Environment Artist
Artist Workflows
Research
When creating Environment art the artist will use a workflow which suits their style, this will be their own workflow that they have developed over time to perfect it. The workflow takes them through the development of the art in stages. To start with the Artist will be given a theme and will start to gather research on this theme. This can be done in a multitude of ways, these being books, looking at other Artists art of the same theme and also by using the internet to gather extra information. By carrying out this research it allows the artist to ensure that all of the work they are going to be producing is. From doing research the artist will gather various pieces of information about the given theme and also a lot of reference pictures, by having this information and pictures available it allows them to create the most correct art possible as it will be based on the information they have gathered. Also by collecting a set of images it allows the artist to ensure that all of the artwork they produce looks realistic and matches up with the theme.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhcZtSKcXUY
This video shows an Environment Artist taking us through his workflow of how he creates Environment Art. It starts off with him showing us how he creates the basic outlines for his work and then continues further into adding colour and also the finishing touches.
The second workflow is nearly the same as the first one as the artist is showing us how he creates an Environment, however I have noticed that this artist will create a better piece of work as they are checking their references a lot more often than the first artist workflow that I looked at. This could be because this artist is at the very beginning and wants to use them to make his work look good as the other artist already had a rough sketch laid out and most likely used his referenced images then. By constantly checking the references the artist can ensure that his work is accurate and will look more like the design and stick to the theme rather than if he only checked them once or twice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUYwep4sc1o
This Environment Artist shows us his workflow as he produces his Environment Art, we can also see that he is using a lot of references and is checking them throughout the video to make sure that he is sticking to the theme and also making sure that his work is right.
By comparing these two workflows I can see there is a slight difference as the first artist doesn’t seem to be using his referenced images at all, this is most likely because he has already created a rough sketch of his design and feels like he doesn’t need them anymore, however in the second video I noticed that the artist seems to be checking his references more clearly which shows he is trying to keep his design accurate and trying to make sure it stays within the theme.
Historical Influences
Space Invaders (1978)
Space Invaders is one of the best known games in the industry and in the world, since this iconic game was released in 1978 its popularity had grown and decreased over the years. Nowadays the game is put into the retro genre because it is an older game and the play style of it is repetitive and not much changes throughout the levels.
Since Space Invaders was a fairly simplistic game, there wasn’t much room to be able to create different environments for the levels as the programs and technology wasn’t around back then, because this technology didn’t exist it didn’t give the creators much choice for the Environment Art which in this case would be the levels and backgrounds. We can see that between each level there wasn’t much change as it just increased the enemies and the background colour may have changed.
This is a picture of concept art for Space Invaders, this shows the models for each of the aliens that would be made and shows them drawn freehand and then also in the grid so they are the correct size, from freehand to the grid there are slight changes which is to be expected as assets can change all the time throughout the designing phase of the game. We can also see from the picture that they were using a pencil and paper for the concept art and this is because technology wasn’t as advanced as it is today however the art is still really good considering these limitations.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009)
In 2009 Modern Warfare 2 was released, this game is probably one of the most iconic Call of Duty games ever made due to its popularity, even though it has been 10 years since its release the game is still widely known as the best game made in Call of Duty franchise.
There were many different maps made for this game and each of which required various pieces of Concept art to ensure that they were correctly made and looked right. By looking at concept art we can see how the artwork progressed for each map and level, and how they made sure each map was correctly styled and every building was made right. Although Concept art was hard to find I did manage to find some although it may be newer than the game in which case the artwork is stylized by using the images from the game to create a more realistic image.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/q0AX2
The Concept Art for this game is really good considering the game is 10 years old. We can see that a lot of time and effort was put into these images and they all show places from within the game which shows the artist used various references to get the pictures right. The colours used also fully correctly represent the places they have recreated which also makes the places look exactly the same.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011)
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is one of the best games in the past 10 years with great Environment Art. The team that created Skyrim had 3 years to work on it, this proved highly successful as the Environment Art is truly stunning and well made for its time.
The pictures that I have posted below show a lot of Concept art for Skyrim which would have taken a long time to produce since everything in the game is really well made and has a lot of detail. Throughout the Concept Art we can see multiple pictures of characters and environments which show a lot of detail and that was only the first stage of development, this reinforces the idea that over the 3 years to create the game they didn’t mess about with time as these images are really well made and show a lot of different environments and character styles.
Since Skyrim is a lot newer than Space Invaders technology has advanced a long way since 1978, due to this Environment Artists have had more ways to display and create Environments because this sort of Art is needed in all games nowadays. The main difference between these games is that one had little to no Environment Art because the time it was made didn’t allow it due to technology not being good enough, the other has much better technology and had a much longer time period in which to create these Environments.
Battlefield 4 (2013)
Battlefield 4 came out in 2013 and made some great steps forwards for Environment Art as the Environment in this game was amazing to look at as it was so well produced, this is because the Environment Artists had a good amount of time to produce the artwork for this game and they also had better technology to help them in creating it.
Looking through the Concept Art pictures on ArtStation I can see that all of the art is well made and highly detailed which tells me it must have taken a lot of time to produce and work on. If the pictures were made before the game then they would’ve helped the developers create the game and make everything look the way it should do in the designs, whereas if the art was made after the game then the artist would’ve used screenshots from the game to create the art, however by looking at the description I can tell that the art was made before the game as the artist mentions how they were planning and doing prototypes before the game.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/gWzBP
Call of Duty Black Ops 4 (2018)
Call of Duty Black Ops 4 was released in 2018, 40 years after space invaders and we can see that Environment Art and Concept Art has come a long way since then and I will be showing this with some Concept Art images to help me. In the first link below I found some concept art for the environment assets in the game which was mainly a couple of buildings for two of the maps. In the images he shows various screenshots of the buildings and they are normally up close as this is the best way to show how much detail is in each design. He shows 3 various building designs, one is of a wooden building in the forest which is well detailed and shows a lot of high detail, in the first image he is a bit further away from the house than the second image but in the second he has got closer so we can see how much detail really has been put into each design.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/4beYOk
In this image we can see a really detailed image of a blockout for a gun that was made in game. They drew all of the attachments for the gun and labelled them all so everybody knew what they were, they made this easier by drawing all of the attachments around the gun as to show where they would go and make it easier for people to see them. The concept art for the gun is very detailed though and looks really good and we can see that it looks like the artist spent a long time creating this Concept Art
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rRdBRL
Contemporary Influences
Modern Software
The first piece of modern software that I will talk about is Graphics Tablets, these are very important in the industry today and anyone who creates any type of art will be using one as they are very helpful and can help create powerful pieces of art. They have been in use since the early 1980s and have come a long way since then and are still getting better but they are one of the most important pieces of equipment to have these days as an artist of any type. Graphics tablets also lets the artist choose what type of settings they want to use for their artwork, for example they can choose different brush settings how hard or light the brush pressure should be and a whole lot more, by using these settings the artist can create anything they want.
Photoshop
The next piece of software that I will be talking about is Photoshop. Photoshop was released back in 1990 and has improved a lot since then and is used in the industry by a lot of artists as it helps them create realistic pieces of artwork. Photoshop has a lot of features designed to help artists create their artwork, there are layer tools which can be used to put different parts of your artwork on different layers therefore allowing you to edit a small part of your image instead of all of it at once. Another good feature is that there are a lot of different brushes in the brush settings and all of these have their own use and they are also very helpful in adding texture to objects, which is very important as Environment art will need to be textured well and a wide range of brushes can help do this effectively.
Artists
Grzegorz Baran – Senior Environment Artist
Although I have only recently discovered this artist I can say that his artwork is very impressive and immersive and we can see this by looking at his ArtStation as it shows his artwork from the games he has worked on such as: Tom Clancy’s The Division 2. In this picture we can see an incredible attention to detail when it comes to all of the assets around the scene and also how he has created a realistic environment with all the vegetation growing through the floors and all the plants growing all over the buildings, by doing this he has created an environment which makes it feel abandoned and isolated which I feel is very visible just by looking at this piece of art. Looking through the rest of his artwork for The Division 2 I can see that his artwork is amazing. Since I like creating Environment Art I could use his artwork as a guideline and try and create my own environment art based off of his, I feel that this would be a good way to get better as I would be using some professional artwork and then changing it up and creating my own from it.
Social Issues
Lots of games companies nowadays are creating games which are making us more aware of the environment and this is because we need to know more about it since the environment is becoming more damaged and they want to make us more aware of it. A lot of these environment awareness games always use the environment as the plot line and will always try to get across a positive message about the environment, I feel that by creating these games and playing them it will spread more awareness about the environment however I also think that maybe not enough people know about them for them to have that big of an impact on the environment unless you go out of your way to search for these games.
One of these games that focuses heavily on the environment is Cities: Skylines – Green Cities, this was an add on that was released in 2017 and it added a load of new assets to the game which included a load of items which made the game seem more environmentally friendly. They added eco-friendly buildings and shops all in a bid to raise further awareness about the environment. I believe that by adding this add-on the company are further trying to raise awareness about the environment as this feature will give players a lot more to play with and will enable them to create their own city and control the pollution levels in order to try and stay green.
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