How to find the juice? That’s much more ambiguous,” teases art director Shaddy Safadi as he narrows his eyes and rubs his fingers across his thumbs. What’s this mysterious ‘juice’? It’s that special something that raises concept art up a notch, and in The Last Of Us Part II became important to depicting the game’s “beautiful decay”.
Shaddy is art director of his own studio, One Pixel Brush, but spent more than a decade working at Naughty Dog on the PlayStation title Jak 3 before moving on to the multimillion-selling Uncharted series, and the original The Last Of Us. For its sequel, Shaddy’s team of “superstar artists” were recruited to help with production. He thought this would be the normal 10 concept paintings, but this rose to a staggering 900. Four years later Shaddy can share the process.
LOOK FOR BEAUTY
Continuing on the idea of “beautiful decay”, Shaddy reveals that this was an idea coined by art director Bruce Straley for the original game to convey humanity huddled in the shadows, out of sight of a zombie outbreak, while nature reclaims our world.
“Beautiful decay became our benchmark back when I first started, which meant when you paint the greenery, when you depict the way that trees grow over things, you can make it pretty. And that’s gonna be a nice contrast to the horror of what the game is,” explains Shaddy.
Denne historien er fra September 2020-utgaven av ImagineFX.
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Denne historien er fra September 2020-utgaven av ImagineFX.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Jan Wessbecher
Dominic Carter talks to the visual artist about creating his own comic and why sketchbooks are great for creative experiments
Kyounghwan Kim
The Korean character concept artist speaks to Dominic Carter about staying open to ideas and the value of drawing regularly
Slawek Fedorczuk
Dominic Carter talks to the concept artist about what keeps him motivated and the advantages of using physical sketchbooks.
Raquel M. Varela
Raquel is inspired by magic, fantasy and fairy tales. She loves designing female characters from distant worlds. \"My greatest reference is Loish's art, thanks to her I learned to draw the movement and fluidity I like to convey.\"
Estrela Lourenço
Estrela is a children's book author and illustrator. Her work is influenced by her background in character animation and storyboards for clients such as Cartoon Network, and she channels comic strips like Calvin and Hobbes.
Daria Widermanska
Daria, also known as Anako, has been drawing for as long as she can remember. Inspired by Disney and classic anime, she loves creating new characters and often finds that a single sketch can spark a unique story.
Allen Douglas
Allen has been painting professionally since 1994 for the publishing and gaming industries. Inspired by folklore, he distorts the size, relationships and environments of animals, and calls his paintings 'unusual wildlife'.
Thaddeus Robeck
Thaddeus has been drawing from the moment he could hold a pencil, but it was the 2020 lockdowns that gave him the time to focus on honing his skills.
DRAW FASCINATING SYMBOLIC ARTWORK
Learn how JULIÁN DE LA MOTA creates a composition from his imagination with a focus on crafting figures, volumetric modelling, and light and shadow
First Impressions
The artist talks about his journey into the mythological world
