Artist Research - IronStylus
Looking toward future career choices i decided to look at artists that work for companies that i have researched upon and am interested in. since my skills lye in being a draftsman and illustrator i looked at Riot Games concept artist who deal with the initial designs and ideas of characters for their game League of Legends. IronStylus is the senior concept artist at Riot Games character development. The reason I'm specifically looking at the character design concept artist compared to the general concept artist is because i am enthusiastic and keen on developing characters and i really enjoy it and it would be a field I'm interested in getting into.
another reason i looked at this artist is because of his illustration style. I feel it is closely related to my own style and i feel i recognize a lot of my working methods in ironstylus's drawings. Ironstylus also uses the method of layering up colors in digital pieces using a grey scale illustration and using overlay and screen layer option. i have also been using this method in the past two years since starting this course. i did not know about this method until then and have found it to be very useful when sorting out lighting and shading in characters but also for editing characters and i can keep the layers separate and revise my design at a later date without create editing complications in the colors.
Its confidence building seeing this method used in a professional setting to let me know that these skills and techniques are used in a job setting where i want to be. this lets me know I've learned something relevant to my career path that will aid me in future success towards a job role.
as for the stylization of Ironstylus's characters and their design i would say that his work is very shape based and outfits are centered around a theme or shape. looking at his following design for Riot Game's Diana we can see around the outfit there are numeric segments to the outfit that are circular. this relates to the characters theme of the Luna. Circles can be seen as the Moon in certain stages and i think it's very creative that hes drawn segments of a circle in her outfit fashioned in such a way that it represents the Lunar cycle. also the presentation and visuals of the shapes in the armor are very fluid and flow into each other. By using this sort of style to it what looks to be simple from far away is actually really complicated in design close up. I can appreciate this level of detail and intricacy and care to detail. Personally i feel its important to make your character unique and take care to build on their design and i feel this shows in his work a lot. This level of care to character design can be seen in him Tumblr or Twitter page where he continuously updates daily sketches on his characters trying them in different variants to see if her can improve or alter the design any.
Further more reading into IronStylus's work repertoire and how he develops his own skills personally i have seen how he combats his own work issues and problems in designs. For example, previous to Diana's character design IronStylus's main habit in illustrating was to draw lines in a very harsh pointy design which can be seen at the bottom in Leona's character design. to combat this habit IronStylus created Diana and took on the designing task when he heard she was themed on the moon. This meant he had to come out of his comfort zone and create a more rounded curved illustration design. This inspires me to combat my own design issues and seek out my own flaws in design that may hinder my work and actively work against it to further improve my level in designing.
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