Those “OTHER” art jobs in the game industry
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Everyone wants to be the quarterback, the front man, the rockstar character designer at a game studio. But there are many art jobs that are more rewarding, pay better and are easier to apply for! Here’s a breakdown of some of the “other” art jobs at a game studio.
Games I’ve worked on –
Fortnite (Environment concept art)
Overwatch (Environment concept art + Sprays artwork)
League of Legends (Character design + Environment concept art)
Diablo 3 (Character design + Environment concept art)
Hearthstone (Illustration)
Burning Crusade(Character design + Environment concept art)
Wrath of the Lich King (Character design + Environment concept art)
Indivisible (Environment concept art)
Final Fight Streetwise (Voice Acting + Character Design + World Design + Cutscene Direction + Co writer on script)
He Man GBA (Pixel Art)
Terminator 3 GBA (Art Direction + Pixel Art)
Terminator 3 (Art Direction + Pixel art)
CannonBallers (Character + World design)
Ikeda: The Scrap Hunter (Programming + Art + Design)
Goblins and Gnomes (Concept Art)
Books available-
Twilight Monk Secrets of Kung Fulio (2020) – Illustrated Novel
Escape from Giants Crown (2018) – Illustrated Novella
World Of Twilight Monk Vol 1 (2019) Art Book
The Man and the Moonken (2019) – Illustrated Novella
The Beast of Tuksa (2018) – Illustrated Novella
Twilight Monk (2012) – 2 Graphic Novels
Nova Colony (2009) – 1 Graphic Novel
CreeD (1993-2007) – Comic Book Series
Ghost Rider (2000) – Comic Book Series
The Fuzz (1997) – Comic Book
8:35 Our studio HAS a mocap suit for horses. 😀
For example if I draw a lot of skins for the game(LoL, Overwatch etc) and show them is there a chance that they will hire me?
whats more in demand, modelling for feature animation or game design?
This was extremely helpful for me, who is struggling to snag an art job rn
I love your excitement over all these fields so much. Thank you for educating us! 😀
one of my first jobs as a concept artist was to draw plants. just plants. it was so incredibly fun to design a bunch of alien plants and so incredibly rewarding to see the pixel artists bring it to life.
I know I am late to this game, but I have been following Trent for the past year as I am repositioning myself to focus on returning to being an artist, focusing on environmental concept art & design for games and films. I just purchased his two workshops for environment design. Excited to get started and up my skill sets. Thanks Trent for all the videos, great work and content from which to learn and grow.
I like the idea of being a UI artist, I was wondering how would I get into it and would I still need like character designs and environments in my portfolio?
Hi Trent. Is it appropriate to teach box and packaging design if you want to be a game designer? Do game artists get hired to do that? I know they can do the art on the box or packaging but do they actually design the packaging/box itself?
I broke the 666 comments.
All of those software you mention…. I only know Sketchup XD
What a great video Trent. Before I always saw myself as an illustrator on a the videogame industry due to I liked to make Fan Art of video game characters or anime.
But recently, I've been really into character skin concept art and I must say it is really nice, fun, and I've enjoyed working on every single one, even more than when I used to do mainly fan art illustrations. And now that I know that this job is somewhat more useful and less competitive than Splash Art, that motivates me to keep bringing new concept art skins!
Environment Concept art, I know for fact that I am not ready for this one but it definitely want to learn how to properly do so and be useful for the videogame industry. Because I find it super interesting to be able to create worlds or specific locations, and when I see your videos you make it seem like its nothing, and I can't even think on how to start hahah. This is definitely too Advanced for me as of now but that doesn't scare me at all, it makes me want to learn more about it.
And lastly, another one that I never thought about is Icon artist (UI artist), seeing your take on this one really made me want to try it out and see what I can do. Specially when you said it helped you get more experience when it comes to texturing objects and stuff.
thank you so much on this video I felt like Im learning a bit more on what I want to focus on major wise
Wow thanks for doing this video very informative
3d modelling is not an easy job think about it again
What about storyboard artists?
This is a great video. Ive been looking for this kind of information to really see what opportunities are out there
This shows how hugley diverse everything is. Really inspiring
I want to be a marketing artist and a do 3D modeling. This was very impressive and made me more hopeful!
This is a very good video, this may be very helpful to me.
Also, I swear you were gonna goin' to a rap n the begnning
So 2D Sexy art is forbidden now ?
The user interface artist is the one that is most appealing to me. Because every icon is different, and each on is a little painting of it's own. I like work like that, even though I do illustration, I found my limit on a painting is 3 days, after that my excitement goes down because it starts to feel like school work. All I am doing is going where the action is, the game industry became bigger than movies and sports combined because of the pandemic, the console games brought in allot of money, but the mobile games brought in the biggest chunk, about 24%, that was in the 70 Billions from the blog I read, and in the next 2 years regions like Latin America, Africa and parts of India will have more mobile users as the technology becomes more accessible. I already have a good foundation on art, and it's all so I can finally make great art full time and enjoy making art all day, even if it's not my ideas. Doing odd and dead-end jobs that take the creativity out is frustrating. If the UI art may be grunt work because it is not glamorous, that is fine, the grunt work tends to have great rewards and sometimes better rewards. It can also build character. And since you mentioned it is easier to get into it than the character design, hey, hey, lets go and get into the fun. =)
So.. how are my chances if I liked everything except character design lmao ( I like them but it's not something I see myself going crazy to do everyday for)
I love Zbrush 🤩 but my computer doesn't :(((
I want a be a concept artist and 3d artist lmaoo
Thanks for the video, Im leaning videogame design, using things like 3dsmax, unity, photoshop, etc. and this year I was feeling kinda lost, beacuse I didnt know what jobs I could specialize in. The video helped me to make a mental map 😀
Well thank god I'm more interested in enviroments concept art.
Time stamps for all the jobs please 😛
Can I take character artist as my career?
I've tried for the longest time to get into UI and prop artist jobs but with no success. How does one find junior jobs or starter positions. I am very keen to learn and to grow and really do want to get into that field instead of doing conceptual illustrations. How would you go about to putting yourself out there as you say?
I have seen artists, writers, 3d publish their creations or stories. They put their name on the credits. But, looking for the creators of characters in google comes the directors, main designers, the company. There are no legal problems or disputes with the artists if it is the creator of the character, design or story (?) I suppose that the creation of the character is part of the work team, bosses as you mentioned in the previous comment, because I have seen a lot of problems legal and disputes for their creations in all industries. music, novels, celebrities, cinema, comic, manga, video games ….. that even became memes or parodies 😂 ohh communities …
Any love for Lighting artist? I am very much interested in that field.
"Splash artist, probably the most glamorous job, this is the job that almost everybody thinks that they want to do but they dont "quite" have the skill to be able to do it."
now i dont know what to do with my life, seeing that my dream is just for the BEST of the best and my parents are really pushing me to get income from my drawings so i grow up and help with the house bills.
Ive always wanted to do prop and world design, when I get on a roll its by far the most engaging and robust aspect of design. I love working on 3D but I really bad at optimizing my topology for animation, still working on that skill
I have a question for you. I'm in this stage of my art development where I am beginning to used references again after being scared off for so long. Due to infringement and copyright concerns. I'm finding myself still struggling with this, in fear of being sued. I see a lot of artists use references from istock or Getty and internally cringe because of that fear. How are we supposed to grow as an artist, use influences, references, etc without being sued? No copying obviously. But aside from that it's obvious artists do copy, and all the time. Like armor assets in video games based off of real life suits of armor. Architecture, motifs, etc.. I want to be able to use patterns, motifs in my armor without problems. And the issue I feel I'm running into is despite the historical motifs being public domain before law set, how do we know if we're safe to use those patterns when people find ways to re-copyright things? Am I being over cautious or are these concerns many artists deal with especially when they make a living at it? I also have the added stress of understanding copyright from a fashion and sewing perspective…One last thing how do I go about finding out what design styles are called? I have little from fashion. I had to drop out of college, regrettably…
You designed so much things in the 2 games I grew up with
This is very helpful thank you!
Im thinking that one person makes all jsksksj is posible make all of this? 😅❤️🙏
I think I'm in love with the Character Skin Concept Artist role, but how do I even get into that kind of job? What experience do I need? Who do I even contact?? I've looked online and there doesn't seem to any kind of vacancies or even people on Linkedin for Character Skin Concept Artist's, so I'm a bit stuck as to where to research for this role. Thanks for any help!
I'm a traditional graphic designer, but being a UI artist for interactive fields like video games seems like a dream for me. I don't know who I can follow to get ideas for creating assets in my portfolio but I suppose I can also search for game screenshots as well.
This is very interesting! I am curious though, are there still positions that exist for traditional artists? Like environment concept sketches and such 🙂 Thank you
I don't really want to be a character designer lol. Anything but that! Give me secondary characters or creatures or environment art any day.
I'm always coming back to this video simply because I still don't know what to do 🙁
I had to stop this video halfway because it is upsetting me. I know that you are trying to be helpful here but basically all I am hearing is "don't even bother".
This mindset that has been stamped into my brain by the big guys such as you, Feng Zhu and others, has made me depressed and scared of pursuing what I wanted to be most in my entire life, which is a concept artist for the entertainment industry. Instead of following this dream I spent ten years working in a grocery store, every day wondering what life would have been like if I just said "f*ck it!" against all that so called 'advice' and eventually I did.
And you know what, I was right. I responded to a theme park design vacancy and before I knew it I packed my stuff, moved to Poland and designed whole areas of the park, I did character and animatronic design (who are being realized by a puppet creator who created some of the dogs of Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs), I've designed complete restaurants, a derby race game structure from top to bottom, you name it.
Now I'm back home in the Netherlands again, because I missed my friends and family and trying to find my next adventure there. I thought of working in an office or just setting up my own company and take on some international assignments. And for example right now I am having a conversation with a man who is the co founder and art director of a new company and who's done work in the past as a lead artist for big games such as The Sims 4.
Seriously Trent, I love your videos, I think you're a cool guy and I know you mean well but advice like this is so toxic and just not legit. Maybe I should have watched it until the end where you say that you should still do it if you really want it but based on these comments I don't think you did. And if you did then maybe start your video with that. Sorry for being so forward with you, but it really triggered me.
I'm not saying that everyone here is a little snowflake or that everyone can make it but at least take a leap of faith and don't give up if it doesn't work immediately. And don't aim for the biggest, most badass company if you don't believe that you're at their level yet. Join a smaller company, get familiar with the workflow, work on your tempo and find a style and structure that works for you. Who knows, maybe you get to know a few people in the industry, either through work or by joining an art event. I went to IAMAG 2019 in Paris and had beers with Aaron Sims, Ian Mcque, even had a laugh with Feng Zhu. All these steps that help you get where you want to be in the long run are worth it.
Seriously guys, don't give up!
Thank you very much for sharing !
Can I work at gaming industry after working as a character designer in animation industry
i want to die
Thx for the video
Honestly I’m now thinking of starting out with the path of mobile games maybe. I used to always wanna be an animator or do the art that’s a anime type style but I realize my art is more cartoony because since a young age that’s what I’ve practiced
Thank you!!! This video helped and answered so many questions I had.
I wanna do 2D concept art but I also wanna do 3D modeling and Environment design with a little bit of audio and programming I kinda wanna teach myself a little bit of everything and I don’t have plans to work for a job just self projects and friend projects or discord projects not sure if this is achievable