Activity Feed
Ahti S.
•
4yr
added comment inJeremy Cranford AMA & Portfolio Review
Hello Jeremy Cranford :) I´m a 19 year old artist from Germany with the big dream to become a professional artist. I´ll attend a university in Switzerland in a few months to study Animation. I´m not quite sure yet what exactly I want to do in the future but I can imagine myself working in the animation industry, working as a freelance artist or illustrating books! There are so many things I am passionate about :) Thank you so much for the opportunity!
Jeremy Cranford
4yr
Hi Ahti, I really your animal paintings. Do you ever watch Aaron Blaise's youtube videos? I think you'll like him. The advice I'd give you is to go to school and learn all of the fundamentals. Find out the things you like and don't like then let the art take you where it wants to. I remember thinking I'd work as an album artist but when I graduated from school there were only CD-roms and then those went away. So you never now what opportunities await but the doors never open if you don't do the required training. Good luck!
@janndelapaz
•
4yr
Asked for help
Hi Jeremy!
I am graduating student, and I enjoy making 2d art. I also started making 3d sculpts recently.
I've been trying to get into the game industry, even as an intern or a junior artist. But my problem is that I just started building my portfolio. Furthermore, I've also recently received some rejection emails, and I am still sad about it.
So, I've been wondering what I should focus on in my portfolio since I like both 3d and 2d art.
But yes, here are some of my works though some of them are just studies.
Hope to hear your feedback soon!
Sincerely,
Jann Dela Paz
Hi Jann, Here is the best advice I can give you. 1
You have two big tasks after graduating. One is to find a way to feed yourself and pay your bill to live. The second job is to grow your art skills and improve your portfolio over time. Be kind to yourself if that doesn't happen right away. I think too many artists give up too quickly because their art doesn't monetize right away. If you stick with it, over time it will come. Until the quality of your work grows from student level to professional level you'll get a lot of rejections. We all get rejections all the time in our careers. It's something you have to grow thick skin towards and not let it discourage you.
The other important thing I want you to do is to download 2D art and 3D rendered models of assets from the companies you want to work for. Place those images next to your images and pick out some things they are doing better than you at this moment and try to work for that until the art in your portfolio is as good as the art you see produced by the companies you want to work for.
It takes time, patience, and a consistent work ethic.
Liz Gridley
•
4yr
Asked for help
Hi Jeremy, my name is Liz Gridley, I'm an oil paint artist from Melbourne Australia. If love to ask your opinion of traditional mediums in game design - is there still a place for oil painting in the industry or is digital just so much more efficient?
My oil paintings can take from a week to two months to complete and I wonder if pursuing work in games and with larger clients is folly because I might not be able to compete with the speed of amazing digital painters.
Should I concede and try my hand at digital?
Hi Liz, Nice oil paintings. I have two answers for you. 1. The majority of artist I work with use digital but I do work with and hire oil painters. Look at the work of Brom, Alex Horley, Chris Rahn, Greg Staples and Mike Sass. All of them are oil painters who create paintings for Blizzard and many more working on Magic: the gathering. So yes, there is a place for oil painting in the entertainment industry. That said, I'd get a copy of Corel painter and learn how to paint digitally as it's such a useful tool to quickly make revisions and modifications to your paintings after you scan it or shoot it with photography. 2. All of your work is beautiful but it's really geared toward gallery paintings. Most entertainment properties do no have nudes in the game. So if you wanted to work in the entertainment industry you'd need to start creating illustrations of "costumed characters".
The Asian Sam
•
4yr
Asked for help
Hello Mr. Cranford. I am a student artist and I just starting out 4 years ago. I am learning what’s works and what doesn’t and I don’t have a consistent style yet. I attached some of my favorite characters I drew and I would like to ask you what’s working with my design and drawing so I can focus more on it. I am trying to figure out what I will do in the industry. As a Hearthstone battleground fan I am appreciated your help!
Hi Asian Sam! I'm glad you're liking Battlegrounds. You have some nice characters designs but try to show them in a T-pose so we can appreciate the design of the character. Don't show them on black backgrounds and there is not need to pose them. I like falconers (Fana and Rezel) but you are using very realistic proportions. I'd encourage you to push the characterization and exaggerate the proportions more in your characters and move past realism. Research the character designs of Carter Goodrich as an example of what I'm referring to.
Olga Bruser
•
4yr
Hi my name is Olga
I love dark fantasy, worlds such as Dark Souls and Diablo especially the art of Diablo 4.
In the last 4 years I'm working for a more casual gaming industry and I create stylized cartoon characters and backgrounds and I find Hearthstone art very appealing and I use it as a source for reference and inspiration.
Although I like a wide range of styles, my goal is to reach the level required for creating amazing cards such as Magic the Gathering, Hearthstone and Gwent.
Thank you for taking the time to look at my work.
As for the AMA, I wanted to ask how artists get an assignment both in Hearthstone and Magic. I saw an artist on Artstation who had mostly realistic human illustrations and after he started working for Magic the Gathering, he created creatures as cards and it made me curious how a task is given, if it depends on portfolio or something else. Thank you
Hi Olga, to answer your question, I know there are quite a few artist such as Jesper Ejsing, Chris Rahn, and Jim Nelson who create art for both Hearthstone and M:tG I don't have an exact number off the top of my head. I do know most artist tend to lean one way or the other. Artist who like to paint more realistic characters with a more "filmic" look will do more work with WotC and artist who like more cartoony and stylized character designs will want to work for Hearthstone. There is no right or wrong answer. It's more like do you like coffee or tea. Only you know the answer. I like the art work of Dark Souls and Diablo also. I'd encourage you to make more monster images without such a heavy reliance of black in the background. I think you'll like the results.
Yiming Wu
•
4yr
Hi Jeremy! Let me just ask a question here: Why do I feel like the industry tend to stick to a safe "defined" look? Like when you see a lot of those images tend to have a certain kind (or a few kinds) of rendering style, you immediately feel like "oh this looks very video game-ish".
(Some effects I believe are due to typical graphics limitation but there's certainly a lot of play in terms of visual style. Are artist playing it safe for easy money? TBH this "mass production look" thing is more prominent like here in China, but I don't really see that much of a difference from the rest of the world)
I don't really got any stuff that align with "entertainment industry", my pictures are more of a depiction of a scenario rather than a structural thing or concept for games, but I'll slip several mines here anyway, will my kind of image have any use in the field? Also thanks for your time XD
Hi Yiming, I understand your question. I have friends that ask the same thing about the music and film industry. The short answer is game companies want to make games that have visual appeal. Just like the music industry wants to make hit songs with appeal. If something is too unique or strange the company worries maybe there will not be a large enough fan base to support the game. That said, I thought games like "Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet" and "Limbo" had very unique art styles. I really like your work. It's very realistic with this wonderful sense of surrealism. I love the image of the man on the paper airplane flying toward the jumbo jet. Great values, good composition, fun storying and nice brush work. I wanted to see this animation. What's happening? Why is he flying toward the plane. Tell more! The image is doing its job with "story telling". Nice work. Keep it up. I see you working in the animation industry one day.
Michael Yang
•
4yr
Hi I'm Michael and I'm still in high school (but soon to be graduating.) I love art but I'm not quite sure what to delve into yet. I have touched bases in a lot of different areas and part of me wants to get good at everything, but I realize I have to specialize in things if I want to work in the industry. Would love to know what you think!
Hi Michael, great high-school portfolio. You have a lot of good stuff here. Love the use of colors and value in your boat painting. The frog image feels like it could be a promo image from the Obsidian game "Grounded" or a pre-viz image for a new animated movie. What you need to do now is decide if you want to work in animation, video games or?? You have an illustration portfolio now but you should know the difference between illustration jobs and design/concept art jobs. Feng Zhu does a really good explaining the difference in this youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fPq1AF7v0E&t=2501s
Once you're clear on where you want to go with your career create a portfolio with images that demonstrate you can do that job. Good luck!
John Avila
•
4yr
Hi Jeremy
I'm really early in this "art" thing. I'm a 16 year old highschool student and would love to be a concept artist in the future like you Jeremy. I would also like to do my own Sci Fi projects on the side. I know there is so much to learn and it could be overwhelming at times, what are things that I must improve on that I'm probably missing, how would you approach on learning them :)
Hi John, the paintings are really good. Try not to always have the center of focus be in the middle (where it is on the 3 of your 5 paintings), trying to add a bit more area of focus and have that area look more finished. Go in and clean up the rendering and edges. Right now everything looks "rough" and a bit unfinished. By bringing one area into focus will really help.
@litmusik
•
4yr
Asked for help
Hello. I've been practicing drawing fundamentals for 1 year and my goal is to work as a comic artist and eventually write and illustrate my own graphic novels. This year my goal is to make the jump from copying images, to drawing from imagination. All the images I'm posting here are studies of other artists because my drawings from imagination turn out so poorly.
Hi Litmuski, That is the trick. Most people with some practice can copy and image but "copying" an image is a good training method is not the same thing as creating art. You'll need to take some classes that cover the foundations of character invention. So you can start with a simple gesture or even stick like figure and pose your character and then build up from there using reference. I think you've copied enough, put that away for awhile and not write some short stories with characters and then create some layouts and start making your own graphic novel now. That will give you the fuel to learn "on the job" when something doesn't look good take an online class on the subject then move on. Having a "live" project to work on is one of the best ways to improve and to have something to show when you're done.
Angela Paul
•
4yr
Asked for help
Hey, I'm Angela and 19 years old. I'm currently studying Animation and Games at a university in Germany. I would like to work as a character designer at some point. I've done childrens book illustration work already and therefore might also enjoy going more into the illustration area.
Thanks a lot for this amazing opportunity!
Hi Angela, your character designs are looking good. I really like the beard design of the wizard's beard the proportions on the bear are really fun also. Good use of drapery as well. Besides a career in animation you can also consider a career as a character concept artist in the games industry. If you're interested in that I'd encourage you to even more stylization and exaggeration in your characters as that is in demand in the games industry. Good luck!
