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3DTotal: Tell us a little about your current job as a freelance artist in the games industry. What does it entail?
Craig:As a freelance artist, a large portion of my work is as a concept designer for games, but I have also been fortunate enough over the last year or so to work as an illustrator on advertising, toy manufacture, marketing, film and comic projects. While the concept work involves designing objects, environments and characters etc. that make up something like a video game, a great deal of my illustration work is more focused on portraying a specific scenario or scene which is made up of pre-established characters or content. The Illustration work, in this case, is simply about picture making.
3DTotal: Your digital concepts appear to be finely balanced between realism and a painterly quality. Can you enlighten us as to how you achieve this effect and the kinds of brushes and approaches you typically use?
Craig:I think this can be attributed to the fact that I learned to paint from looking at traditional illustrators who worked with gouache. When I first made the transition into digital painting, I still tended to think in terms of these old school techniques and worked as if it were an opaque medium. I’ve since started using greater amounts of transparent brushwork to achieve things such as the subtle value transitions or shifts in hue that tend to move the work toward realism. That also includes dropping in transparent layers, sometimes made up of photos or just a loose texture, in an abstract way to achieve that random but subtle detail that contributes to realism.
In terms of brushes, for the most part in the past I used the standard Photoshop brush set (like the hard |
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round or spatter brush). I have picked up some other brushes over the years and have recently started to create new brushes to achieve certain textures and emulate certain materials more quickly. I also work with a couple of amazing concept artists, Mike Sebalj and Thomas Pringle, who I’ve learned a ton from as well. I always get inspired by working with other artists and these guys are no exception.
3DTotal: You mention the importance of other artists in your development. If you had to name a handful of key influences in your life, whether it be an individual painting, a certain film, a specific experience etc., what would they be and why?
Craig: I’ve been inspired by the works of a lot of artists. From a pure painting standpoint, a big one is John Singer Sargent. He was huge with all the artists at Disney. I was lucky enough to see an exhibition of some of his works in LA once and his ability to capture light and form with such economy of brushwork is incredible. |
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As a student in Industrial Design, I was introduced to the work of Syd Mead, who was also an inspiration. He is the master of designing convincing objects, because he has a complete understanding of how real things are made.
Some traditional illustrators that influenced me were Robert McGinnis, Stanley Meltzoff and, of course, Ralph MacQuarrie. I studied his paintings and renderings for hours on end while I was growing up. |
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In terms of films, Star Wars, as for so many artists, was a huge inspiration, but other films with unique or strong visual design such as Dark City, Brazil, and 2001 were also influential.
3DTotal: There seems to be a definite reference to the late forties and early fifties in a number of your concept pieces, barring the western and fantasy themed paintings off course. Can you explain the ideas behind some of the work?
Craig: I think I tend to gravitate to that genre in my personal work because it is so different from the type of material I create in games. I am a big fan of old school sci-fi films and old pulp illustration. They seem to have a warm, evocative feeling to them, but are looked on as kind of campy or even cheesy. I guess I like the idea of taking those design cues and visual elements and giving them a serious or more realistic treatment.
3DTotal: A few of your concepts appear “deceptively simple” in terms of the |
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convincing lighting. Are all the scenes purely fictitious or are some based on real life locations or photographs, such as the office interior for example?
Craig: When it comes to lighting, I try to take note of interesting light situations in real life, films, photos and books. When I plan an image, one of the first things I consider is the lighting situation and if there is something I’ve seen that can be applied to the image at hand. I always try to create a lighting situation which will effectively “stage” what I imagine may be occurring in the scene. This is something I learned as a layout artist at Disney. They are so great at designing simple lighting situations that not only tell a story but are graphically interesting.
All the scenes in my work are fictitious, but definitely inspired by things I have seen. The office image is, once again, inspired by old pulpy detective stories. |
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