How did you become a game artist? Can you tell us about what path you took? Did you ever think you'd end up as a game artist?

Could some of mankind's earliest recorded drawings have helped pave the way for video game artwork?

Lorne Lanning: I figured out that games were a big part of the future, convinced Sherry McKenna to raise the money with me, and we started Oddworld Inhabitants. I had never worked on a game before Abe's Oddysee.

I attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City and started off as a photo-realistic illustrator. After that, I moved to the West Coast and went back to Cal Arts, and studied film and motion graphics, visual effects, and computer animation. Then, I moved into film, commercials, and theme park simulation attractions with computer animation. I started as a modeler (back in the mid 80s!), worked up to lead technical director, became an art director, and then had a short-lived period as visual effects supervisor before starting Oddworld.

Actually, I didn't see it coming until about 1990 when game technology on arcade machines started indicating what was going to happen with console gaming.

Shuhei Kurose: I've always liked drawing pictures, in particular manga, ever since I was a child. I got carried away drawing pictures, and before I noticed, I ended up in this industry (it was that kind of era). I didn't intend to become a game artist at first, but I always wanted to have a job drawing pictures.

Perhaps more importantly, could this have helped inspire the creation of Katamari Damacy?

Levi Hopkins: I always dreamed of being in the gaming industry, but I was never quite certain how to go about getting a job [there]. After a few years of floundering around while inspecting cherries for the state of Washington, I finally went to art school. Fortunately, I met some fellow artists there who were beyond dedicated. We pushed each other daily until our minds and arms were jelly. With their help and motivation, I was able to get a job in the game industry. Oddly enough, those same friends work with me now at ArenaNet.

Yoshizumi Hori: After I graduated from college, I became a businessman. However, I changed my mind and went to CG school for half a year. Then I joined Capcom. I didn't expect that I was going to become a game artist. I thought I was going to work at a TV station or work on commercials.

Naoki Katakai: Having been impressed by the CG I saw in movies such as Jurassic Park, I was directed to a career working on CG for television. This ultimately led to a job at a game company that made a lot of CG cinematics. In the beginning, I didn't really think about making games for a living, as I was more interested in doing cinematics. But after a while, I understood the excitement associated with working on a game and have focused a lot more on creating "art" within the bounds of game creation.

Lee Dotson: I've always loved drawing and have spent countless hours doing art and programming for my own games. In high school, people would ask if I was going to art school, and I'd look at them like they were crazy. I grew up in a small town in Georgia in a blue-collar family; to me, those sorts of jobs were what real people did. So, it never occurred to me that making art for games was an option until I came across a course catalog for the Savannah College of Art and Design. I think I must have read the course descriptions for their computer/sequential art programs more than 100 times, because I simply couldn't believe that there was a place where art was a real course of study and not just an elective.

"Art was my first love. I was fascinated by the art used to define the worlds in games."

-Shuhei Kurose, Artist - Namco

Which of these was your first love: games or art? How does your current job tie in with your interests in art?

Lorne Lanning: Games are fun, and they hold great potential, but so far, game story content is largely uninspired and almost entirely void of social reflection and criticism. Our Wal-Mart world spawns far more useless entertainment than we can shake a stick at, so it's refreshing on the occasions when we experience more quality and contemplative stories being told. Inspirational art that changes one's perception of the world we live in...that's what we need more of and that's what personally drives me.

It's inseparable. Whether working on film projects, game projects, or writing scripts, the goal is always the same for me: creating interesting worlds that reflect interesting and timely dilemmas that our own world is facing and always trying to portray these worlds in new and interesting ways, which can end up being something beautiful when experienced by the end user, even if the content is dark in nature.

Shuhei Kurose: Art was my first love. I was fascinated by the art used to define the worlds in games. One of those games includes The Tower of Druaga, which has influenced me heavily. I feel that I want to draw pictures and create a cool world, and this position allows me to do just that. Furthermore, I am gaining more skills and knowledge while getting paid at the same time, so I'm really happy.

Levi Hopkins: When I was a young kid, my first love was gaming. I pretty much played every game that came out on the early consoles. At one point, I even had an envelope with about three months' worth of yard-work money in it just so I could buy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES. I also remember selling all my Transformer toys just so I could get the original NES hockey game. However, as I've grown older, art has become my true love. Luckily, my work involves creating art for games, so I feel pretty fortunate that I don't have to choose between my two passions.

Art can take many forms, such as the inspired claymation of Tim Burton's motion pictures.

Yoshizumi Hori: My first favorite love was art. This job affords me a lot of freedom to work on screen composition and color adjustments.

Naoki Katakai: I have always wanted to work at a job where I can create some form of art. If it wasn't for the fact that I played Nintendo games for hours on end as a kid, I don't think I would have ever considered the game industry as a career choice. So based on that, my early appreciation for video games has more to do with why I am at Clover Studio.

Lee Dotson: I'd have to say monsters were my first love. My father took me to see American Werewolf in London when I was four years old, and even though Mom pulled me out of the theater after the first really gory death, I've been hooked on them ever since. From there, it was just natural that I got into games and comics, since they generally had lots of monsters.

On my own time, I generally like to work on character portraits that use a lot of clean lines, soft colors, and sweeping design elements to help fill out the composition, like you might see in a lot of art nouveau pieces. I usually do these pieces as a change of pace from all the flayed and gibbering masses of flesh that constitute many video game monsters. To me, they're just different aspects of my personality, and I really enjoy working on both for what they are. I don't think you can really appreciate something horrific if all you ever see are horrific things--just as you can't appreciate beautiful things if all you ever see are beautiful things.

So You Want To Be An: Artist

Find out what it takes to be a successful artist in the game industry from some of the most accomplished video game artists around.

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