WOMG NE admin
STEM ambassador
GameDEVheroes 2020
BA computer animation 2007 – 2010
Self employed artist 2010 – now
The next talk was with Lucy Kyriakidou who is an assistant director and freelance concept artist, the last big project that she worked on was the art for the hit game released in 2020 Battle Toads. She has 8 years exspirenece in the gaming industry and has helped work on 20 games overall according to her about page on her portfolio. In her talk she goes on about the details as working as a freelance artist in the gaming industry and her work ethic and day to day exspirenece as an assistant director for an unannounced project.
Some of her notes on how to make freelancing work –
- Set goals
- Work on your craft
- Network at events or online through social media
- Know what your worth
- Make your own luck
Networking can be found at all possible events even if it’s going to the pub with people from industry
Having an online presence is also very crucial to getting your name out there and having it connected to the work your producing
Though don’t be pushy about networking don’t jump straight into work talk
She goes on to say that after several years of making friends in industry a majority of her work comes from these friends, she’s made who when then need a piece of work that’s suited to her skills, they go straight to her.
Character design –
Day to day activities
- Research
- Drawing
- Iterations and Feedback
- Emails and client management
Battle toads challenged her as an artist and helped her heavily improve her skills
Her process for working on a 2d character concept
- Research
- Thumbnails/Roughs
- Sketches
- Details
- Clean-up
Most of the time all the art you concept won’t find its way into the game and that’s ok as this is the point of the process to find the designs that fit with all aspects of the game
She even breaks down some of her design process including the process of including visual storytelling into character designs.
Another belief that she holds is that as character designers they have a responsibility to include race, gender, and body diversity in their designs.
Art Director –
Day to day activities
- Making decisions for visuals
- Feedback
- Ensuring consistency
- Meetings
- Recruitment
- Emails
Main Responsibilities
- Setting the style
- Holding the vision
You need to be confident in the final product and how all these small art decisions will come together.
After this a Q and A was held, below you can see some of the notes I took from some of her answers.
When displaying your work online the best options are to have an Artstation and a personal website, make sure to use twitter alongside with this to show work in progress shots and get your art reaching a wider audience
If you have an artistic eye and the core skills your good to not know a certain piece of software a studio uses as they’re looking for the core artistic skills and will teach you the software when your part of the studio.