Fashion-focused Character Artist: Viable?
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Just a question of a potential specification of what I could concentrate on as a Character Artist in the future:
How valuable and viable, or how often used, would a fashion-design focused character artist be? Understandably, the restrictions would grind down to humanoid characters with clothes, but would such a specific expertise or concentration be recognized by employing game studios?
And how would I go about getting started in an education in fashion design/illustration by the brute force "get resources online, sketch, draw, study?"
How valuable and viable, or how often used, would a fashion-design focused character artist be? Understandably, the restrictions would grind down to humanoid characters with clothes, but would such a specific expertise or concentration be recognized by employing game studios?
And how would I go about getting started in an education in fashion design/illustration by the brute force "get resources online, sketch, draw, study?"
Replies
so yeah could you be a bit more specific? of course knowing about sewingpatterns, semas, stitches and whatnot is a big plus, getting online info will be somehwatvhard but there are great books out there to cover a lot of that. But be cautious, this is a whole other story than just sculpting what looks good, i once bought a huge compendium about a lot of that stuff and i had to stop reading it just because it was just way over my head without studying the very basics, and the language fashion designers use. Just like an outsider to the 3d art world you'll be confronted with lots of words you never knew that they exist
My refereneces mostly stem to to games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Remember Me, Mirror's Edge, and certain Star Wars games. I suspect much of this is goig to be heinously subtle compared to armor designs, etc.
What I mean by that is that while MD is good at plotting pattern and stitching them, it won't teach one much about which kind of curve, seem or cut is the most appropriate for a given curve of the body...
Now of course it is different if the goal here is just to reproduce existing garments for a realistic, contemporary setting in a game. In that regard I could imagine big studios hiring specific artists (MD operators ?) to do just that ... and it would be a great way to learn about pattern types too, since the job would likely require purchasing actual clothes and break them down !
Where I studied we had fashion design. Was quite interesting, but back then I didn't see much overlap with actual games character design. I remember they were sketching, but not life drawing like - very stylized. Then there were plenty of hands on courses where they would actually sew - I guess to learn, as Neox said, how the curves and cuts work out on the actual body (or the dummies they used). Then they did design studies, studied actual materials and how they can be used in clothing design. I guess nowadays they might actually use MD, like a prototyping or rapid design tool.
With shoes it was even more like actual CAD where they designed the layers of soles, decided on materials to absorb sweat from the inside, but repel water from the outside. Then there were all kinds of plastic parts. Especially those hi tech sports shoes are crazily complex.
So far a lot of cloth got sculpted, but now that MD seem to embrace our industry much more with v3.0 we're looking to make use of it. But I think a character artist who only does clothing might still be in a niche. Depending on project/studio there may just not be constant need for such a guy unless he has other skills too. In the worst case you may end up work making props - hey cloth guy, make us some curtains! Make us a table cloth!
You are asking if good character artist, making characters with really great original clothes can get a job ?
I suppose as well, it's more of a career question of "Hey, if Sparth is stupid good at Sci-Fi, could I personally, as a Character Artist, be known for my fashion design within the game development space?"
Since you are bringing up Sparth, who is a perfect example of what is expected from a concept artist in the strict sense of the word, here is what I think on this subject based on personal experience and what I have observed at various studios :
If you are an established concept artist within an art team, chances are, you will have a lot of opportunities to give feedback to other, more production-oriented artists "down the pipe", and from there there will be a lot of opportunities for you to actually fiddle with the tech. For instance, a concept artist with a decent enough knowledge of UV mapping could give direct feedback to a production artist (through the filter of the 3D lead of course) about which part of an outfit should receive more texture density. There might be even needs for such an artist to use thech tools directly, like when it comes to posing a character for an art directed box art picture for instance.
There might be also times when production could allow that person to simply "play with the tools" during downtime or as a Friday thing. For instance, I wouldn't be surprised to see Yoji Shinkawa (responsible of the high level, almost abstract character design of the Metal Gear series) giving Marvelous Designer a spin to test out some kind of unique fabric stitching pattern he came up with in his sketchbook. Chances are, some very interesting designs could indeed come out of this !
However, and especially in bigger studios I couldn't really imagine the person hired to be in charge of building all the clothing items as MD cloth simulations to be given much time for playful fashion design experimentation, because of the heavily scheduled nature of the job of that person (gotta build and export these 50 pairs of pants by the end of the week !)
Now of course the very interesting part is that someone who is in daily contact with stitching and garment making might very develop a great "garment fitting" sense as a virtual seamstress, and later on move to pure design tasks as a personal thing or even as part of the art team ; but I think it is less likely to happen than the opposite, especially considering the tight time constraints of video game scheduling.
Now the third option would be indie/small studios, where such roles could totally blend. But in bigger structures I would imagine the design and execution tasks to be very separated - just like car designers are separated from car mechanics, fashion designers from their seamstress and the workers at the clothing factory, and so on.
Hope this helps !!
Yes you totally could - but in order to get such recognition, all you need is a sketchbook and Photoshop, just like Sparth. At that level there is not much need for MD at all. Now of course being curious about tools and experimentation is very healthy and can even spark some great design ideas, but this technical aspect of things is not where the recognition will be coming from, I think.
If this is something you want to pursue, I'd recommend looking for courses in fashion design - I'm lucky enough to live within commuting distance of London College of Fashion(they also do online courses, which may be worth a look) and I took their Costume Design short course earlier this year. It was really fascinating stuff(the assignments were no joke either! I was very busy for the whole eight weeks) and the course tutor - a guy who's been working in theatrical costuming at all the big London venues for longer than I've been alive - was absolutely amazing. He loved the idea of designing costumes without some of the restraints traditional costumers have to work within - sourcing fabrics and materials, worrying about actors getting too hot or a fabric being too heavy to hold the shape you want, etc. The more realistic your setting, of course, the more those considerations would also make sense to work into your designs, but high fashion design has no more need for realism than games do ;3
Basically, I think if fashion design is something you're interested in pursuing and integrating into your game art work, go for it! The worst that can happen is you'll learn some interesting stuff.