Concept artist for Playtra Games
This blog post goes through the talk delivered by Noemi who is an artist for Playtra games, her talk mostly focuses on how to stand out and be creative in small companies. Before going into her time at Playtra games, she notes the history of her artistic career, with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and a masters in character animation, ten years exspirenece as working as freelance artists for book illustrations and her time working at Playtra games.
One area she touched upon was the work culture, benefits, and drawback of an Indie studio. As Indies are typically very small studios, you get to know everyone you’re working with and can build connections with team members. This can be very important as well due to the high level of communication needed between all team members in an indie studio. Though one of the clear disadvantages to working in an indie studio being usually the clear lack of resources and funding the studio will have, even if funding is secured and you are backed by an indie publisher program there will still more than likely be a lack of team members working on the project. Though the main issue is ultimately the game you’ve worked on just wont even have a chance to be successful even if the game is outstanding as a lot of it rides on just your game being released at the right time and finding the right people.
- Do not be afraid to speak up for yourself and sharing your creative opinions
Noemi also goes into her exspirenece with dealing with art blocks and how she overcomes them. Art blocks are a completely natural thing and happen to all artist of all levels, its just a crucial part of the creative process. Dealing with them is completely personal and can need different approaches for different artists. Make piece with them being an occurrence and accept that everyone gets them, and you will find it easier to tackle them.
After this an extensive QA was held, below you can see some notes I made that I felt stood out from the answers –
Its good to take issues from work and discuss them with friends and family as it allows for fresh out of the box opinions and ideas to come to you
It’s always hard to say goodbye to a piece of art and stop working on it, but you need to remember to be professional and that other team members are waiting on your work to start theirs, so you need to be strict with yourself.
When joining a studio, you will have to adapt your art style to the team, there are instances where you can take your style but most of the time you’re following a vision not created by you and you need to be professional and follow it.