Creative Report
Alex Castro
Creative Report I contacted a concept and character artist called Robb Waters who has now been in the industry for 20 years. I first discovered his work when I found his name in ‘The Art of BioShock Infinite’ art book. Previous to this book I had actually played a few of the games he had worked on but I did not know his work or his name then. I started my research into him and his work and discovered he had a professional website with his portfolio of work and a contact page, as well as a Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn account. There I was able to find out some history about him including his educational background. I found out that he attended Kendall College of Art in the Michigan area and achieved a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in illustration between 1990-1993. In 2000, he joined Irrational Games studios and has worked on titles such as System Shock, Freedom Force and the BioShock series. He worked for Irrational games for 15 years and played the role of Senior Character Artist and Concept Artist creating about 90% of the characters in BioShock Infinite alone. He also took on other roles including storyboarding for in-game sequences and cinematics, in-game art such as posters, art and advertisements plus also graphic icons that represented the abilities you could wield.
Creative Report
Alex Castro
As well as working in a studio, on his website he says, “Robb is available for freelance work and commissions, and is excited to explore new projects with like-minded thinkers.� As part of a brief in PPP I contacted Robb to see if I could ask him some questions. I asked him questions about his artistic process, about advice he would give to somebody who soon will be leaving university like me and about what things inspire him. 1.
What or who influences you when you work?
My influences are sort of baked into my youth, so I draw from Hammer Horror films, Clive Barker books, Giger, Alien, Jack Kirby and Marvel comics...etc. 2. Do you ever get artists block when starting a new commission or illustration? as I know this is something me and my peers struggle with. Here and there any artist will hit this wall, I build in some time to play around with illustrations and or concepts so there can be a certain amount of discovery without pressure of a deadline. I often find if i'm blocked, I can step away from it, go out for lunch, a walk, poke around on eBay...etc...and find surprising inspiration to fold into my concept. 3. Do you have any advice for a soon to be graduate student for getting my foot in the door in a game studio? Of course have a solid portfolio, be versital, i.e. provide examples of a few styles in which you can work for a better chance at being a match for a particular studio. There is also the back door approach which i've seen work out for people in my experience...i.e. come in as a game play tester and gradually once people get to know you, you can show your work off and find yourself helping out with art or whatever and eventually if you are good, moving into that role. 4. Is there anything to consider when designing background characters specifically for video games?
Creative Report
Alex Castro
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "background" characters. However when designing a character for a video game you have to be able to answer a checklist of questions as you are designing them...i.e. who are they? what is their purpose in this world? If they are a creature how do they attack how would this influence their design? What is their motivation, How can I boil down the character to it's main take away. How original is your design? I usually ask myself the question, "have I seen this before? if so...I usually start over. In the end when someone is looking at this character concept they should be able to read a lot into it and not guess at what they are looking at. 5. Songbird has become such an iconic character, was there anything you did differently in your process that aided its acquired iconic status? Songbird was a tough character to design for sure, as the character inherently had the baggage of living up to the same status of the big daddy's...stepping out of the shadow of the Big Daddy's was always in the back of my mind. I wanted there to be a connection in vibe but the design had to be strikingly different in order to not feel simply like a recycled character. Really the character all came together after I figured out his head design. From the start I wanted the shape to be iconic in the same way the bouncer head is iconic. I played around with the head design as a simple silhouette and then sculpted the head with clay to further formulate it's iconography. Another example of this methodology is the head design of the boys of silence...it's instantly recognizable and iconic...utilising it's simple exaggerated shapes. Once the head felt good on Songbird I went down, the my personal list of questions to fill out the rest of the design. I also wanted to consider Irrational Games, the studio Robb worked for, to see if I could find out more about the studio. They are based in Boston Massachusetts and were founded in 1997. Before Irrational Games there were 2K Games (Boston) until 2007 when the studio was renamed Irrational Games. “Our studio is widely recognized as one of the industry’s leading game developers. We have earned a reputation for creating story-driven, award-winning games…”