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3DTotal: You have a very painterly style in your approach. Is your art background one of painting or fine art?
Mikko: I’ve been playing around with computers since I was a kid. I was doing a lot of pixel graphics with DeluxePaint ten years ago. It was only a few years back when I realized you could actually paint with a computer. I had gotten more and more interested in traditional painting when I saw some great digital artworks around the internet forums. Nobody ever taught me much about painting, despite the fact that I spent a while in an art school. Now that I’ve been working full-time for a while, I haven’t had much spare time for traditional, let alone fine art.
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3DTotal: How did you come to work in the games industry?
Mikko: I went to an art school in Finland but didn’t quite feel comfortable over there. I quit and took a day job so I could practise painting during the evenings and did that for a year. Eventually the hard work paid off, and I joined a developer called Red Lynx. Since then, I've worked at Team17 in UK and most recently, at Recoil Games here in Helsinki.
3DTotal: Do you get to do much drawing in your current job or is most of your time spent working in a purely digital medium?
Mikko: I like to do quick marker sketches when I’m trying to put down ideas. I’ve done that a lot, but recently I’ve shifted even more towards a purely digital approach. My personal works are mostly 2d digital paintings done in Photoshop. In my day job there is a lot of 3d involved too. For that I use 3ds Max, Maya, and Mudbox. Whatever gets the job done basically.
3DTotal: Could you talk us through how you approach a new painting and describe the processes you follow?
Mikko: There’s so many ways. I try to avoid developing a routine. I often start with a mess, and try to build something out of it. Somehow it all ends |
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up looking the same, so I guess I’m not trying hard enough. As I work mostly on environment type paintings, I’ve found using 3d block modelling very helpful. It helps you to set up the perspective, and generally play around with the camera. Then I usually do a greyscale value study, just to get the basic forms down quickly. I keep adding colour gradually, refining the forms at the same time. All in all, I try to keep the process as simple as possible, avoiding any unnecessary “tricks” that could drift my concentration away from the subject. I like to play around with different tools, but when it comes to communicating an idea, I like to be as strict and fast as possible. |
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3DTotal: Could you describe how block modelling has helped your work referring to specific examples?
Mikko: What I refer to as block modelling could be just creating a simple 3d grid to help with the perspective drawing, or something as complicated as modelling a series of rough objects and rendering a greyscale image with radiosity and cast shadows. It all depends on the complexity of the picture that you want to do. I don’t really have any good example images of this that I could share, but I’ve done some matte painting style cityscapes with a bunch of stock model buildings which literally had every window modelled in there. That kind of 3d help |
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can really make the painting process easier, as you can just focus on adjusting the lighting of the piece, paint interesting textures and so on. The line between a 2d and 3d artist is a blurry one. I prefer using whatever techniques that may help the piece and speed up the process. |
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