Vertex 2019

Last year I attended Vertex, hosted at the Olympia center in London, UK. When there I went to various talks curated by industry professionals, and my favourite talk of the day was hosted by Ryan Stevenson, Art Director for Rare Ltd, who has been at the company since 2001. He spoke about 'New Visual Adventures on the Sea of Thieves', discussing how himself and his team of artists went about designing the stylisation of Rare's latest, super successful game, Sea of Thieves. During the talk a filled an entire A4 page with notes, which included:

• Start the process by defining the art challenges and goals

• Stevenson has a concept art background

• Explore character and environment

• Have fun with the exploration

• Then look for the art pillars and create them!

• The Rule of Three - Make three pillars!

• Cover shape, form and overall style (Illustrative Response)

• Cover a large or main art challenge, for example, Rare's was the Sea in Sea of Thieves (Impact)

• Every part has a story and character, even objects! (Visual Characteristic of Project)

• Simplify structures!

• How do you texture? --> Brush marks!

• Rare's designs were inspired by Studio Ghibli

• Expressive texturing --> Explore it, simplify it!

• Rules in action --> How the art translates to a 3D object

• The main art focus in Sea of Thieves was the skies and seas

• Put the character into your environment --> give it personality

• Lost and found edges, make things asymmetrical

• Be creative with focal points

• Wonky with logic --> Wear and tear, patched and repaired --> Shows character

Ryan Stevenson's talk I found to be incredibly knowledgeable and inspirational, and helped to push my drive further to become a concept/character artist.