Introduction

Hello! My name is Elizaveta Loseva and I’ve been a part of a character artist team at Plarium for a bit more than 3 years now. I’ve been working on projects like Sparta: War of Empires and Raid: Shadow Legends. In 2014, I took a short “Autodesk Maya’s interface and basics” course fully believing that I would be an animator. Right at the same time, I found The Last of Us. I’ve been playing video games since I was a child, but TLOU has completely changed my view on games as an art form, as well as my career’s trajectory. Since then I couldn’t see myself anywhere but the games industry, so I’ve started to learn ZBrush, Substance, proper topology flow, texturing for engines, etc. all by myself.

Working on the Characters in a Team

In a production environment, chances are that character design is already made for you by a concept art team and your work as a character artist is to execute the design in 3D. Sounds simple and boring, right? Only it’s not; especially if you can build a good communication channel with concept artists in your team. Don’t be afraid to ask or politely comment on something that doesn’t work in 3D in your experience. There were situations when it was simply impossible to recreate some designs or silhouettes in 3D. But if you collaborate with your concept artist on solving the design, you can make it better keeping the initial concept of the character created by the artist. And believe me, in that case, you will be contributing to the design of a character far more than you would initially think.

The other important thing is: don’t be afraid to ask questions about anything you don’t understand regarding concept art that was given to you. The rule of thumb is “you can’t model something properly if you don’t understand how it works”. Especially in a case of intricate clasps or helms on fantasy character or mechanical parts on sci-fi characters and robots. Ask the artist what the reference for that detail was and look at it closely. Or if this detail is a fruit of pure and wild imagination, ask how they think it would work (bend, open, etc.) and what parts it consists of. As soon as you understand how it works, it will be much easier to recreate the detail in 3D (it works for anatomy, too).

The key is to be respectful and kind to an artist and work with the concept art, not against it.