By Jeffrey Yu
The designer of Kratos from the God of War series, Charlie Wen, gave a lecture about concept art Saturday in room 4C of SCAD-Atlanta. The panel started with a round of interactive questions between the audience and the lecturer and were meant to identify the majors of students that were attending the presentation; most attendees are pursuing a major in sequential art, animation or interactive game design. Shortly afterwards, Wen introduced himself to the audience.
Wen has worked with companies such as DreamWorks, Wizards of the Coast and Sony, all of which are well-known in the world of animation, gaming and concept design. He had participated in the design of characters and environment for series such as “Gatchaman” from Japan, “Thunder Cats,” “God of War,” and some unreleased titles.
According to Wen, he did not start off wanting to become a concept artist. In the beginning, he wanted to pursue a more gallery-oriented art career and thus studied figure drawing with traditional media. His interest in concept art did not start until after he came into contact with some friends who were employed in the field. Wen said that he was able to utilize his figure drawing skills in the field of concept art, which helped him understand how characters and environment should be structured. Presently, Wen works with many companies and is currently designing concepts for the upcoming movie “Thor.”
After the introduction, Wen proceeded to showcase some of the works he had done in the past. In his portfolio were concept art for characters and environments from “Gatchaman,” “God of War,” “Thunder Cats,” and even some personal works. Wen then exhibited his illustrations for the respective titles to show what can be created with character and environmental concepts. After showing his illustrations, Wen gave demonstrations in concept art and design in Adobe Photoshop.
During the initial phases of the demonstration, Wen suggested that concept artists should brainstorm as many ideas possible before collecting reference materials. One reason, according to Wen, is that if the artist pushes a design “too far,” they can always scale it back. Also, many art directors like to see “what doesn’t work” so that boundaries can be set.
Throughout the process, Wen remained interactive with the audience by asking for suggestions as to how the character should look. When a design had been agreed upon, he proceeded to design silhouettes for a more general look of the figure. Then, he selected the one silhouette that exhibited the qualities of the character he is designing and started rendering the details with the help of reference materials. For the next hour, Wen refined the details and even gave the character some defining characteristics, such as a mustache that looked eerily similar to Hitler’s.
During the rendering phase of the demonstration, Wen answered several questions from the audience. One student asked for him to show how he would start the design process for environments. Taking a break from the character design, Wen brought up a new window to create three frames in letterbox format for the environment sketch. He established a line in each frame to represent the horizon line from which he began to draw orthogonal lines to show perspective and depth. Then he used the brush tool to create contrast between light and dark areas of the picture plane to enhance the illusion of depth. Afterwards, he formulated and rendered the shapes for buildings, vehicles, etc. Finally, Wen merged the environmental page with the character design page so that they were combined into one coherent space.
Professor Tseng closed the lecture with much praise and appreciation for Wen’s time. He also disclosed the blog at which students can reach Charlie Wen.
For more information, please visit: http://charliewen.typepad.com