Ashley Swidowski & Claire Hummel
Explicit content warning
11/13/18 • 100 min
We're taking a big ol' swan dive into character design and concept art on this week's episode, and so we're SUPER lucky to have Ashley (formerly a Concept Artist on The Last of Us: Left Behind, and since then she's worked on Uncharted 4: A Thief's End as Lead Character Concept Artist, as well as the upcoming The Last of Us Part II) and Claire (formerly an Artist and Associate Production Designer for Microsoft Studios, where she worked on a bunch of Kinect games, Fable Legends, Sunset Overdrive, Powerstar Golf, and more. She also was the Production Designer for Westworld VR, and currently works as the Art Director on In the Valley of Gods for Campo Santo/Valve) joining us to talk about the misconceptions around what a concept artist does, how they each approach character design, what they want from the writers/creative director when they're starting out with designing one, working for the project instead of yourself, how they know when they're done, the importance of taking breaks and having personal projects, how to achieve good storytelling and character work through costuming, how "real" you can push things before it becomes so novel for players that they're distracted by it, cloth sims: the final frontier of video game character design, making art for VR, major influences, how to create characters that are lifelike and not superficial, the secret to navigating creative disagreements successfully, the importance of failing and making mistakes, which game stories they've responded to recently, and MORE!
Our Guests on the Internet
Ashley on Twitter and Instagram.
Claire on Twitter and her Website.
Stuff We Talked About
Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles & Ted Orland
Our theme music was composed by 2Mello, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.
We're taking a big ol' swan dive into character design and concept art on this week's episode, and so we're SUPER lucky to have Ashley (formerly a Concept Artist on The Last of Us: Left Behind, and since then she's worked on Uncharted 4: A Thief's End as Lead Character Concept Artist, as well as the upcoming The Last of Us Part II) and Claire (formerly an Artist and Associate Production Designer for Microsoft Studios, where she worked on a bunch of Kinect games, Fable Legends, Sunset Overdrive, Powerstar Golf, and more. She also was the Production Designer for Westworld VR, and currently works as the Art Director on In the Valley of Gods for Campo Santo/Valve) joining us to talk about the misconceptions around what a concept artist does, how they each approach character design, what they want from the writers/creative director when they're starting out with designing one, working for the project instead of yourself, how they know when they're done, the importance of taking breaks and having personal projects, how to achieve good storytelling and character work through costuming, how "real" you can push things before it becomes so novel for players that they're distracted by it, cloth sims: the final frontier of video game character design, making art for VR, major influences, how to create characters that are lifelike and not superficial, the secret to navigating creative disagreements successfully, the importance of failing and making mistakes, which game stories they've responded to recently, and MORE!
Our Guests on the Internet
Ashley on Twitter and Instagram.
Claire on Twitter and her Website.
Stuff We Talked About
Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles & Ted Orland
Our theme music was composed by 2Mello, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.
Previous Episode
Ben Esposito & Andrew Shouldice
Puns are OUTLAWED on this episode as we talk with Ben (Creator of Donut County, and also a game designer, level designer, sound designer, artist, programmer, writer, and more, with credits on Brooklyn Trash King, Bubsy3d: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective, The Unfinished Swan, What Remains of Edith Finch, and Tattletail. Also a co-founder of Glitch City LA and Arcane Kids) and Andrew (pretty much the one-man developer behind Tunic, which he’s been working on full time since leaving Silverback Games in 2015) about skulls near toilets and environmental storytelling, designing a story where the player doesn't fully understand what's happening in the world, when to start thinking about theme, garbage chic, coming up with a game to match a specific feeling, freedom being a terrible thing for an artist, the emotional expense of investing yourself in someone else's project, the danger of snacks and working from home, when you know you’re done with something, games dictating their length, naming your game, keeping a good work/life balance when your boss is you, secrets decisions, and how to Twitter well.
Our Guests on the Internet
Andrew's Twitter and Tunic's Twitter.
Ben's Twitter, Website, and Donut County's Twitter.
Stuff We Talked About
Emily Short's Blog Post About Donut County
Donut County is a Game About Swallowing Los Angeles and Realizing You're an Asshole by Laura Hudson
Our theme music was composed by 2Mello, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.
Next Episode
Ryan Benno & Ellen Shelley
We've got another art-focused episode for you this month as we're joined by Ryan (environment artist on Hunted: The Demon's Forge, The Wolf Among Us, The Walking Dead, Sunset Overdrive, Ratchet and Clank, and the senior environment artist on Marvel's Spider-Man. He's also one of the hosts of the Environment Art Podcast) and Ellen (currently a lighting artist at Supermassive Games, previously a 3D artist at Sony’s London Studio, a 3D Environment Artist at Little Wolf Studio Ltd, and a VR developer at Yelo Architects) to talk about whether degrees are necessary anymore to find work, where do you start when making an environment, style guides, navigating creative disagreements, environmental storytelling, the overabundance of sci-fi hallways, narrative/visual techniques that games still haven’t tried much, soft cardboard boxes, starting with the blank page, the difference between making a twentysomething-year-old’s apartment vs Peter Parker’s apartment, what can’t you tweak when you’re building an environment that everyone knows, breaking walls that were not meant to break, readability, accessibility, and know that not everything you make needs to be at 11.
Our Guests on the Internet
Ryan on Twitter.
Ellen on Twitter.
Stuff We Talked About
Our theme music was composed by 2Mello, and our logo was created by Lily Nishita.
If you like this episode you’ll love
Episode Comments
Generate a badge
Get a badge for your website that links back to this episode
<a href="https://goodpods.com/podcasts/script-lock-171701/ashley-swidowski-and-claire-hummel-10584132"> <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/badges/generic-badge-1.svg" alt="listen to ashley swidowski & claire hummel on goodpods" style="width: 225px" /> </a>
Copy