Guanjing(Yoyo) Mu |24/11/2024
In early November, I watched the World Finals of League of Legends at O2 Arena with my friends. This is the first time I came into contact with this game, and after feeling the enthusiasm of the audience, I became interested in the company, Riot Games, that produced this game.
Due to my own interest in character design, I specifically searched for an interview with Daniel Orive, a professional character designer working at Riot Games, and learned a lot from him.
The whole interview was quite long (1:13:13), but what impressed me most was Daniel’s insight into whether character designers need to develop their certain styles.
I believe that many artists, whether they take the commercial art direction or the pure art direction, have struggled with style. To me, I have been thinking for a long time, in the face of future career development, is it more important to maintain a unified and unique style or to develop the ability to master a variety of styles of creation? And I finally got a reasonable answer from Daniel.
In his view,
“Of course it’s better if you can handle a different style, so think about like, some of the studios, they are not like focusing on just one style. So if you have that variation, you’re gonna be a better fit for them for sure…… ”
[(Blender Guru, 2018)]
From this point of view, practicing and developing different creative styles may be more suitable for the current job market and easier to find a satisfactory job in the future.
The next second, Daniel also describe the common thought on developing personal unified and unique style:
“ … you’re still just stuck in one style so you’re gonna get better. You’re gonna kind of like to be an expert about that.” [(Blender Guru, 2018)]
Daniel doesn’t refute this view, but he offers a new perspective based on it:
“How I see it is like every different style benefits another style.”
[(Blender Guru, 2018)]
In a subsequent interview, he explained this through his own experience of jumping from 2D to 3D and back again. When switching back from 3D to 2D work, he described the mood as a bit nervous and scared, and a kind of lazy, because he thinks it’s gonna take a lot of time again to adapt in 2D style. But to his surprise, when he came back to 2D, he found that he could do better than before. Probably because he was getting that 3D view and working the anatomy, working on different shapes and stuff, so when he had to draw, it was easier for him to understand.
In short, after watching the video of the interview with Daniel Orive, I have a clear understanding of artistic styles and the coexistence between developing unified personal style creation and multiple style creation. To conclude with Daniel’s own words:
“… if you are working in something stylized, when you jump to the realistic one, you’re gonna be better with shapes. You’re gonna have a better silhouette, because you have that foundation form stylized. So the same for realistic, when you go to the stylized, you know where to add that detail. Because you are working on that on the realistic side. ” [(Blender Guru, 2018)]
Reference
Blender Guru (2018) ‘Most people don’t realize how much work it takes’ Pro character artist on
getting hired.