Confetti’s’ Industry Week kicked off today with a lecture from a well-known Artist and Illustrator called Neil Roberts, he is a 3D artist who creates his own type of hypo realistic art using the tools provided with software such as 3DS Max and Photoshop as his bread and butter. Whilst being widely known for his cover art for the 2000 AD and Judge Dredd graphic novels he has in fact contributed artistically to a wide range of notorious franchises such as the X-men, Warhammer and also the ever popular Dr Who.
I previously had the opportunity to have Neil Roberts as a guest lecturer at Confetti during my first few months of the FdSc Games Tech course. Based on my experience and due to the fact that I am an aspiring videogame artist myself needless to say I was excited to see him again and hear about what he had to tell us this time around.
As we were all seated in the designated room so began the first Industry Week lecture for the games students. Neil started off by introducing himself to everyone and gave a brief yet thorough explanation of who he is and what he does. Introductions aside he then progressed to talk more in-depth about his chosen profession, as a freelance illustrator specialising in 3D art he explained how he is often plagued by the question “Is your work done by hand or on a computer?” a question I myself had wondered at first, his response to this was that his work is “Done by hand on a Computer”.
Neil then went on to discuss his most notorious bits of artwork and how they stem from his influences now and when he was younger. He went on to explain how he has always been a fan of sci-fi, in particular titles such as DR Who, War of the Worlds and Flash Gordon where amongst the list. As well as these he stressed his infatuation with British comics and as a lover of comic books too I have always been able to see the connection and influence this has had on lot of his artwork. Something which interested me was when he mentioned how in his youth he would draw spaceships on separate bits of paper then cut them up and place the images on a larger background so he could move them round the page till he thought they were in the appropriate position. This technique is a notorious feature which is widely used today in the Photoshop software in which Neil himself uses.
Influences aside Neil then went on to talk about his profession in greater detail, analysing his journey from first setting foot in this industry till now. To start with he explained how his Grades and A-level results where never really up to scratch in a sense that they were somewhat lacking however he boasted a lot of skills and creativity in Art. After graduating with a BA (Hons) degree in design and illustration he was brought to a cross roads so to say. With the skills and talent he possessed he could take one of two different routes, video special effects or video games. He spoke very fondly when he went on to say that video games was his choice based on the fact it was notoriously better pay and with the height of interest in the industry thanks to titles such as Tomb Raider it was a positive route to take.
Using the projector set up in the room Neil then brought up an example of his CV and then began talking about his experiences with numerous companies in the Industry, if you would like to see the full list or any extra material you can refer to the live stream of the lecture on the Confetti website. He continued by stressing how he was often made redundant as the way in which video games are produced and distributed when the design process is over so is the job itself. This was very interesting as this kind of behaviour so to speak isn’t very typical of a working industry environment but more expected of a freelance type style of work, it certainly made me think differently about my future plans. An interesting point that Neil raised next was how he managed to get his foot in the door with his first job in the games industry, this was for Codemasters, an independent company that was responsible for the famous Micro Machines game featured on the Nintendo 64.
He went on to say how he initially applied for a huge total of 25 jobs up and down the country and to his surprise only receiving 2 replies from this. One being an e-mail declining the success of his application and the other from codemasters with the result he was looking for, something that interested me was when he mentioned certain techniques to help set you out from the crowd when looking to get into the industry. He said a very successful method is to undercut the competition, “If the person making the decision of taking on a new member of the team has a choice out of a few artists who can all do the same thing, the one they will choose will be the person who will do it for the least amount of money”. The moral of this he went on to say is that persistence and skill is the key to success when applying for jobs in an industry like this one.
At this point Neil opened up the room to any questions, a lot of which regarding the time keeping involved and skills needed in making some of his beautiful artwork. He explained with a typical example that one of the larger full pieces would take roughly around 2 weeks and how the key to success when perusing an artistic job is to be drawing 24/7 and to ensure you have a wide range of examples of what you can draw. This led to a point he made about how an artist is supposed to be able to make anything look good regardless of what the image is of, the way he explained this was by saying “If you can draw an egg that looks good then you can make a soldier shooting someone’s face off look good!”. The theory for this is that an egg is a very simple and basic shape which when put in front of an artist can be made to look exciting.
Finally Neil began to then talk about what he does now; he went on to say how he is officially full-time freelance. This means he works off his own terms in the sense that he can work fully from home, he chuckled when mentioning that he has no need to commute to work due to the fact he just has to walk downstairs to his workspace. When asked about where he will go from here he replied by explaining how a good artist is never happy with the work they produce and with every project he will be compelled to try something different. With this being the second time I was able to hear from Neil Roberts I went in with high expectations, I can safely say that I was impressed, excited and humbled by what he had to tell us today and I look forward to the day I am lucky enough to see him again.
By Samuel Johnston FDSC Games Technology
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