Interview with Shaun Ellis

1 What made you decide to be a concept artist?

     After graduating college I mainly worked as a 3D artist, usually doing environments. Most of the time the work would require me to do more than the normal tasks of a 3D artist (FX, Scripting, Concept Art), and I noticed that the other concept artists on those projects would be too busy to do concepts for environments, because they were doing characters, equipment, vehicles, etc. So I'd be doing my own concepts most of the time in addition to the other tasks. Eventually I decided that I should make my life simpler and just transition to doing specifically Concept Art since I was doing it so often anyway.

2 what was your second choice of position if being a concept artist didn’t work out?

     I suppose I'd just go back to doing 3D. Though I'm sure I'd find myself in the same position as before.

3 how did you get you first concept job?

     The first time I got hired as a "concept artist" specifically was when I was still a junior college. I wanted to start getting some working experience on a game development team before graduating so I had a better feel for it. I contacted a small indie team and offered my services, they needed a concept artist pretty desperately so I started working right away and did my work in between classes and after doing homework. I didn't take it too serious of a position because I wanted to still focus on school.

4 what do you like most about the job?

     I really enjoy how quickly I can go through different ideas, its faster to make concept art than anything else usually so I get to share my ideas and get feedback on improving things really quickly. Because of how fast I can work, and as long as I show initiative I can be a part of major brainstorming sessions and have more of a say about what goes in the project. 

     

5 what are some hardships you had to face during a job?

     The biggest difficulty for me is whenever a project has a lack of direction. As a concept artist a lot of times my work is used to direct other members of the team about what specifically things look like, if I'm getting no direction as to what I'm supposed to design and how it's supposed to be used in the game then it's shooting ideas into the dark and most of the time the idea gets rejected.

6 how long would you spend on a piece?

     Depends on the piece. A simple prop would be no more than an hour to have a handful of designs made, an environment or character design could be an hour or two (possibly more if really complicated). If I'm doing something meant to be a marketing image then I could spend a whole day or more working on it to make sure it looks nice enough to display to the public.

7 what is it like working with a team?

     Every team is different, but it always requires good communication skills to succeed, and a willingness to take the initiative sometimes if there's a hole in the team no one is filling. So you'll have to get used to working outside your comfort zone sometimes.

8 what was your favorite piece and why?

     I don't really have a favorite piece. I just try to find whats interesting about the current thing I'm working on and try enhancing it, or if I can't find something interesting then I try injecting what I'd find interesting into it.

9 what kind of concept art is your specialty, environment?, creature?, character?

     I tend to specialize in props or environments, characters are also pretty common but it depends on how many characters are in the project. Characters tend to go through the most revisions, so you might find that concept artists do a lot of character simply because of that fact.

 

10 which was your favorite company to work with? 

     I tend to work with smaller companies, but currently I enjoy doing work with SVA Games. The people there tend to be pretty good at communicating and know what they want but are very much open minded to any ideas people have.