Casey Matsumoto is a concept artist working for film and video game industries, currently working as freelance designer in sunny Los Angeles, CA. Upon completing high school at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, he attended Art Center College of Design, majoring in Illustration with a focus in Entertainment Design. After graduating from Art Center College of Design, he promptly starting working at Konami Digital Entertainment in Los Angeles as a 2D artist/concept artist. Casey’s last position as a concept artist for Rhythm and Hues allowed him to work on environment / set designs and creature designs for Sergey Bodrov’s THE SEVENTH SON. We talk a bit about ZBrush, his idea behind being a concept artist, his time with videogame companies, and more! Read the full Q&A below…
We interviewed Sei Nakashima late last year who told us that during work on Seventh Son, A lot had happened during a year and half production time but over all it was all positive. Could you shed some light upon your own experiences working on the film and how you contributed.
I was brought on-board when the production was already in post production of “Seventh Son.” Sei Nakashima was the art director of the movie and he needed me to assist in creating environment designs or rather set designs of what the architecture would look like. It was difficult for me who has never seen the production reel or concept art so trying to blend in was challenging. For the first few days, I was given a set of production arts and reels of what they have so far. It was amazing how the artist (3d modelers, lighters, matte painters, fx artists, compositors, etc.) make everything from scratch. My position as a concept artist was to understand the world of that universe and to create a bridge between an idea to the finished vision.
Of course, some of the designs were ejected from Sei and the creative director so I had to keep trying different things to keep the process going. There was a lot of different iterations that were taken place and a lot of there were scrapped but that’s part of the process. I would start by creating a reference sheet for myself so I don’t get lost into cranking details. Mostly I would take those images and put them into the concept art so I can speed up the process. I would also ask for a 3D model if they have any to paint over them in Photoshop for what may or may not look like in the final design.
What is the biggest difference between working on film and working on video games? Do you approach concepts differently?
The biggest difference between working on film and working on video games is the scale in audience and medium. In games, you can create an entirely imaginative world with no limitations of explosions, rendering extras, giant creatures and machines that doesn’t need to function. In movies, it’s all about function and reality-based because the production set has to work in reality with the actors and actresses. Furthermore, not everybody plays video games especially elders who are in their 50s unless they are in the game business so the demographic margin is very limited.
What makes it sell is the storytelling. The graphics is always going to improve as technology advances so the only place that can improve or execute will be storytelling. A lot of the movies nowadays push the CG technology and simply it looks amazing but it can lack in story and character development. Recently, games such as Konami’s Metal Gear Solid series or Naughty Dog’s Last of Us has a great story and visuals so both is very important to sell the franchise. It is common now in the next generation console games that narration and cinematic is necessary.
I usually don’t approach concepts differently in games or movies because function is important in both worlds. If I would to create a massive, epic-scale environment in film or games, I would start out with a 3D model with bunch of boxes for place holders and paint the scene in Photoshop so I don’t need to worry about perspective, lightning and scale at first. I can tweak them while rendering it in Photoshop by creating a perspective grid to make it look like objects belong in the environment. I would water the design a bit so I’m not compensating the original design if it cost a lot to make the product. In games, it doesn’t matter because it will all be about constraining with the poly counts per model. Those are the two main factors I worry about when creating a concept art.
I hear concept art for games is more in demand then for film but the pay is worse. What is your stance on that?
It’s mainly because of budgetary reasons. Film requires a lot of man power to create one thing unless you don’t require any special effects or cg work. Even in games, AAA titles are expensive too and there are lot of people working on one single title but the difference is the production pipeline. Often times, when a production have a budget problem, they would cut the costs from the artists (or layoff) and make them stay for overtime. I have couple of friends who are employed as salaries so they have to be there overtime and then get let go after the production is over.
To minimize the damage for both parties, artists should be getting paid by hours. If the client or studio can’t pay them, artists can walk off with how many hours they worked on rather than getting cheated by having them stay overtime and fire them when they have no money to pay the artists. Most of the time, It has nothing to do with the performance of the artists.
There is uprising in the independent developers (indie) in both films and games. With a small budget and crew, the project can be successful. Often times, they would to submit their project on Kickstarter to get their project crowd-funded. A notable mention is a indie game called, “Hyper Light Drifter.”(https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1661802484/hyper-light-drifter) It was created by two developers, Alex Preston and Beau Blyth. It was initially asking for $27,000 but got funded to $645,158. The 2D Action RPG game garnered a huge fan base and it’s still in production with community support. Even a small team can make a great product. There’s an interivew he did that was inspiring and informative: https://soundcloud.com/the-collective-podcast/the-collective-ep-26-alex
What was is like working for Sega in the late 2000′s?
I was working as a concept design intern at Sega in Tokyo, Japan for three months. It was definitely a great run as I was learning the production pipeline that was uniquely different compared to here in US. Most of the designs were all done in line drawing with color swatches to show variations as opposed to working at a studio in America, it was all about the rendering and the final look of the character or environment with values and lighting.
And the transition to Konami…was that seemless?
Konami was a different experience. After graduating from Art Center College of Design, I worked at Konami, located in El Segundo, California as a 2D Artist working on various projects such as Playstation Home, Metal Gear Solid series, Frogger, Silent Hill series, Castlevania series, etc. I was mostly associated with the social media marketing with creating art assets and graphic designs for marketing purposes.
Is ZBrush still your go-to program to create organic concepts? How has this process evolved over the years?
I still use Zbrush as part of my pipeline for both organic and hardsurface modeling. Zbrush has changed my view in creating concepts because while schooling at Art Center College of Design, I was honing my traditional skills in designing using markers, pens and pencils. After my second year in Illustration, it was then that I started doing more digital art work and learning how to render in Photoshop. It was not until my senior year (2010) when I took a class at Concept Design Academy (CDA) in Pasadena where they offered Zbrush for Concept course with Bryan Wynia and Josh Herman. The program had a steep learning curve where I had no idea where the tools are but Bryan and Josh were very informative and taught the class the basics of how to engage with Zbrush with the right tools of creating illustrations and concept art for video games and film.
When an art director wants me to create an orthos (top, side, back view designs) and I can’t vision the side view so I would block it out in Zbrush which only takes me few minutes and use that as a guideline so I don’t need to figure out what the side view looks like. It’s only a tool to boost my production speed and I don’t see why I can’t use it. I can get my black and white values already done by pressing the render button and colorize them in Photoshop.
As a concept artist, how do you struggle with coming to the understanding that your work is not your own? I know working collaboratively it goes directly against the game or script of the film being created.
Most of the work I do for client(s), on a freelance basis, are not really my vision but to offer as many designs as possible for the clients to see what appeals to them the most. I usually crank out at least ten different variations at first and then “frankenstein/ kitbash” (coined term for mashing up different designs) from each parts so they can see it entirely a new design.
Working with another artists can be difficult at times because one has a specific vision and the other has another direction to what the final product would look like. Collaborating can tend to lead into production problems and ultimately lead into a halt but to solve that, I think it’s important to be flexible and open to what the client or art directors wants in the final look. I ran into a lot of situations where the client(s) would have a hard time understanding what the character, creature, or environment design would like so I would ask them to give me a sample reference sheet of what their initial visions or direction were.
I try to invest in my spare time in my sketchbook at a local cafe so I can liberate myself from clinging onto a project. Later, I would take some of the sketches I did and render them in Photoshop or even take them further into 3D. It is always important to get fresh eyes when you are on a project for so long to see designs in a different way. Of course, I’m just there for the caffe latte and macaroons [laughs].
Lastly, any advice for any budding college grad looking to break into the industry?
Be aware of the trend that is going on and be different from it and believe what you think is different from your peers. It’s essential to build a large visual library of various cultures from literature, science, literal arts, comedy and even a little kid’s preschool drawing. It takes time and practice but spending 10 thousand hours on one particular thing you enjoy most will definitely take you even a greater leap of success. Just like an Olympian runners do, the more hours you spent on a craftsmanship, you’ll improve as time goes by. Digest and evaluate what you learned because speed will come later.