Star Citizen Live: Beast Armors

17 July 202001:04:281,757 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

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hi everybody welcome to another episode of star citizen live game dev beast armors i'm your host jared huckabee and if you've never seen star citizen live or one of our special game dev episodes before uh this is where we take about an hour out of our week at the end of a week uh hang out with one of our artists or designers or whomever and go through a little bit about their process they get to showcase the the the working process of how they create something specifically for star citizen uh we are doing that again this week uh we are joined today by one person who perhaps needs no introduction and another uh a person you've maybe you've only just met for star citizen let's get to meeting them now before we get going jeremiah chance welcome to star citizen live how you doing
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doing well thanks for having us don't act like you don't know where the camera is jeremiah you know where the camera is i like your turn hi uh so so jaylee uh well uh before we get into it one every show is somebody's first show so give us the the nickel version who are you and what do you do for star citizen uh i am the resident meme lord of cig um also i am aka lead concept artist lead concept artist with the character team for the uh correct yeah although you've dabbled in some spaceships before a little bit a little bit and then uh to to to the right uh screen uh chance welcome to your first live show looking at your first star citizen live tell everybody who you are and what you do for star citizen hey everybody i'm chance rome the character art director
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and i'm here to give jeremiah a bad time today so it'll be fun that's that's legitimately how i got a chance on the show it's like hey i'm like hey chance we're doing the show with jeremiah he goes all right he goes you want to just hang out for an hour and give him crap and he's like yeah and there was no hesitation you know those times where you you're talking you get the three little dots and like i wonder what you're saying but no no dots it was just a yes straight up so uh so jeremiah what are we making today so um we're going to do a very interesting um concept painting today uh we'll be designing armors that were um made from a survivalist in pyro uh that would use um parts um parts off of a creature that we've shown before
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on a creek on the creature segment that chance was in so this person would be harvesting um parts of this creature to protect themselves from the elements so a beastman armor beast armor beast armor beast armor uh the second best version of transformer armor all right uh so uh and then and then chance will be here to like i said guide and critique you we'll take of course take some questions uh from the chat as we go uh you can you can drop questions into the chat by prefacing your question with the word question and capital letters uh surrounded by brackets of course we will only be doing questions related to the creation of our beast armor or things roughly relating to character team remember we got two folks from the character team so if you're asking questions about turrets or
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flight models or that that adorable penguin that has shown up in alpha 310 uh this might not be the guys for you so uh maybe i can answer it they might not be right no no no no you're wrong enough on your own without jumping into other people's things so why don't you start your screen share jeremiah and uh we'll get going okay so uh as always every stream um a good concept bars always has reference um so i had i had to do a lot of thinking a lot of a lot of digging and i was kind of curious i was wondering like what type of art i should make what direction and so i i looked at a lot of like uh post-apocalyptic stuff that um and also i use a lot of like cosplay stuff because i love
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cosplayers um the the type of craftsmanship that they put in so the top left i had looked at a lot of post-apocalyptic stuff where they put like random stuff together that this guy's got like street signs and stuff and some cool like little techie bits here and there and i really like the usage of these pipes um so i kind of thought i'd incorporate that especially pyro being low gravity and also it's hardly breathable i don't think you can breathe and so there are some cool uh cool like mechanical bits in here uh and then also i don't think i've ever done this before um i started looking at kind of like um orc cosplay reenactment type of stuff uh because they they would use like hide uh and like um little bits of stuff that they've hunted
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uh and put it on display and stuff like that so i thought that would be a lot of cool stuff um i especially like this one and then i also looked at like real world references like a lot of native americans they would harvest every part of the animal and put it on their clothing on also they would uh use it for a lot of things so like um i thought this was like really cool as well um let's see and then i i just like these pants that's why i put it in there but then also i looked at a lot of the the newer um the newer spacesuits that we have new and old i think this was for the artemis i think uh moon landing suit i think or was it this one um so there's a little bit of that and also
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of course are the spacex um so i wanted to kind of fuse all these together and see what kind of cool shapes we have and the creature that we will be um harvesting i guess would be is this creature is which is the the crab that we've shown earlier um and so we'll be taking parts off of this shape here and also probably the hard shell um maybe a little bit of the babies as well oh i hate you so much babies are terrifying i don't know i don't know what you're talking about their favorites um and so and also this this technical thing too what might be really cool to incorporate in some sort of way so i'll be playing um i honestly i don't have an actual like
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uh direction per se of like how like where i want to take it so we'll kind of explore it together and then we also have chants here um and also chat and we can kind of like work it out together um so i have a base plate i don't want to start off in a white background so i got uh sorry uh so we got this this image right here so this is our base rsi uh odyssey suit uh and also this helmet is one of our i think one of our oh man i forgot the name of it um it was one of our heavy outlaw armors uh i think it's a good place to start um so i quickly did a like a little filter and paint over on it real quick and so we'll be designing the armor
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on top of this yeah all right are you going to get started i'm just going to add hr to the call why why all right so so chance as an art director jeremiah starts with uh an idea here we we've we've got our bree we've got our the basics of our brief you know start exploring uh the types of armors that can be created using you know this particular creature uh do you at this point you just let jeremiah go off and be crazy is this the time where you offer advice and feedback before you get started how does this process work yeah i mean usually we do a kickoff meeting and we just start discussing at a high level what our thoughts are on it like
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you know as an example like would you want to use the little heads off those those baby crabs in the thing and i'm probably not i mean you know we want this thing to look appealing at the end of the day and i think it just kind of ruined the whole design honestly so what i think you know we usually talk about is like um you know what would make sense here what what would we want to stay away from uh just just initial direction but um i also don't want to be so prescriptive to be like this is exactly what we're going to do and jeremiah don't be creative at all so um uh there's enough to get going you know if he has questions that that kind of thing but then we you know just get started and hopefully uh you know work out some cool stuff that we're happy with yeah uh we we've done a number of shows about concepts uh in in the past it's it's always a it's always an aspect i'm very uh
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uh very interested in uh because it's it's it's the a lot of it is the blue sky time it's it's it's where ideas get thrown through the furnace uh you you test everything you can you see what comes out a concept artist often iterate you know 10 15 20 times and they do this work so that all of the other artists down the line don't have to you know don't have to it's to find that that a blueprint or roadmap for for everybody else down the pipeline and i'm just endlessly fascinated by that i'm supposed to talk right yeah yeah um so right now i'm just trying to like my initial idea is kind of like what what shapes can i pull from this creature onto this
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armor like obviously like that beak that this thing has is too big to put on any armor but then they could try to like maybe these guys want to replicate a little bit of uh in respect to the the creature um so i might give it a peek um it might be really cool um well it can also be built from a section of the skull of the creature which may not right which may not actually include that beak just like how a human skull doesn't have the nose right right so uh right uh as far as the questions that are coming through uh the first the first request that came through almost immediately is uh whether we can include any of the fangs or the or the the tentacles in the helmet yeah i mean we could uh we could but the also the biggest thing
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is like what would be the purpose of it um so that's another thing so like um the the settlers in pyro without spoiling too much um like they're they live they live in a very harsh environment and so yeah they probably would have some flourishes here and there um but um i don't think they would like i don't think they'd run around like this for no reason right right um it would have to serve some sort of function um so we can we can think about how we can incorporate that so if we can find a really good excuse on the um the functionality of it then yeah because thing is for me personally if i had free reign to do whatever i want all right i would just like i would give it like spikes and you know like
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he's got like a little little little whip and a little a little fox tail no no um but um it's the biggest thing is like uh the thing that really sells a cool design is when you hint at uh functionality um and uh coming up with new ideas from now you're starting with the helmet here is is when you do these things do you always start with the helmet or is that just in this case something that kind of jumped out at you uh no i normally start with the helmet and the reason why is because um we as a as a as a species we ten we communicate by looking at uh at the eyes in the face and so um when you talk to somebody or when you
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see somebody first you don't look at their their feet or their hands first most of the time you look at their fi their face because that's how you identify people and helmets uh is the same thing if you have if you're wearing glasses or something your eyes will go there first and then your brain will swap to whatever is interested next and so for me when i concept something the helmet is always the most important thing and then i try to have the armor or everything below follow through afterwards unless there's a specific lore reason or design reason for the something else to be more important now we don't actually have a designer with us on the on the show today so as far as gameplay implications we can't we can't really talk there are some questions
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in there about whether uh beast armor might give any perks over other armors and stuff that would be the that would be the purview of the actor feature team well chance and i can talk about what we would like sure yeah and so one thing that we're discussing is you know if we if we get creatures like this you know in the game and there's this you know there's this high risk to say fighting one of these things there needs to also be a high reward for uh if you are successful and so that's something we're just in discussion about is like well maybe for example the shell uh you know is is a craftable resource and you can do something with it or maybe it's you know also quite valuable and you could you could trade this for other things um the what we're uh the plan for pyro
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is that it's a very harsh environment a lot of radiation all kinds of solar storms and so the you know maybe this hard shell is something that would protect you from those kind of uh elements and stuff like that so um all of it's still you know tbd but it's just you know those are the discussions that we're having right now about what you know from a gameplay perspective what makes sense uh and so so yeah maybe maybe this armor you know if you if you get this stuff you've got better radiation resistance or something else like that so i'm thinking about a an old movie from the 80s called enemy mine right now uh where louis gossetta junior and dennis quaid used to take the these indigenous sand beetle things and then use them to for they built a house out of them that built armor out of them it was basically it was one of the primary resources
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available to them on an otherwise barren and desolate world so they found as many use for them as they could can we can we talk about the how beautiful this crab is and what we were thinking about it sure why don't you once you talk to us about the how did we did a little bit on isc but not everybody watches everything uh talk to us about how we got to this crab chance um yeah so um we we started off first of all with the location uh you know we knew that it was gonna be pyro pyro one in this case um and that helped us uh you know with a lot of things and just deciding like what would make sense on a planet like this uh the discussions that we had was like well uh
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is this uh you know did this animal um felt naturally or was this you know something uh that was seated on the planet in this case it is uh it's supposed to be uh naturally occurring on this planet and it's evolved uh you know with these conditions in mind um we we knew we wanted a predator so with this thing uh lives off of you know uh hunting other other prey that's on this planet or maybe in also humans in this case uh and then you know the the other part we decided upon was the large one you see in in the image is uh the queen of basically a hive that um she's got all these little babies that that also are there and possibly uh these creatures use the cave systems uh to lay their eggs in and that's what you know why you find these clusters the little ones
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inside the uh the caves so and then we also discussed other things like um you know how does this thing you know if it's on the surface what what does it do and uh how would you might come across it and so we we've talked about these things actually uh use camouflage uh with the rocks around them so when they all hunkered down they might look exactly like a pile of those rocks and you might not even know it's there uh so um definitely the few things that helped us make some decisions with what we wanted to do with it um but we still have lots of other things to work out as to like what other creatures might exist on this these planets stuff like what like for example what are the prey animals this thing eats we haven't got to that point yet uh parts of it look like it might they
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might parts of it look like they glow is there a bioluminescence factor here yes yeah the bioluminescence factor uh definitely want to we want to try that that out um and uh we've also talked about uh as an example that the little ones um they're more like a soft shell uh sort of you know uh crustacean so that like this only happens that they get this really thick hardened type of shell over time uh and this also would if that's the way we go uh this also would play into the gameplay aspect of it in other words you could go shoot a whole cluster of the little ones you're not going to get any you know any resources off of them the same way you would with if you do the the more difficult task of fighting one of the queens right
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uh there's the the the reward is not there for the little ones as much so so because the the little ones are more vulnerable uh they rely on their obvious attractiveness as seen in jaylee's picture there to as a defense mechanism like why would you kill me look at how attractive i am don't hurt me i'm just a little baby have this little baby you never they're they're there are times where you immediately regret opening your mouth but that they happen no no not not me i wonder if i wondered jeremiah maybe a
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little more asymmetry in the design would be kind of cool since it's all found oh yeah yeah you know what i mean it's like like you know it's not manufactured but but what if they want to look cool i'm just kidding i'm just kidding no i agree it's cool yeah that's true i'm trying to see yeah there's they've got like little like spikes here too i think i should incorporate a little bit more of that on the the carapace stuff um do they do they need like maybe they took one part yeah like like one big pauldron yeah yeah i'm thinking also like maybe like that like they might have bolted some things but maybe they also put like strap some things together yeah so that'll probably
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yeah i think you know they'd have to if they cut these shells off they'd have to then modify them you know hooking some sort of like uh straps to them and ever you know other things to fasten them and stuff so yeah yeah yeah there's no guarantee each yeah each part of each shell comes off in the same exactly the same even pieces every time yeah so a very bespoke look now granted if you add anything to an mmo you're even the most bespoke items you're gonna you're gonna see multiples of them running around but yeah that's just one of the unfortunate side effects of running an mmo it's it's still during a design though you know you're still encouraged by the origin and idea which is a completely individualized you know look
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yeah actually i was thinking at this point the only thing that we've shown publicly as far as uh the denizens of the pirate system uh were the overlord armors that were that were provided to subscribers uh in the last couple months um based on the uh overlord vigilante gang that the lord team developed for pyro a very rough and tumble look um i mean this is cool and all but it's kind of boring i wasn't going to say it yeah i think we can push it a little bit um so chance at this point what's
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jeremiah doing wrong everything everything i'm i'm taking notes it's going it's going to tell you no all annual review if you've found the bane of my existence jared i shall i shall work i shall pray repay it and double forwards one day i shall get you i'm pretty sure if we're keeping score you're at like 48 and i'm at like three so you're not wrong um okay now i think what i could i got some general shapes in here i'm thinking maybe if i can just push the envelope a little bit maybe i'll add now the silhouette like it's very similar to this so like i kind of want to push it even more um the cheap route is just to add pipes
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everywhere this is let's see we're seeing a lot of questions about uh a cape uh it seems folks folks want the uh tentacles uh as a cape to form some kind of cape capes dude i've done so many caves not everything needs a cable though capes are cool i mean i mean capes always look make things look super majestic and like really badass i can say badass right yeah i see it yeah yeah i mean it's like that that is one way to do it and that'll also make it look asymmetrical too um yeah what yeah what if there it's just what if it's less than cape and just like
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like two of those largest uh tentacle things just draped back and glowing from behind or something uh chat also asks uh if this would be easier to do in zbrush instead of photoshop um it depends um for me when i concept uh the concept when i concept uh when i'm doing like a bunch of like it uh what do you call it blue sky stuff where i have no idea what it is photoshop is the fastest and most efficient tool to do these things just because how quickly i can change things for zbrush as much as i love the program and i do you're a lot slower in making variations right
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because like sculpting something like this could potentially take maybe five minutes when i can just do it in three seconds on photoshop photoshop is just about the getting the initial feel and the idea um of the of the said assets so it's like it's a it depends if i know for sure that you know uh chance will like something um and maybe a chance of seeing like a sketch like a napkin sketch of something then yeah i might jump into zbrush and just like refine the refine the heck out of it right one of the things i i've discovered through the six years here at cig now is that uh we're very accommodating as far as uh
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letting the artists work in the tools that work best for them you know we we have an entire tools team dedicated that's separated across several studios dedicated to building all the different converters and importers and stuff necessary to to let artists work in the things that that allow them to be most effective and then bring that in so yeah and also also for a concept artist like there's never like one method to solve a problem like i think i've said that multiple times concept artists are problem solvers and for me um that has not been my experience well they're supposed to be sorry doesn't mean i do it well but uh um but like i have the most respect for concept artists and a lot of the guys
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in the studio they approach where where they'll tell ask me how long they have and they'll try to solve the problem and they'll pick whichever program or workflow is the most efficient to get the job done um because if you're like hey i only do zbrush i'm gonna be like hey i need this i need 10 of these sketches by 6 p.m you know they're they're going to struggle a little bit right because they might they might not have enough time um or i might be like hey i need you to like um i need you to figure out the anatomy of this thing but i need you to be very specific right or like maybe a specific person like a character modeler needs more uh context of what something is maybe you do it in photoshop maybe doing
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zbrush maybe you actually sculpt on top of their mesh just to help them out so like it really depends there's there never is like one method of doing concept because it's just ideas at the end of the day um i kind of like the with the little [ __ ] yeah yeah yeah i think replicating some of that would be really cool in here i mean it's what the it's with the it's good enough for the armor for the animal to cover its uh you know embody side yes yeah i think i think also we could look at like what other you know items would this this type of person find to modify their armory because they figure like it's they're if they're a scavenger of
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these you know beast parts like what other things are they scavenging from you know like yeah other humans other things like that like i think that stuff would be cool to think about i'm also thinking like these guys would be like going around collecting stuff so they probably would have a backpack of some sorts um just to collect stuff and probably a lot of pouches here and there right there there there's a survivalist mentality of of dressing like one of the alpha predators to scare away other creatures and you know you know lesser creatures while you're out there collecting foraging doing stuff so there can be a there can be a uh like like a gameplay used to wearing this armor more than just looking cool it's like
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they're dressing like the alpha predator scare lesser predators away uh okay let's see i think i think uh i think this is like good enough just for like a sketch and then we can kind of like pick our favorite one i like how we did our last sure our last session that way because i could just start rendering this uh but i think what's more important is just coming up with some cool shapes or some ideas so i'll just move on to the next one um there have been if you want to take any requests from the community here uh there are a lot of folks asking for a shield okay like a shield
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yeah like i like take the like like imagine the the plate that's there on one of its knees you know uh taking off wholesale is like a shield like that maybe yeah i don't know sure chancy cool it's a little big yeah it can be smaller and be like let's save it all like captain america's thing from uh uh infinity war where it was just a much smaller kind of thing that's sat on the yeah i think it'll be really cool if you actually saw a little bit of the hands that way you can actually grab stuff yeah if you wanted to it's a little too saturated for me right
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now okay uh okay that's cool um and i'm thinking maybe this one maybe we don't need to necessarily maybe we could do something like that because this is kind of wait they're circular eyes right now this color palette you've chosen the the blues and the grays this you took this from the concept art uh no no so this was just from the base undersuit i don't i don't necessarily choose the the color just yet because i'm just looking at shapes and like silhouette and so what i'll normally do
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is after i have a couple shapes that i want then i'll i'll color them um in what i think is most appropriate it looks kind of kind of kind of derpy so chance we haven't had much opportunity to to get to know you on streams and videos yet um how did you get started in the business where did you come from you know i mean you don't need to share your whole life story or whatever but whatever you're comfortable sharing with folks like like what what can you what can you tell us so folks get a better sense of who you are yeah sure um uh i actually have my degree in illustration um i originally when i was
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in high school i i was very into comics and actually uh was interested in becoming a comic book artist um and it was actually when i was in art school that i learned a little more about uh games you have to remember this is in the 90s when uh you when video game careers are not exactly a thing that schools were teaching yeah so uh but i um i ended up uh you know i've been playing games my whole life and was like this is actually seems even better taught myself 3d and and i got my start in the industry in 1997. but uh uh most of my career has been in characters i've done vehicles uh worked on quite a quite a few different companies and games uh but uh um yeah i've uh worked it worked ea
00:31:24
worked at riot games for a long time um and uh yeah it's you know it's uh definitely love love the industry it's you know we're all pretty privileged to be able to to be involved in something that where it's a passion at the end of the day you know and um i think that that's uh that's something that you know not everyone gets opportunities too so yeah definitely grateful that you know it's um something that i'm a part of you so you've been you've been in the game industry since 1997 23 years wow yeah been a while how were you german [Laughter] i think uh i think you were uh i think i was eight just yeah when chance first started when
00:32:13
chance first started uh i immediately like reached out because i'm like somebody of my own age somebody my age uh i i think one of the first things we uh we bonded over was g.i joe and the defiant versus the flag if i remember correctly that this is true yeah it was uh it was a very very upsetting christmas when uh the neighbor kid got the uss flag and i didn't get it it was like i remember the catalog it's a six foot long aircraft carrier and i'm oh all of my dreams right here and then i didn't get it in that neighborhood house oh i was jealous so jealous of my similar thing was you know mowing lawns and doing chores and and making sure everything was good for six months uh you're gonna give me the challenge are you giving me the defiant you're gonna get the defiant then ended up
00:33:00
getting the uh the crusader which is just the tiny spaceship part and not the booster and the launch complex and i'm like oh it's tragic i'm like mom what what what is this garbage what is this garbage dreams yeah i crushed that was my uh my thing too was mowing the lawns and i think i'd get five dollars for mowing the lawn and that was a perfect amount to go buy a figure you know a gi joe figure so yeah yes it's true and now i'm now i'm in my 40s and i still trying to get my same thing yeah still children the same thing still mowing lawns actually as i think about it there are a number of similarities i could go off on
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about what i do and going around mowing people's lawns um all right so so first thing we notice here jeremiah is you've got the tentacles off the back of the helmet which uh folks seem to be responding well to in the chat yeah just got a little bit of a uh molly who is in the who's in the chat with me molly's our community manager out of the uh oh i remember molly awesome uh she's helping go through the chats she just commented i was two when he started in the game i industry i don't know if she meant that for public consumption and if you didn't molly i apologize but uh i was just it just made me feel very old so yeah video games looked a little bit different in 1997.
00:34:35
we weren't quite pushing the fidelity we're pushing in star citizen everybody what was your first game that you worked on actually uh it was the title that never shipped actually i was at cave dog entertainment so the first company worked at and for the first two years uh both projects that were done were cancelled so oh yeah that was uh yeah that happens it happens quite often actually because more than what people do yes uh everybody in the chat if you haven't already say hi to molly she's she she's on the line today doing good work um question about process jeremiah uh what hardware are you working on right now are you on a tablet you want a
00:35:22
a clinique yeah you wanna walk home what are you using i'm on a wacom tablet right now at home uh i actually was exclusively only using the tablet but then um a lot of the character artists used cintiqs uh in the office and so i converted and i miss it very much so i don't have a cintiq at home but it's also like it's just just a lot of space and so i like the compact uh tablet but at the office i use this i use this antique we'll pick a day in time i'll go in with yell i'll distract dennis and you run out with the clintique okay yeah it's cintique how is it said it's antique cincinnati you know it sounds like a hair conditioner
00:36:10
we're gonna we're never gonna get sponsored by cintiq now yeah i love you i love you i love you guys welcome i'll always i'm always down to test cintiq's man this is how it works is this how it works that's how it works don't ask me all right all right the the only thing close to a sponsorship i ever got was i got sent a care package from whataburger for mentioning them on uh reverse the verse once way back oh and also the uh dx racer right i got a dx i got a dx race yeah yeah and i got a and i got a a care package from whataburger uh which is the hoodie that i actually actually i just realized i'm actually wearing the shirt
00:36:56
you're actually wearing the shirt you're actually wearing the i'm actually still i'm wearing the whataburger spicy ketchup shirt that whataburger sent me uh unrequested uh when i uh raved about them on reverse the verse back in 2015. you know who i'm sponsored by who are you sponsored by rondo the thirst mutually cig sorry i appreciate your reference a chance all right good um so uh question for chance from the chat here how do we balance pure functionality with the rule of cool like like what what is is there a formula is it is it always like we're we're
00:37:44
shooting for 70 30 uh what are your thoughts on bouncing functionality and rule of cool so in regards to this armor design or just in general in general well i mean there are limitations that we have to abide by i mean every project is different um uh for us we you know for most of our our assets for the clothing for for the people it needs to be modular so you can mix and match uh your um uh the pieces and so we do have volumes and zones that we have to abide by if it is swappable pieces so in that regard like some of the things you were doing here might not play by those rules so that is that's something to consider um but uh you know at the end of as far as the
00:38:34
cool factor if the other day if we're not excited about it you know then it's you know we're not gonna do it i think that's that's the kind of the balance you have to you have to take and and as far as like the um you know what i think is important for star citizen is is uh the immersion the realism you know this you know if it's too fantastical to the point of just being you know like silly and outrageous it's not gonna fit with like what what everything else is you know we made a um you know and that but that's in every project you're on that's gonna be a different you know a different balance that you have to take where you know like um like for example uh we're not going to create something that doesn't fit into lore right we're not just going to plug something in and it's not going to you there has to be a back so it has to be a
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reason why even no matter what it is it has to be a backstory um not every game is like that right like you know you don't have to um some games it's just like well like fighting games why is that person fighting this person you know aren't they friends it's like you know that's a it's just like who cares it's you know it's it's smash brothers i wanna i wanna go play play that game right so i think that we we um that's the kind of things that we have to consider but there's many many considerations and and part of you know our job is to work with all the other teams you know whether you know and make sure that design and lore and everything we're making something that fits in with all that and then from the technical side can we do it gotcha um a lot of a lot of folks i shouldn't say a lot of folks uh one of the one of
00:40:08
the questions that came through was how do folks how did you get started as a concept artist and and what kind of things are you looking for when you're hiring a concept artist um well for me personally it's um uh well obviously the style is definitely helps um because uh star citizen uh we've we've been well at least i've been in cig for like almost i think a little over five years now and uh i helped kind of establish at least on the character front the style and the um and as long as i as the the candidates uh if as long as chance and i are confident that the the the people who want to join the star citizen team can execute in that
00:40:57
specific look and style um then that's kind of like where we like to start the conversation of potentially working with us because there is a specific look right and like um as much as i love like the disney and the animation style i think some paintings that people do are gorgeous and are super inspiring um that might not that probably won't translate well with with the the realistic look sci-fi look that we have for star so there's that um but also it's um the second thing is for the thing that i look out for is when concept artists when they do art when they put work in their portfolio is how far did they think into the functionality of their design is it just cool or did they actually think about
00:41:45
like the little details um and uh concept bars they have to be in in a weird way great storytellers um because you're telling a story through whatever your character or the scene how you're trying to paint um so those are little things that i look out for when i look at our portfolio and stuff like that uh you have on the left side of the screen you've got your inspirations right uh how uh how important is it to have that stuff that's on the left of your screen right now uh really good uh i never just paint like this i don't uh the reason why is because uh if i just stay like this i'll start making shapes that only i like i make out of habit so things things will start to be 45 degree angle
00:42:36
and also like because um there's a lot of shapes that i tend to make that's kind of like what my style is and forms but then the reference board here will inspire me to make different shapes like for instance like this shape right here i was looking at this pauldron right i was like oh that's actually a really cool cool thing to implement here and what can i do to uh change things up a bit on what i would normally do um so like it's uh yeah when i see a concept artist without a reference board it just it makes me a little nervous um because it also means that you know uh like having a reference board it's just good to have for inspiration and also i try not to have concept art or like illustrations as a reference uh
00:43:25
just because sometimes like they can be a little too whimsical but photos are actual real real world yeah right so like um these are actually chris the stuff on the left is the truth yeah exactly um so i could use that so it's at least like whatever i'm drawing is based on reality um so like no no definitely the stuff on the left is a reality can't argue with that that's my that's my biggest inspiration anyways i kind of want to incorporate more of the little the post-apocalyptic steampunky stuff in here
00:44:13
um i'm thinking like maybe i think that might be cool jim i was like thinking about like what uh you know if they came a lot across like derelicts or other things that right like so you know [Music] how how long have these guys been surviving in this very harsh world and right right right that's kind of thing that was the storytelling elements of like uh i think that would be nice stuff to put in there where you know there's maybe very little of the original undersuit that's you know not been modified over time because it's like if something breaks and you don't have like you can't just buy a new one you have to keep that thing going you know so if he's right right in this system for years and years and years what would it look like uh one thing jared you was asked in the
00:45:03
last question about like uh what we look for in concept artists i can speak to that a um uh one of the things that i you know when i went to gdc and given uh reviewed portfolios and stuff that i mentioned is i think too often um uh concept art gets confused with illustration oh yeah that's right this is a really important thing is that making beautiful illustrations that's one thing and you know but concept art is about the ideas right and what i what i love to see in a portfolio is show me all the steps that you know the from the first round to the thing that getting created right and that is really helps me know you know how this person is as far as like just coming up with cool ideas right and
00:45:50
i think like you know versus like you found reference and you paint it you did a pretty painting you did a pretty illustration that's not concept art concept art is is is coming up with all of the great ideas and then as to jeremiah's point you know what's the thought behind them how would they work how would they you know uh that is that's really really important uh you know like if i if i see a sketchbook or portfolio where you know you see tons of really different cool ideas you know all around uh towards towards finalizing the concept that shows me that that person's gonna gonna have a lot of uh you know uh value when you when you really ask them to like hey come up with something cool you know i mean you know uh many many times uh you know if you have a concept i was
00:46:38
working on something i love it when i'm pleasantly surprised by something that oh man i wasn't excited i wasn't even expecting that yeah yeah let's let's go down this thing right so yeah it's one of those things uh jeremiah just is a thing you've got about 15 minutes left if you want to what if you wanted to get a third one in there just it's up entirely up to you just letting you know i keep forgetting it's one hour yep uh but uh yeah one of the things that uh often comes up whenever we show concept art and this is not unique to to cloud imperium and star citizen it's concept art for anything it's that a lot of times you know concert artists are asked to realize an idea that's in somebody else's head as much as they are uh go crazy and inspire us to other ideas yeah yeah so you know so a lot of times you know that's what we
00:47:26
call that blue sky stuff it's like it's like we don't know what we want to do as like if it's a movie like we're still exploring ideas for stories you know maybe we'll do go this way maybe we'll go in this direction and they'll they'll have they'll have concept artists just explore ideas visually he's like oh that would be cool as you you a good scene can inspire a good story in that regards so it's like whenever you get the the art of star wars books you know you see a lot of stuff that has no parallel in any of the movies that you see it's like what is this what is it like we never saw anything remotely like this in the movie and that's usually from those blue sky times where they're just exploring and trying to inspire the the writers and the producers and stuff like that to stuff i'm gonna do a crazy one because because
00:48:15
i don't have time do it but a lot of times when we show concept art uh for you know star citizen it's like yeah lots of times yes it's something that's actively being worked on and may actually go into production and other times it's one of those blue sky things that never got past the drawing you know that that orzen video that uh that that you film jared is actually like i feel like the most accurate portrayal of what com being uh being a concept artist is like like i think we showed probably up upwards up to like 40 or 50 concept paintings that just never never saw the light of day and they never will um it's just yeah um concept artists sometimes like you know they're just they're like hey
00:49:02
we just need something figure it out and then we have to that's what i was saying at the beginning like the concept artists tank yeah you know they they they tank all of the all of the uh uh i'm trying to the right word uh the it's not it's it's it it's not indecisiveness that's not the right word that's not the right word it's it's all of the exploration it's all of the it's all of the the discovery they they they tank discovery for everybody else uh so that so that everybody else you know has a much sought more solid idea of what it is that they're building and working on it's like because it would it would be terrible it's a lot easier to change a photoshop file than it is to change a fully realized 3d model right armor or ship so you you take a lot of the challenges during
00:49:53
uh game design game development and uh well not specifically with jeremiah i appreciate that from everybody else i just i just i don't know actually i i talked to my mom about the concept life and she was like why do you do do you like do you like your job oh my god i love my job it's like but i saw your video and i and i and so many of your art didn't get approved i was like yeah that's part of the process mom is like do you do you like being told that you're doing a bad job i'm like no mom that's not what they're saying it's like why do you dude she still doesn't get it yeah yeah yeah concept i think we had it in the in the segment concept artists hear more a lot hear no far more than they hear yes
00:50:39
yeah but it's but it's not any it's not any reflection on that oh actually do you know what i hear the most actually it's not no it's kind of like i hear that a lot i hear a lot probably the sound i hear the most um uh you know what i'm painting stop me from putting a loincloth what part of the creature is the loincloth made from hey you know what maybe it's from maybe he got it from it's woven from the tentacles
00:51:29
oh yeah that's what i was thinking from from the definitely not because i just wanted to put something there to break this a i'm just trying to like describe concept art in one word it's true it's so accurate it is so i'm sure you've gotten a lot of that too like just like like hey what do you think the worst is silence yes that's the worst that's the word then you're like okay well maybe they're not super into it but the worst that's that's the worst yeah we talked about that with gavin rothery uh a vehicle concept artist uh last week that the you know when you when you're
00:52:18
making art uh you want a reaction i mean yeah you you pull for a positive reaction but even an even a negative reaction means that you were uh you you were pushing things you know it may have gone in a direction you ultimately didn't want but sometimes it's really important during the concept phase to figure out what you don't want just as much as it is to figure out what you do exactly uh the worst thing is to show somebody something and they just like it's like they're just they just go back to their phone it's just like oh wow this didn't get anything how do you oh that that's that's where art fails i mean also though a responsible concept artist will try to draw notes from their clients or who their boss right so like for instance if chance was like hey jeremiah i don't like that
00:53:07
i the a good concept artist would be like as a problem solver we'll be like okay what do you not like about this right or being like so or were you thinking about something else or you know what i mean uh instead of just sitting there and just gonna go back to the drawing board um you need some sort of direction that way at least the time you spent on said thing is not a waste of time yeah that's very true i think you know learning how to translate feedback is i think one of the most important things like because um sometimes you know the the worst thing you can do is like oh they hate her to throw it out completely i'm gonna do this and i think that's that's really just you know translating like what the what what they're after what what the what the feedback you're getting i think that's that's really a good skill to have yeah that's stuff
00:53:56
that people don't tell you in art school too is kind of like um actually like how to receive feedback um and also uh how to remove yourself from your art pieces um because you're not you're not making like you know you're not van gogh or rembrandt right you're trying to sell a like a solve a problem for a client or your boss and so like it's not about you or your feelings it's about solving the problem right things they don't tell you in art school yeah they don't think yeah everything's gonna be butterflies the the amount of time spent pulling ideas out of somebody else's head yeah is not to be uh
00:54:46
glossed over lightly and it's one of the more impressive aspects of of concept artists i mean obviously uh a a successful art director somebody that can effectively communicate uh these things but there's also the uh factor of a successful concept artist is being able to uh interpret feedback you know recognize what's applicable uh figure out the things said and unsaid it's like that and work with that it's all things that probably aren't taught in in art school and require just experience by the way chance this is a bazooka yeah there has there has been a time where i
00:55:34
did added like a i forgot i forgot which concept it was um but i i just drew a random weapon on a character and uh that got chris really stoked he was like oh yeah we should put that in the game and i was like that's like the i just could feel the eyes of like you just added more work jeremiah just why don't you stay in your lane stick the character like i just wanted to do something cool what hi ben sorry very nice bazooka and dude i always like warm up like towards the end of the stream like it's so annoying they should be two hours jeremiah is
00:56:22
that what you're saying i'm kind of hungry but starving i said i was gonna do something crazy and it's not crazy it's probably the least crazy do i actually want the one cloth i don't think i want it anymore i liked it you like that all right well you're my boss i'll keep it different um one of the questions from the chat says i noticed that you use the eye dropper a lot do you prefer that to the dodge and burn for shadows yes uh the reason why dodge and burn is i recommend people not using that
00:57:12
until they're at the very end of their rendering uh because dodge and burn will take the saturation and the um the call is the saturation and then the value of what's underneath and we'll crank it up so you could potentially quote unquote burn your image and it won't be um it won't be salvageable if you do it too much um but the eyedropper also like it keeps me within i'm only using colors and values that are within this painting so i know it won't be too dark or too bright when i paint something on top of it so i'm just just is that was that just a cover because you never discovered the dodge and burn tool until like a year ago you know you know me so well
00:58:05
exposed jelly exposed that's interesting yeah i think like maybe like he was like strapping things on with like string or something all right so we've only got a couple minutes left so why don't we take a look at all three uh uh and that looks terrible present uh present these three to your to your art director now how would you how would you present these to to uh to chance what were your thoughts whatever before this is this is a neat trick
00:58:51
i'll i'll i'll share my little industry secret so i'll eat obviously number and if you have a favorite if you have a favorite right so i could listen my second one second one's kind of my favorite what i actually tend to do is i'll actually in secret they don't they don't teach you this in school i'll like add a little bit of like it's kind of it's barely noticeable but it's there just make it a little brighter a little more attractive to the eye just darker than some of the things i don't really want what do you think i'm wise two tricks jeremiah did you know he did that chance uh i
00:59:40
i've not that jeremiah does it but yes i know the technique yeah all right so so so give it g so so what are we looking at here how would you describe number one how would you describe number two how would you describe number three so number one honestly if this were if this were like a real if i if i had to show chance something the professional side of me would actually do this okay that's what i would do uh because i'm not confident with number one i'm trying to i'm trying to warm up and the ideas are kind of there but it's kind of a little bit of mess all over the place so for me i personally would do something like this i wouldn't even include it um uh and if chance asked me like do you have more i'd be like well i started on this one but i'm not confident in it and so like uh number one i think we have a lot of
01:00:29
we have a little bit more of the alien shape so i added a little bit of like use some of the toes and stuff like that or the claws off of a creature we got shield thing on here you got a little bit of technical element here uh this one i i guess i took more of the survivalist route where the creature's not that accented on it's not prominent on here but the survivalist element is prominent on here with a little bit of string and stuff like that and then we can add a at least on the texture face add a little bit more you know um like bumps and show more of this type of stuff on here if i had more time yeah looking at it i would say three is like klingon warrior two is weapon x captain america and one is plo [ __ ] from the clone wars yeah but honestly
01:01:17
though um like one i think if i pushed it maybe if i spend like 30 more minutes on it i can salvage it but if if i was on a tight deadline i'd probably just like remove it yeah and the reality is i think like you know we obviously need more time to truly work on these things this is not something that we've we've done a bunch of before and i think that's you know we will spend more time and work through i think the idea is cool uh we'll just get something that's you give it the proper time you mean cranking out three concepts in less than an hour isn't the norm depends it depends all right now you can go in actually the rxi the rsi explorer suit the the the white one um that one i did in 45 minutes that was just one sketch um i remember
01:02:08
it was like the wild last days like four years ago and they're like a character artist needs a concept now so i did in 45 45 minutes and i passed it off and they were like all right we'll work with what we got and it became that has happened before i i've i have worked on projects where i just had to model a creature and had no concept whatsoever so uh it you never know there's a lot you stop your screen share jeremiah all right uh so yeah so thank you to jeremiah and to chance for taking your time to be here on the show with us this week uh a chance i hope you enjoyed your first foray into live broadcast for cig i i promise it probably won't be the last that's fine that was fun um as we uh
01:02:58
are want to do we're gonna throw the we're gonna throw the host uh the raid over to a star citizen streamer who is streaming right now i understand today's recipient of the star citizen live jeremiah lee memorial raid is cyborg angel yes i'm sorry jeremiah you're you're you don't have long to live i i don't know memorial a cyborg angel uh cyborg angel is a uh is a british streamer uh she's relatively new to the star citizen scene uh but we're gonna like shake it up some old timers some new timers uh i understand that she's on ptu with alpha 310 right now so um when you go and you see her uh just tell her uh rip jeremiah and uh jeremiah rip jeremiah he was a lovely person just pay respects
01:03:49
to jeremiah lee uh for star citizen live uh i'm jared uh that was that was chance that's jeremiah and we'll see you back here next week take care everybody

Transcript from YouTube’s automatic captions — punctuation and Star Citizen jargon are approximate. The video itself is hosted by CIG on the official channel.