10 for the Artists: Episode 04

10 August 201500:29:47841 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

00:00:00
[Music] greetings citizens welcome to another episode of 10 for the artist we like to thank the subscribers out there for making this possible couldn't do it without you to my left is Omar uh concept artist hello and uh my name is Forest uh CG supervisor and uh we got some some questions from you guys so we're going to try our very best to answer them all right let's get to it all right first question swordfish elspar asks are rejected concept ships or art ever held in a vault for possible future use if there is no official one do artists lend tend to hold on to a few
00:00:51
of those on a personal basis we've never had a rejected concept art have we yeah we've never had to redo anything have you all the time what happens at least a few times a day you ever had to re completely redo something where it's just they're like nope rejected yes and what do you do do you take any of that do you keep do you have a vault at your desk you have a combination okay so we'll we'll break it down cuz it really depends on who's leading that concept who's designing that right and it when as a concept artist you're trying to develop someone else's Vision right right so occasionally you the best way to do it is you make a concept you go through your first pass they say okay this looks good change a little bit here change a little bit there you change it everything's going smoothly and everybody's happy and then during your
00:01:40
deadline you meet your deadline right and it's cool sometimes you do a concept and maybe you get a little cheeky you want to get creative so you kind of throw something out for left field and it could be like I kind of like it but I need you to integrate it a little bit more or it can be the worst which is this is not what I'm thinking at all right redo it so those Concepts usually aren't put into a vault some things that are put into a vault uh and I could speak on this for like assets helmets and things like that is let's say I create something it's a little bit weird it's a little bit too sci-fi they want it to be more industrial not as Sleek we might take that concept and say hey it kind of looks like it fits over here more so when we get to this when we have to do this task right then here's
00:02:30
something that we kind of like the FM then you might be able to start for so something might be able to fit uh Krueger and RSI and then You' be like okay well that's more RSI just put it and hold it yeah I don't think it generally uh we ever have to keep it in a vault as much as uh really look at the concept and figure out okay where does this actually fit in the world and uh obviously it's not always going to be perfect the first time around um but now that we actually have these manufacturers and like you know we've finally been able to put Chris Roberts kind of visual um standards onto the uh onto the screen uh we have a better and better idea of uh what each uh concept gears towards as far as the manufacturers so you know and the Styles and the look of the game so it's uh I don't say we ever really throw anything away I feel like for every concept piece
00:03:16
even if it's not 100% correct there's elements that we could take for it even if you need to take that element and put it towards another concept for another manufacturer right right and even if it's like geometry based right you can just go in and rip one thing out like I really like the Thruster but the whole rest of the ship is awful yeah you be like rip it out um but with with ships though I think with assets it's easier but with ships they're really deliberate from the get-go right so very rarely when we start a ship do we finish it and say oh it doesn't match we'll throw it away like that ship is designed to fit a certain thing and there's so many stages that it really can't get off track so much the point where there's a finished product that's people aren't happy with yeah that's exactly right we don't it wouldn't be rejecting concept for ships it's it's evolving the concept for ships so you know not bad huh damn all right
00:04:05
so you know you got Chris Roberts you have designers you have concept artists you have uh you know a slew of people that are reviewing these uh concept art and from the very get-go we're making sure that it works in every aspect that's required for the game and meeting the visual consistencies that we need for the universe so it just keeps evolving and evolving and evolving until finally it's something that we're ready to uh we feel like it fits Star Citizen mhm all right uh that answers your question swordfish elpar storm wa you want me to do you want to switch off or you just want to do this how you want to do this uh just want to rrap yeah I'll do two than you do two all right sounds good all right we have storm all right storm when making various parts of the game how do you stay motivated on things that are normally dull um maybe items maybe
00:04:54
certain characters well uh don't make it dull if it's dull then make it cool some things are there's you just have to some things you just have to be done yeah right yeah like yeah there are things that are boring I tested Omar yesterday with doing a shadow proxy for a helmet yeah that was boring yeah but to stay M motivated it's you know yeah money's a good motivator yeah um but other than that most of the time you were right though you try to make it cool make it cool yeah yeah I mean this is a Sci-Fi game you know you could be creative about everything whether it's a a coffee pot you know in a your apartment in your space condo right or it's you know I've seen super cool things you know you saw in the gamecom demo that intro you know that kind of
00:05:41
room that they started and it's just like got the cool light post cool lighting cool coffee stuff you know cool little PDA and uh you know so you could really know I think no matter what it is the fact that it's sci-fi you know you can kind of make it interesting yeah if you're really if you're really you know intelligent and think about it you can you can make a Sci-Fi cup that's really cool yeah exactly like you can do anything but I think more with the with the art side our jobs really aren't that like we sometimes I do TD stuff but really not that much you know not usually yeah so usually it's stuff like oh man I'm going to make a I need to make a light I'm going to make the sickest light everyone's going to be here and everyone's like oh this is the dopest light I've ever seen and then we're all cheering and jumping up and down in the office Y and dancing that's right that's exactly what happens that's exactly what
00:06:28
happens o just got dark in here sudden Darkness as a question O M Paint on a ship when you first buy it look new or battered for example the Taurus although an industrial ship has marks and scratches all over the interior and exterior uh we are buying a new ship right you are buying a new ship you're absolutely right uh in the game world uh the way that the shaders are set up and the texture are being ported to is that when you purchase the ship it will be pristine it's just like purchasing a new car you drive it off the lot it's brand new soon as it gets off the lot it's never really brand new ever again you know your value goes down right and then we start uh factoring in the code that will kind of procedurally blend in the
00:07:18
wear uh over time and then it'll kind of be like a grand theft auto type thing I think where you take it in your space garage and get it you know cleaned up um cleaned up and washed and um detailed I guess um so but these are new systems that you know we're we've been working on and coming online a lot of the early ships we're just get them in there let's see how it works to see what it looks like wear it up a little bit um but now we're starting to backtrack and you'll notice that the newer ships you know like the Retaliator and whatnot um has much cleaner materials and then uh we're going to figure out how we're going to start bleding in that we cuz that is something that we definitely want to yeah we're still early on in that technology but uh we kind of know how we want to do it we pretty much know how to do it and then a lot of it is like retrofitting and stuff like that yeah but also I think for industrial ships they're never like they'll come with a
00:08:07
little bit of wear probably like you normally would if you're making like an industrial scale or something like that but it'll never get cleaner than than when you buy exactly yeah yeah absolutely for sure um and then yeah but even the clothing like when we're messing with like jeans and stuff so even the Pu clothing is going to wear over time too your jeans start getting faded you know you're start getting you know dirt on the bottom of your pants stuff like that which is kind of cool so it's going to the whole system around the um all the items in the game and the ships and the characters are going to have some kind of wearing and be pristine when you purchase it and then that's cool cuz then you sell it it's used it looks kind of dirty that'll probably be the first demonstration for people to see would probably be the clothing because it's simpler for us uh to kind of start off fresh with you know like a fresh shirt and then kind of do all the tests that we need to do uh cuz ships obviously you know we we go as in
00:08:56
depth as we possibly can in those ships so that would take definitely like a lot of work but y that's what you'll see first y absolutely Eve wake can we see more concept art of ships that haven't been seen in a while I.E Merchant man caterpillar well I think that in general what you'll find um is we will do the original concept it'll be some really quick interior shots but mostly we concentrate on the outside of the ship um and that's usually during the concept cell and then later down the road um then we start blocking out the interior we start working really close with the design to making sure that uh you can get from the front to the back you can get in your chair you can exit your chair turret this and that so uh heavy design goes in the interior so I'd imagine that when you see followup Concepts from Concepts you haven't seen
00:09:42
in a while um you will find that you'll see some new interior shots I think we're going to have uh some Vanguard uh interior teases pretty soon uh that uh our uh concept artist gmach did which are pretty sweet yeah probably see those sooner than anything else mhm but we pretty much plan when to show stuff it's like yeah it's hard to just show stuff that hasn't been seen before because that has to go through a whole approval process and it's kind of you know there's a little bit of a art to like you know we are we are a game and we are in the entertainment industry so we want to Hype people up it's we can't if we just start throwing everything out at all the time it gets it'll get oversaturated it get a little boring even though people are always excited you know you want to keep that excitement and momentum moving and that allows us to concentrate on one thing at
00:10:29
a time yeah but I think that um yeah you will see some upcoming uh concept that you haven't seen for a while um probably pretty in the near future yeah I think really near future probably yeah all right next question oh this is a perfect question for what we were just talking about all right it's by Nick do you visualize the actual spatial Interiors of the overall size of the ship when you do a concept drawing or do a concept and puff it up and shrink it to make it work yeah so that's that is part of the reason that we do the follow-up Concepts and they do kind of take some time is because uh that's exactly what we do we go through we get all the dimensions uh we make sure that the door frames actually work with our uh FPS requirements uh we make sure that the ship is fully functional when you're
00:11:16
inside of it from a gameplay perspective and uh in order for us to save time uh we do a lot of blockouts in 3D uh and making sure that it all works properly uh which leads to some concept shots um however there is some Concepts that are just done by hand and roughed out and stuff like that very early on totally totally and I think I think in house we tend to like the concepts that work for or 542 they build everything in 3D and because they work closely with the game designers so when you're concepting you're trying to save time for the modelers and everything like that so you definitely don't want a modeler to get something and to be like oh this doesn't fit in here and this doesn't fit in here and this is this so we tend to have a little more time for concept so that we can figure out uh everything and work closely with the design so that it
00:12:02
doesn't have to be redesigned but also I mean there is something to really cool 2D art that a lot of concept artists that are uh Outsource just really make V Vis beautiful visual imagery and then when we get those we might take one of those drawings and then figure it after the fact we'll refactor and make it work we'll make it work we we try to we try our hardest I mean sometimes it can be confusing and difficult but for the most part we'll keep the essence of the ship as much as we can which is usually the majority of it and have it with a fully functioning interior but when me and GMU design we always think about uh interior spaces that's great saves our saves the modeler's time they's get right to it yep 100% all right what's next all right do you want to to read this next one or
00:12:50
you want me to read this next one fire it all right fire it okay go away far Seeker I like how this is the only one that I just told you to go I just told you to go away I oh I made fire away dude this is ridiculous can I just leave all right all right here we go all right whatever don't cover your face for I'm not covering my face I'm bringing it down I'm just putting it back in order I'm sure okay far Seeker could you rank the following possible in oh could you rank the following possible influential inspirational materials in order of personal importance when you start a new concept ship ship roll company style guide reference picture what you think fits the verse personal appeal favorite sci-fi first or other fictional sources you want to take that first sure yeah so uh we do actually spend quite a
00:13:38
bit of time I mean again it all comes back to the manufacturers right they kind of Define the way that everything looks now and uh but one thing that you know like lately been kind of looking at the ships of the you know the shapes of the ship and making sure that you know the form kind of fits with each manufacturer um having similar Styles as far you know maybe the bridge is kind of always rounder on this type of ship you know what I mean but it's much more blockier Square you know this manufacturer you know um so maybe this is more of a fire pilot you know this is more you know kind of industrial right so we do uh definitely keep a very big log of exactly kind of our style guides of how we kind of approach each and every ship and it kind of already falls into a type and a visual feel like right off the bat when we start doing the concept yeah yeah and sometimes certain trips that we haven't done a lot of them haven't been developed as fully as the ones we've done a lot but they're always
00:14:26
consistently growing and we try to keep the same and and form language more now than ever before right uh cuz you know obviously at the beginning of the ships it was kind of like uh we're still figuring it out we're still figuring it out in the very but now I think what's going to happen is the the bar is going to be risen yeah but for personal influences like in how you start I guess I can just say like how I start a concept yeah go for it which would be like sometimes you just look at a couple pictures you're like oh I kind of like this and this shape and this shape but it's it's different every time you know if I'm really in the dark I'll just block out shapes until I see something just like black and white right just nothing they they'll look abstract just a silhouette yeah sometimes not even just sometimes there's this program called Alchemy which just draws weird stuff and you're like oh I see something in there um other times uh you'll get direction from somebody being like it's
00:15:16
this kind of feel and then then you start from there and you kind of do a little bit of research and other times there's no direction at all and you got to kind of piece it together yourself and I find just looking at you know three images uh like if I have to do a helmet I'll look at three things that aren't helmets and then a couple things that are helmets and then try to them together yeah I think that's great advice too like I mean I love doing that you know you kind of I kind of get the you know overall look that I want to go for and I find a couple examples then I find some kind of more kind of radical looking things that aren't necessarily on those things and I figure out all right this kind of style and this kind of look you know that kind of fits the way it should be but it's not part of it and I'll just kind of start combining things and start kind of building shape and stuff and then try to get something kind of original and new so it's not completely just reiterating on something
00:16:04
that already exists um it's just you know evolve the art and the process and keep trying new things and then you'll kind of see it you'll be like that works or you'll know you know that doesn't yeah right it's always different every time you start like I don't know if there's like someone has a specific method of how they begin something each and every time yeah cuz a lot of times we have to start just from a blank piece of paper which is like that's pretty tough you know yeah yeah it is um or a blank idea like you just come up to me like I need a jetpack and I'm like I don't know it's like okay I did that for Gamescom I asked him to do a jetpack in one day with no concept yeah all right oh and game model oh yeah that too I jesz okay um you want to ask the next question sure there you go Bud let's do it uh Jumpman how exactly would helmets work on a multim monitor display usually the
00:16:51
extra monitors gives us more fov in games um but if heavier helmets restrict fov wouldn't it just cover a significant screen space with helmet this is a question that I do not have the answer to yet um design has been working on a way to make that work but there are some challenges uh such as it's a uh significant Advantage uh while you're playing uh the FPS having so much more screen space and uh you can't obviously stretch it across through monitor so you actually need the extra uh field of view so it's that's kind of a difficult one and I'm not sure exactly how that is going to work but if you guys have suggestions I'm sure throw them into the forum um and ask design and give your suggestions on how to make that work I know they're still fleshing it out but I don't have the details yet yeah I think it's just it's just unfair right now and how is that what the the Oculus is that
00:17:38
like cuz that requires the full the full thing too is that kind of like having three monitors well I've tried the Oculus one time I don't necessarily think it's like having three monitors because you can just like look to the left look to the right and it kind of comes over it it covers your whole face yeah but I think depending on certain games you can change your rlv but for certain games I love when they do that like the racing games you have like the like the multi and stuff you got your joystick oh the windows on the side oh yeah that's so cool that's tight but I don't know if we can I don't necessarily know how we're going to be able to do that to where it's not a tactical Advantage uh well but we'll we'll figure it out if you stack three more monitors on top then you could kind of still have your 169 ratio okay this is getting radical Oculus we just sit right in front I think I did an Oculus plug yeah
00:18:29
yep DK Steve Hunter do you have style guys for non- combat related things in the universe for example the look of clothing being different on each planet or different by each clothing brand we sure do we got yeah we do fashion line that you guys are going to be able to try on all kinds of clothes we got Megan and Rob McKinnon on that stuff doing ter fashion styles Terra fashion casual Terra fashion business ter fashion UPS scale down scale bar clothes bar patrons mhm oh there's going to be a ton it'll be a world full of clothing that's going to be real fun to model yeah so many shirts yeah no it's going to be yeah we're going to be modeling a lot of clothing so but that's fun who doesn't
00:19:17
want to I mean the whole system is based as we said before in the last one that the whole sister is very modular you have pants you have shirts gloves shoes high heels hats you know what you know all kind we don't have high heels yeah we will I was going to say there's a lot of Animation things sounds difficult okay let's not do that Flats we have flats all kinds of stuff but yeah so I mean it's there lotss of clothing and it'll be quite exciting you'll be able to customize your characters and I mean even now we're talking about the armor right right now our the armor that you saw um in the Gamescom demo is just a very only probably 40% of the quality and you know very still prelimin and that those armor pieces are going to really be built out to be customizable right and um even though you talked about non-c combed
00:20:05
it's going to be all the way across the board um everything's going to be customizable right and like we keep saying we're still with fashion guys for every you know manufacturers clothing lines no different than we do de uee has a whole thing uh even down to the deck crew what color uh how Like Oxygen Mass where does it attach like it gets you can have it attach not attach yeah it gets pretty gets pretty complicated but the thing is it's still like we're still developing these things when we did the first batch of characters when we did the second batch of characters every time we learn so much right so when like you kind of always want to restart from scratch and be like now I can do it better but you you know you obviously can't obviously you can't but as we start developing and as we start ramping
00:20:52
up the character team and as we start ramping up the quality of the characters and figuring out our system and damage and the modularity uh cuz we have everything right it's just yeah just needs to be I think we're finally wrapping up all the tech like as of right now and now we're ready you know the things that we kind of have are kind of more Legacy uh but now we have the final Star Citizen Tech of how we're going to do all this stuff for um the non-combat clothing you know and including the wear like we just talked about and you know all the different um item attachments for all the different clothing you know put a jacket on top of your shirt type thing um so yeah you'll probably start seeing that in a couple months I think coming online as far as that full system probably has to be after the P pu gets released a couple months pretty pretty close yeah but I don't know exactly I don't know the date
00:21:42
but we're working on it we are working on it that's I promise cross my heart oh okay ready yeah farewell red no farewell red say goodbye to Red see you later see you later will the other helmets be closed at the back I mean now you can still see the skin and the neck and I guess that will give you some problems in space no never of course not when I was we were working on Gamescom we're doing the Dem you know we're doing the play test and then someone comes up to me and they're like you know the characters are kind of cool and all but uh what I was doing the Eva my neck was kind of you know and we were like that is a design Choice out there out there out there in space and I was like what is that a problem is that not supposed to would that be a thing yeah so uh actually currently I actually
00:22:32
um we you know we got that fixed and so actually it kind of has like some kind of black rubber that protects you but um you brought up a good point like a week ago where you were talking about having a type of you know attachment or some kind of you know bridge between the helmet and the suits that's kind of modular that way you can take the helmets on and off and they actually do kind of cover up that was just one of those things that we just you know you don't really think about until you're in space and all of a sudden your neck is exposed and you're like oh right that's not right that's that's it's got to hurt so yeah I think yeah it's got to it's it's it's hard too because when you first design a character sometimes when we were doing the the Marines they were going to be fighting um in indoors right so we kind of designed them for situation like that and then as design goes on they're like you know what would be really great would be now these guys
00:23:20
are going to launch into space or now the hole is going to be breached or that not so as design throws things at us that's when we start to go come back and fact check our characters right between like okay now we know that all the Marines pretty much or all the combat soldiers are essentially going to have to be Eva capable at some point to some extent or at least survive in in a in a that lifts us back to the first question which is that's when we go back into the Vault right and we look re-evaluate the concept and then we figure out do we need to go back to concept stage and make some adjustments can we make them on the Fly Like Omar did with the jetpack for the Gamescom demo um is it a temp solution is it a permanent solution so we go back see what we can do and then all of a sudden you know we have the next clamp and then we have you know jetpacks but and then we learn from it
00:24:08
so then that's the next iteration is we say okay now we're doing the concept like for the Eva jetpack right um that uh Jeremiah's working on we know that the way the thrusters need to be set up now which means they're going to take that into account so they're going to be even better than the last version right and that's just as we're flushing that it out because we are in pre-production you know we are still learning how the game mechanics are going to work um so that's just you know you know it's a very organic iterative process right yeah I think it's it's difficult too because one thing is just that uh so concept would have to know that all these marines have to be uh Eva capable yet they don't know when they're drawing it that it does because you don't know it until it's built and it's in game and then you see okay this is a problem but that's something that needs
00:24:55
to be designed so once that happens we then we can go back to concept say hey hey all callar there needs to be some sort of collar or Connecting Point right and they'll concept it and then when we get to the game the guy who's modeling the character he needs to know here's where the geometry goes here's how it connects the concept is now built off of this one point ex but there needs to be a whole bunch of things to occur for us to notice and you need the suit to support it so it snaps in you need the helmet to support it then you need all the modular pieces of the suit to support so it's a you know it's a very you know it's a thing yeah especially when like modular flying through space like it it it gets why do we have to do space you just have to support everything just it is space and land and sea I'm not saying C though I'm not announcing you just did that no
00:25:43
submarines no sea no planets of water please no planets are we going actually that's that would be pretty easy that a good question though yeah we know we Water World with Kevin cner really we're going to do water world no announcing 2000 I'm just kid not true but that would be awesome some modders out there do that Kiren K kir Kiren Kieran Kieran that's K like a beard kirich are we going to come across nonhumanoid alien races in the verse Absol positively yep hope so oh yeah we've been designing them that' be boring if there's all humans yeah we spent a lot of time making some of these alien races so if they don't show up in the game that would be very fun no that would not be fun we have some super cool alien races
00:26:32
that we're really excited about we have ships specifically designed to fit alien races alien races yeah absolutely uh so yeah you'll be able to hopefully I mean on and eventually I think on the Pu side too you're you know once you know at first it's going to be very humanoid cuz you know that's what we're concentrating on you know we want make sure we do it right and then we'll move on to the next thing and then you know like right now obviously the vel's been going on for a while the Bandu you know right um so you you know it'll be cool to be playing around be playing kind of the Pu and all of a sudden starting to see like some Bandu appear some you know like you know these different alien races that you have to interact with I don't know the lore I don't know if they like each other or not maybe they don't but I would imagine it's going to be very similar to Like a Star Trek Star Wars type deal where you go on the planet you go into the bar there's all kinds of different alien races that you have to interact with um and especially as
00:27:19
you're traveling through space you're going to be going into you know a whole new area that's going to be primarily the alien race you'll kind of be the minority I'm sure you know it'll be kind of pretty cool uh actually so I'm actually very excited about the aliens I'm excited about the aliens too and like we keep saying like the word of the day is like development right so we have to develop so at first when you develop a character it takes a long time right so but that's a great thing about being a funded game like this by the public is because maybe at first there's a couple alien races here and there but as the world develops over time like if it takes off and it's 10 years down the line right I mean you could have a fully populated world but for the initial like awesome which would be amazing I mean that's our whole end up goal that's the goal yeah but for the initial launch I mean there has to be a given and take of how far we can take it right and develop
00:28:10
it but once we have it developed we can take it pretty far yeah and we'll probably concentrate on the main races and then just get those polished and nice vuel and Shen probably are going to be the most uh yeah probably the most thought about at first yeah for sure um okay well I think that's all of the questions uh again we'd like to thank our subscribers for making this happen and we've been talking too about doing uh you you were talking about well we're going break in the third wall fourth wall here uh about doing a recording of artists making art and how we do a concept and how we approach it and like the F very first stages to the last stage so I mean I'm down to do a video like that cuz I know some of you okay so maybe next time around what we'll do is we'll actually do some recording of you know the work in progress of some of your next work and then we'll kind of
00:28:58
demonstrate some time lapses of you know building a helmet from Scrat to finish or something be kind of cool that sounds great all right guys well uh thanks again thanks to subscribers thanks for having us and see you next time see you around the [Applause] verse hey guys thanks for watching um temp for the chairman if you guys would like to uh see more episodes go here if you guys would like to subscribe to our YouTube channel and always keep up to date with all our video content go here and uh if you guys would like to watch episodes of around the verse go here please and I will see you in the verse

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