're not smarter than fighter pilot so my spiel here is about three super easy steps to hopefully make us all better artists but first i want to break down how i think about visual design this is my personal take might seem silly to some of you guys but i think it frames a little bit of the stuff i'm talking about so i see these three pillars in my head and the first is what i call the idea it's the intellectual read like what is it this could actually be a paragraph for all i care it's all typed up right it's just the idea what it is then is the design kind of like shape language proportions uh maybe the model um right even in the silhouette you can tell who's a real human and who's a cartoon right there and then the method of rendering is it oil paint or is it photoreal pbr in game is it cell shaded is it uh whatever just how's it uh rendered and then all that stuff is kind of in service of tone uh vibe mood things that enforce the the themes so like lighting color palette cinematography music would be a good uh candidate to go in here so in a one of many food analogies i have in here if art if our content is the food then tone is the restaurant so like mario kart happens at chuck e cheese and resident evil happens at my all house uh stupid jokes so so lastly is uh execution and this just literally means how well did you you know the kind of the craftsmanship aspect how well did you say did you execute on what you set out to do all right so to kind of explain this a little further i'll just use a simple uh uh example homer simpson so the tone is a clever crude comedy satire simpson uh the simpsons the idea is a dumb fat american family man with anger issues the design is cartoonish round shapes and the technique is cel-shaded and of course he looks like that so in my head what if you changed the technique to be 3d clay it looks like that if you change it to be photorealistic oh what gross gross now you're saying why didn't that look like a real person because in my head you got to change the design to be real human proportions and it might look like that and then uh if we talk about the tone uh it goes from kind of a crude comedy to maybe like a dark comedy like a tim burton thing and look like that all right so different tone different technique different design different tone oh what did i mess it up different idea jesus right different idea different technique different design different tone different execution you guys remember that that is tragic man so idea tone design technique execution these are uh they're tools for expression and what's unfortunate is i think this is where the magic happens like what are you saying what are you making what are you building that's where that happens in those two columns but everybody including myself kind of focuses on this other stuff right you go to heart station oh it's gorgeous looking and so you don't have to raise your hands but in like your brain raise your hand these are quotes that i've had in my life that i'm not terribly proud of but let's see if you guys agree like i want to draw like actually wood that's not anything you don't start like that uh i'm going to make a portfolio piece tonight what are you drawing what do you want portfolio please right um i need to get started freaking asap i can't think about this i got to go i got to go and what's my style what's my style like i don't lie to me all of you guys have thought some of that crap and you know what's my style well this is my dad and he's got a cool singing about style style uh expression is the ultimate goal cool jorya why is your dad talking about art well because he was my boss for 10 years at arena net he's this phenomenal uh concept artist designer and art director and i took his job he left he left but but i did i did come on i'm not gonna take his job um no but he taught me that expression truly is the the most important thing and yeah i got to work with a ton of other awesome people at arenanet teo prince carlin lim amber barrett levi hopkins richard anderson kotaki jamie jones thomas scholes neil hanson jason stokes he's just some of the people that taught me expression is the ultimate goal and then they don't sit down and tell me they didn't all say but you know just by by seeing them in action and the way they interact with people in the way that they think i i buy into this oh yeah who cares about expression why why should i care about expression we're commercial artists this is their job like scoot the toilet over this is our job who cares well i don't think you guys would be in this room if you weren't actually artists like the commercial part is to pay the bills and whatever eat food but we're all artists so that's what i'm talking to today is the artist so here it is three steps to becoming a better artist immediately oh my god i'm not going to lose that lens flare because it's hot it makes it pop all right so checklist this is it get you get your e pencils ready or whatever i'm just joking all right so the first one is about just being groovy and cool nice people which i'm sure like 90 percent of you are 85 percent of you are uh it's it's about being open-minded uh taking direction well being friendly that's sort of important more important stuff in this uh very collaborative endeavor we call making games i couldn't get that into a short enough thing so i just said don't be a dick that's my number one it's not terribly connected to the next two but time and time again since i was whatever first starting out in the industry until right now to when i was a teacher like this is the number one thing i cannot stress enough it's it's foundational all right number two stop and think please what are you doing what are you doing what are you saying just stop take some time and and think before you act because i i think it's so um uh stressful to have that empty piece of paper you got to go get stuff on there like just take a moment take a moment and lastly use reference pretty self-explanatory but i think every great artist um knows that this is the key there's a difference between professionals and amateurs all right number one so at arenanet we actually have a no jerk policy i've seen them send people home like mid interview like you could be the most talented person but if you got that like rock star attitude where you know i'm the best get the get out there's the door because the whole the whole point of games is that it's it's a collaborative environment um these are a couple creative geniuses here um john cleese talks about creativity uh being kind of a willingness to play you can't play when people are being next door you can't play around when people are stressing you out or saying no all the time you know you have even when you're by yourself you have to kind of give yourself that space and that time to for your mind to wander and be creative and be in that open state um and and you know if you're leads in here be jim henson say thank you to all your artists like just make it a cool place to be to work kind of that like groovy i know that sounds silly but like we all need that to be successful so don't be a dick um i try to put it in like a cool sports analogy to impress you guys um but then i got distracted by this dude because he looks no hold on he looks like a perfect mix of john lithgow and my buddy daniel right so i had i had to change the poster um i changed it to this a creature is a feature and that's like a very cool rhyming thing that i made up but what i mean by that is of course when you're making a creature in the game you're not just making something in zbrush and chucking it in that's nothing that's a mesh that's creature is as a backstory and like how does it move where does it live what sounds does it make what's the game design what's the ai what effects come off of it when it shoots its laser beams like all of that stuff that's the creature that's what the player interacts with that's what that's your art form and so if you ever think you're making something on your own you're not a creature is a feature we're working together the best work that i've ever done and the most enjoyable and satisfying was when i was working in strike teams where you show up to the table and there's somebody from animation and art and design and uh literally every one of every uh department that's going to touch this thing you're like alright by next friday we got to make this thing fun whether it's this and second sun this uh r1 laser shot needs to be way more impactful and fun or or this creature needs to be more badass or whatever like we got to take all these things into consideration and put them all into the creature and you can't be at that table unless there's trust respect and honest collaboration and by trust i mean of course that you have to kind of trust people that you can give them feedback across disciplines all that stuff it's safe you respect them to do their jobs though you don't try to like i'm not gonna go tell the sound guy i'll tell him yeah i think it's just but i need to do my job i need to draw it as good as possible to make sure he knows what it sounds like and i could say this sounds good that sounds bad but at the end of the day we're all sharing it it's our creature and i gotta respect that he's gonna do the right thing and that is what true collaboration is so again just don't be a dick and if you're starting out in the industry or you got junior gremlins on your team everybody knows the first six months of being in the industry you learn more than four years of school like my mother-in-law says you got you got two eyes and two ears only one mouth and she's right like you gotta be this when you're when you're starting out in an industry or anytime like listen collaborate just be like this i don't know what this reference is i hope it's not some weird puppet weird porno or sorry um anyway but if if you're cool and you take critique while and all that stuff you get chosen for better projects better teams and then pretty soon you end up on people's uh superhero list we all have this list like right now if i was like you get a billion dollars and you can start a game company like you're like oh to hire jason and so-and-so like you know exactly who you'd hire and the only way you end up on that list is not just to be super talented it's to be awesome to work with so start making your list all right so you learn more by not by being cool you do better work collaborating and you get more jobs all right number one is done beat that horse to death number two stop and think all right art is visual communication here's a sweet example i i can't take credit for that i didn't make that up i'm not that smart i thought it was hilarious but i was just searching for pie charts because it's like a pie chart is this like two-second piece of information that actually stands for like a whole ton it's like a wall of nonsense text that's told you know through a cool pie chart like visual communication is just amazing um it transcends time like what's that a cow what's that a horse cool you know who got us to say that together we all said it probably didn't show up on film but everybody was saying cowan horse uh this was awesome i got goosebumps uh that was drawn like 17 000 years ago are you kidding me like you don't have to speak caveman ease like you just know what that is visual communication amazing and uh international crew here right no matter where you live on earth you know what this is one two three stop all right i'm gonna add two more things you guys tell me ready stop this is that famous nc hammerstein hilarious all right so the point is we all agree it's visual communication right so for the the point of this chat i'm going to just say it's straight up communication and first thing when you come up to the to the podium like what that's that's not how you start like i mean even i'm from romania once people are like oh say something remaining i can't think of anything to say i'm a grown-ass man i can't think of a sense because what are you thinking saying something in a british accent is stupid forget forget stop for style sake and start focusing on why am i doing this what do i want to say who am i saying it to and really importantly for expression how can i be most expressive to reach the best these are your tools right here so think about that stuff stop and think so in game design terms that means fill in your own design spec obviously you know if somebody sat there and typed up all the details for you your job's done make sure you check all the boxes but if you're doing something um like a barrel maybe somebody didn't give you a bunch of info they're like make a barrel okay so i'll go around to the artist i'll do my rounds and be like what are you working on a barrel come on man i need more information uh friday it's gonna be due to friday it's like that's not like no i want adjectives awesome descriptive adjectives where does it go who uses it who made it all that stuff and i didn't write this down but i hate the word generic oh it's just a generic barrel get out get out like there's no such thing even like this is this is the most generic barrels i can find wood barrel right all of them have a story to tell like what environment was it in how long how weathered who made it what's the technology of the people making it like the different you know the rapping what is that bamboo or something the one on the left like speaks to the things that the people have around them it like ties it to the the time and place where it's at like which one of these explodes right like barrels are like snowflakes they're like fingerprints there's a huge delta between what a barrel can mean so do your homework my point is anything can have character anything uh there's no small assignment so wait to kind of depict that is pretty simple here the harry potter uh what's this gryffindor gryffindor common room like it's inviting and warm and friendly just like these blokes look at them you want to be a gryffindor where do these live look at them of course they live here right like this place is better than you it's expensive but it's like off-putting it's not inviting it's cold right so just just the way a set designer puts different pieces of furniture into a set to bring out a mood um you can do that so i think of anything if it's a barrel a creature whatever i think of it as a pot sticker because i'm kind of fat so what are all the yummy things that go into a pot sticker to make it delicious and you shove those in so if you're making a creature and so what are you saying what are you making i'm making a creature what kind of creature start filling your design document up um of course at work a lot of that's taken care of in this track team but you know in your personal art like are you working on a movie concept or are you making a game like all that stuff makes a difference so i pre-did this like a cooking show i filled it out i said we're making a game it's a first person shooter you know is it fantasy steampunk i went with sci-fi enemy creature it's a monster and then why would you think of all that stuff even if you're just doing your own game because you're not going to have a monster in a sci-fi game that's a unicorn right and so you're like oh maybe it's a mutant or a robot or a beast okay those are sci-fi things i'm going to say robot intelligent and then oh back up to game how does it move is it like i'm trying to shoot it a bunch and one bullet kills it but it moves so fast i can't hit it that's a ninja or is it like slow and sturdy and i'm just emptying my clip into it and it falls right at my feet i don't know just being a weirdo all right so that's that's like a tank enemy it was getting too serious so all that info goes into your gyoza goes into your pod stick it goes in your game design document and then you're not just making a creature i don't know by friday you're saying i'm making an intelligent robot tank enemy creature for sci-fi shooter and like that could be a damn paragraph we just don't have all day here um but the whole point is stop and think about what you're doing so you can so you know what you're doing that sounds obvious but anyway it's visual communication so you have to know what to say before you say it fill out your own design spec and use what why who how all those that's your big tools right there and then the last one is use reference um if you're not familiar with that picture it's of course from this famous scene in titanic where he's referencing the life model i have a scene right here i think the director the director drew that no but we know we know that the the you know traditional artists have always had uh live models and that in animation whether it's like just you know little facial expression stuff that they pick up for for the little mermaid or like rotoscoping for peter pan or or even the one-to-one uh expression capture that they do for like uh the golem dude what's an andy circus you know it's almost like one to one you need you need reference like it just grounds things it brings life to them it makes them more believable and and good and it's not that reference is all about realism um this is an old episode i saw the i think it's on youtube uh the mickey mouse show where they had or what's it called mickey mouse club where they had these four awesome background painters go out and they painted a tree i'm like that's not real but you know the guy in the middle is sort of cubistic this one on the right guy went to town on the really groovy awesome um tree bark like you had to be there and experience the tree to get that crazy with a tree bark he wouldn't have had that successful and expressive a piece if he wasn't live looking at the thing so just forget forget your uh your needs your corrections and do a little internetting like we have supercomputers in our pockets like there's no excuse to not not do that um and then there's like this little known artist i found on art station uh so look there's no there's no arguing he's a master master draftsman painter all that stuff but i think his superpower comes in selecting the awesome models that have the most character and composing them in like the perfect kind of emotional shot like sure the painting brings it to a whole other level but like that photo if you if you had photos like that on your instagram his instagram would be off the hook so the way i think what i think of it is creating art is like arranging flowers so put yourself in that mine mine frame all of these are beautiful none of y'all could do this i can't like this is this is amazing and nobody invented any of those flowers oh it's from my own imagination it's my own flower design get get out of here it's just making the right selections and putting them together in interesting ways and i bet you if if i gave 10 pros the same flowers they each make a different arrangement out of it like quit thinking you're smarter than everybody just look up some damn reference and make a good reference tragic uh delicate exotic somber not the first row on google not the first thing that pops up right like shitty generic crappy reference gets you your first apartment and then like expressive dynamic interesting reference gets you the harry potter common rooms right so expressive reference can say whatever you're trying to say for you it's just about stopping thinking and selecting the right stuff or as um peter koenig shared a uh uh quote with me that he got from i don't know it's like an old industry saying and it's and it's crude but it makes a lot of sense if you want good eat good food that'll that'll stick in your brains there all right so so back to what we were talking about we're talking about our creature so what are you what are you saying what are you making an intelligent robot tank enemy creature for a sci-fi shooter all right the whole point of that was to generate a list of creatures that we could do a google search for and remember i did this i did it to make it stick in your minds or drawing a tank guy that could take a lot of bullets no i didn't that guy can take the most bullets all right so why not a rhino well hold on you said intelligent robot creatures so out of these guys it's actually not the rhino it's probably the gorilla that's a better choice so i take this gorilla and i treat it sort of the armature maybe for the for the monster and i say i have a tank enemy sci-fi shooter robot gorilla thingy and i shove those into the gyoza and now it's time for reference dipping sauces the dipping sauces i don't know why i'm doing that voice there it is so if we shove our thingy into kind of junkyard dipping sauce bear with me boom you get an intelligent junkyard guard robot creature for sci-fi shooter right like that makes sense or if i go into the badass military sauce i chose mustard because it's almost military colored pretty cool extra points uh you get something that looks like this an intelligent military assault bot tank enemy for sci-fi shooter either way i mean you saw it it was going completely different ways but the point is each one of those were super expressive had lots of information about them had lots of character and interesting references pulled again you got to express yourself and you can just do it by curating expressive reference and then just combining it in interesting ways there's no there's no other super trick so don't be a dick stop and think and use reference and i'll end with a couple slides left um so my friend jamie jones got this from like a real painter because he reads and but anyway uh there's this old saying that like if you have an hour to paint use the last 10 minutes to paint use a 50 minutes to plan and think that's that's pretty epic pretty cool i think it was actually 45 minutes but this is the only clip art i found so 15 minutes uh the the point is all the stuff all the thought is going to help you express what are you trying to express and all the things we talked about are in that first column the idea what is it what's the tone what's the mood and then all the other things can kind of serve us that so if you're doing something cartoony you double down like those cute yoshi games now they're made out of whoa oh that's adorable right like double down double down but again if you don't have this first column taken care of if you don't stop and think about what you're doing and use really good reference you're not going to be there so if pilots can avoid disaster with a checklist of basics and surgeons have a super simple wash your hands kind of basic checklist to save lives and aaron's crusty ass piece of paper can help him make this like fantastic awesome art then maybe just maybe you guys put this in your pocket and we all become better artists instantly thank you very much i'm not sure if you have real time for questions or it's not rocket science is it awesome no questions all right thank you very much thank you

Channel: GDC

Views: 146,173

Rating: 4.9568624 out of 5

Keywords: gdc, talk, panel, game, games, gaming, development, hd, design, arenanet, concept art, visual arts

Id: amlwcI8dh_g

Length: 27min 51sec (1671 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 01 2021