By all means, study film. It’s vital that we use it as a visual story telling tool. It’s been around a lot longer than games have and its very sophisticated in its visual language. I still think visuals on a color level can be somewhat naive in some games, but some teams have it down to a fine art and that’s when we get beautiful looking work on our screens. But I think we need to get past our clichés such as “turn the screen red “when we get hit. Contemporary players are far more savvy than that.

The art on your Artstation page looks nothing like Driveclub, Battlefield, or Motorstorm. This is like a completely different surrealistic world. A combination of Evangelion and Jodorowsky’s Dune. Incredible stuff. Where do you get these ideas and are you ever going to make all those beautiful ideas into your own game or a movie?

A movie would be great (give me a call Hollywood!). I am doing a game with a small team that should be out later this year. It is based on some of my ship designs. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Art by Col Price © Col Price, 2014

For me that work is just a release. I grew up reading books and studying art from Chris Foss and Jim Burns and I love that over the top style. Alien ships should look…well alien. So after a day’s work doing story boards, I just like to empty all the rubbish out of my head by doing these concepts.

I tend not to put up studio work online it can take ages for a project to finish so the work could be up to two to three years old although I may put up the Driveclub work soon. I did a huge amount of art for that project.

I also create work just to keep my creative edge and constantly lean. These pictures keep my brain alive! I’m not sure where it all comes from. I get ideas pop into my head all the time. I just need the time to get all these ideas down now.

What are you working on right now and why did you decide to leave big companies behind and work as a freelancer?

Yeah, it was a big decision for me to leave studio life. I had been in the confines and safety of studios for almost 20 years and it just felt like the right time to make this move. In my position, no time is the right time. I was on project after project with no let up, so I just made the choice. It was a tough one but for me personally I needed to see if I could get out there and do it, so to speak. And so far it’s been the best thing I’ve ever done. The response has been fantastic and so has the press with fantastic websites (like yourselves) inviting me to chat. It’s been an incredible time and I haven’t come up for air yet.

Right now I’m on a beautiful story driven game called Troll and I. I’ve been working with the guys from Spiral House for a while now and they are an amazing team. I’m story boarding the game and it’s a joy to work on. It’s always nice to work with such a talented and enthusiastic team. What you see on the net is very early work; but trust me, it looks great and it’s going to look fantastic. It’s a very original game.

I’m also working on a movie at the moment. That’s during weekends. It’s called Welcome to Purgatory, and it’s a blast. Following this batch, I’ll be back onto a game I was concepting earlier as they want some more work. Then I’ll be on to my spaceship battle game. It’s a crazy time!

We get a lot of questions whether there is a big difference between preparing art for games, movies, and TV. Do producers usually look for the same thing in these industries, or is there a difference?