Episode 6: Lyndsey Gallant

[music]

[00:00:18] Jasmine: Welcome to All Inclusive, the podcast of our game development and the diverse people who make it. My name is Jasmine. I'm a 3D environment artist from Cologne, Germany.

[00:00:27] Ash: My name is Ash and I'm an environment artist in North Carolina, USA.

[00:00:31] Jasmine: Today's special guest is an art director that works at Absolute Joy, Lindsay. Welcome, Lindsay. Thank you for being with us here today. We're so excited.

[00:00:38] Ash: Thanks for coming on.

[00:00:40] Lindsay: Hey. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.

[00:00:43] Jasmine: Our pleasure. [chuckles] [crosstalk]

[00:00:43] Ash: When I thought of people to bring on, I was like, "Hm. Who's fun and who likes to talk? Lindsay."

[laughter]

[00:00:53] Lindsay: I'm an art director so most of the job is talkings. [chuckles]

[00:00:57] Ash: Yes. For me, especially, you've been such a huge positive force in my art career so far. It's just nice to have you on so we can talk about you and let everyone else know how awesome you are because that's the point.

[00:01:19] Lindsay: That's so kind. I appreciate that because, Ash, you're just incredible. The fact that I've been able to have any part of your journey is like you deserve it. You're amazing. I'm so excited to talk about that stuff.

[00:01:30] Ash: Everything you have done has paid and will continue to pay dividends in my life, like trust, okay? Moving on to topic one, I was wondering how did you become an art director? What does that path look like? It feels like, to me, from a person who doesn't necessarily know that much about the pre-vis side of things, you can't just start there. What did your work before look like to get you to where you are now?

[00:02:06] Lindsay: Oh, God.

[00:02:07] Ash: What were the kinds of jobs and things? What were the stepping stones?

[00:02:11] Lindsay: It's funny because I have so many opinions on the comment you just said about like, "You can't really start there." I feel like we can get into that later after we talk about the setup and things but, yes, I have so many opinions about that. How did I start as an art director? I feel like, in a lot of ways, I've had a really non-traditional path in the game industry because I've wanted to work in games since I was a little small dork. When I was like six, I was really into Warcraft. So into Warcraft. I had the Warcraft I because I'm old instruction manual that had all the old pencil drawings of the different characters like the trolls and stuff.

I thought they were so cool. I remember I would just read the instruction manual all the time and be like, "Wow. So cool." Then, at one point, I asked my father, "Who drew these? Who drew these drawings in the instruction manual?" which was like the then concept art before we really talked about concept art in the way that we do now where everyone knows what it is. My dad was like, "That's someone's job to draw the characters for the game."

I was like, "I want to do that. That's what I want to do when I grow up." From that point, it was just like this singular path. All I wanted to do was work in games basically. I might give a brief overview of just what my path was to also provide context of it.

[00:03:46] Ash: Yes.

[00:03:46] Lindsay: Cool. I basically worked way too hard all through my teen years and sacrificed a lot of my childhood in the pursuit of art. Then I went to Sheridan College and got a degree in Technical and Scientific Illustration which is a program that does not exist there anymore because most of what I learned to do is now done by computers for CAD programs and stuff like that. It was a weird degree but I learned a lot of cool weird stuff about how the world works.

We had people from the nearby ornithology institute bring in a hawk and pull out the wing and show us how a hawk's wing works and drew dead bodies that were in formaldehyde jars and took apart engines to understand how they work. It was like I didn't do a tremendous amount of drawing but I did a lot of figuring out how the world works. Then I was incredibly lucky to be graduating-- I graduated college in 2011 which was around when the mobile game industry was really popping off.

It was this very singular and strange point in time where there were just tons of entry-level game jobs for people who were also predominantly 2D. I was all 2D, no 3D, at that point. It was like there was just job postings for entry-level background painters that you could just apply for and do the "normal way" that people get jobs in normal industries where it's like you see the job posting, you apply for the job, you do a little interview, and then you go and get the job. That was actually how I got a job.

I just applied to a couple different places. I interviewed well and just got my first job which was I was a background painter on the Degrassi Junior High mobile game, which is very Canadian. I had a really Canadian foray into the industry. I was at that studio for a number of years and I worked my way up to being an art director within that studio. It was a weird combination of things where I just naturally like doing lead-type things because I have a tendency to see the overall view of stuff.

"Why are we doing these things? Where do they fit into the project?" I think that kind of mentality just leads well to, so to speak, being the lead. It was also that that studio I was at didn't have an art director and we really needed one. It was kind of start-upy. Nobody knew what they were doing in mobile games in that era, so it was sort of like, whatever artist got to the pitch first, their style was the art direction. Then people would be like, "I guess we'll emulate it." It was just such a wild way to work.

The studio had about 80 people at its peak. At one point, I was like, "This doesn't make sense the way that we're working. We need to have someone who's setting the direction of things. I think that could be better." I sort of fell into doing that role just because I saw a need. After doing that role being an art director for a couple months, I ended up just going to HR and being like, "Hey. This is the job I've been doing. Formalize it and give me a raise." They were like, "Okay." [laughs] They just did it.

[00:07:11] Jasmine: That's dank.

[00:07:13] Lindsay: There were just a lot of weird circumstances that maybe could have only happened in that various strange era in mobile games. I was an art director at 25 and I don't think that happens a lot in this industry. That was kind of how I got into being an art director. Again, I have a lot of opinions about how people get into art direction that maybe are better for later.

[00:07:41] Ash: Sure.

[00:07:43] Lindsay: Then I had worked my way up from being a production artist to-- I was a lead artist. I was a lead on just a small team then to being the art director of the whole studio and setting direction for things like that. From there, I had a very brief stint as a creative director at a local studio that was starting up an internal game division. I frankly got very, very depressed there because it was really similar to the job I had just done.

I was like, "I feel like I'm in this weird loop where I'm just doing the same problem-solving for the same types of people on the same teams." I unceremoniously quit my job as a creative director because I was just like, "This is not working for me." Then I decided to go freelance, and I was going to take a break from the industry for a bit but then word got out that I went freelance and I just started getting job offers.

You know how there's the whole thing with freelance where they're like, "It's all feast and famine. You get a bunch of jobs and then you get zero jobs and you've got to live on what you did when it was the land of plenty"? When I got job offers, I was like, "I have to take these because they will be the last jobs I will get for probably my entire life."

[00:08:56] Ash: Yo. Yes. I get that.

[00:09:00] Jasmine: That shit's real. [laughs]

[00:09:02] Ash: Freelance gang in the chat right now.

[00:09:08] Lindsay: I was like, "All right. I'll take these jobs that have come in now because, surely, they will be the last I get for a while." That was how I worked for five years straight with no breaks.

[laughter]

[00:09:19] Jasmine: Damn. That's crazy.

[00:09:22] Lindsay: I was like, "I'll take a sabbatical." Then, "No," because the jobs just kept coming and I just kept taking them. In hindsight, it probably means I should have been charging more money so that more people were going, "We can't actually offer you this because we're on a budget," but I just took everything because I felt this real scarcity mentality about where I was at because everyone talks about how hard freelance is.

I think I had that really cemented in my mind like, "It hasn't gotten bad yet by some stroke of luck. Surely, I just have [unintelligible 00:09:57]," but then it never did get bad.

[00:09:58] Jasmine: Thank God. That's good.

[00:10:00] Lindsay: Yes, surely. When I talk to people who are like-- I have so many friends who are incredible artists, delights to work with, and they're reticent about going freelance because they are like, "It's so hard," and I'm like, "I think I can actually be easy to." If it's hard in other ways, how do I stop my body from falling apart? Or why are my knees making that sound when I sit down? I didn't have too much trouble with getting work. Though I will also say it's clearly because I'd worked in the industry before. Going directly into freelance I think is a totally different prospect. Way more difficult.

I had the benefit of connections and people I already knew so it was easy to tap into my network I already had established and that way. I think my experience would be way different if I had out of school gone to be a freelancer. Anyway, freelance for a while, that turned into co-founding an indie studio called Sonderlust. Worked there for a couple of years, we did a seven-figure funding raise which was very exciting. Then got that all set up and I decided to move on from that and just fell into my current gig at Absolute Joy which we're a weird experimental VR game experiences, maybe not games company.

It's like the weirdest stuff I've ever been doing and it's been very cool. That's the TLDR maybe long version. [crosstalk] I always like to give context because there are so many different paths to the game industry, sure you both know, and I always given a context where what I say as an art director is probably going to be different from what a person who has worked their way up the ladder you'd be soft with their experiences. There's always a big asterisk of-- everything I say here is based on my own experiences and I think my path is like a fairly atypical one.

[00:12:00] Ash: Yes, I think kind of relate to that a little bit because I feel like even between me and Jasmine, our starting points were so different. With me, I went to art school and I didn't want to be a game artist, I wanted to be an animator. I wanted to work on Disney films, but yet I'm here in game right now. Because there's just certain events happened where I'm here and I'm enjoying myself. It's nice to see people have a little bit more atypical paths because you can get sucked into that, there is one way to do the thing that you want to do.

There's just so much variable by existing as a human being that that's just not-- I think we try to do it because we try to have a safe way to do things generally like, "Oh, this is the path that you can have to become at whatever but it's not." It's not always like that. Sometimes life is like, "Hey, what if you freelanced right now?" That's what happened to me because I wasn't planning on it.

It just happened to me and that's also a valid route. Everyone's different. Hopefully, people don't feel too bad even though I know people do feel bad for showing. Having a different path for whatever reason, their degree was not art originally or they're older in quotes then everyone else or whatever and they're just getting their start. There's a lot of ways to do the thing.

[00:13:42] Lindsay: Absolutely. Yes so well said. I didn't even go into the industry wanting to be an art director, it just happened because I found that I like, oops, I really like this type of work. Even with getting that, I felt so invalid in my career for like, honestly, up until maybe a couple years ago because there's this really dominant idea of here's what it's supposed to look like, here's what it's supposed to be. Honestly, a lot of times that gets difined by people who are not marginalized. They also don't have to figure out different paths for how to get there.

It's like I felt so invalidated and like such a fraud for such a long time because I was like, "Well, this is such a weird path, it means that I am sneaking around or doing something I'm not supposed to be doing." It's wild the ways that we can do mental gymnastics to justify our own invalidation and it's only a couple years ago, I've been like, "Oh, my path is really cool." I've had to do so much different stuff, it's so awesome, it's so neat, and it doesn't mean that I'm lesser than because I didn't do what I thought this career was supposed to look like when I was mapping out my goals as like, a 16-year-old, which I think a lot of we have this idea of a dream career. Then if we deviate from that, it's like somehow we let down our past and adapted. We're wiser, right? [crosstalk]

[00:14:59] Ash: It's the craziness that's just such a thing that people do, like everyone-- Well, not everyone but a lot of people do is that they do that thing. They're 15, 16 or even I know people who did it at like 10, 11, 12 were like, "I'm going to be a comic artist." It's just you're like, why aren't you running outside? Why? Something on the flip side that I've seen lately which is sad is I will see people who are 15, 16 stressing out about their game art portfolios that they've been working on-- [crosstalk] I'll be like, wait, you're 15, you've been learning 3D art on your own for four years, meaning you started at 11, why weren't you outside getting around? Why are you stressing out about not getting a job at 15?

[00:15:52] Lindsay: Yes. That was totally me. I didn't have teenage years honestly. It sucks because I really had to work for what I got. I didn't have really a safety plan or backups or help or anything. On one hand, I'm like, "Isn't that great that you can have very little and work really hard to get to where you are?" but on the other hand, I'm like, "No one should have to do that." That shouldn't be your requirement into the "privilege of getting into this industry", you shouldn't have to give your life for it. It's honestly a real travesty that sometimes we can only see that after we've sacrificed so much.

I know what the solution to that is, we need more entry-level positions in the industry, we need more formalized mentorship to get people in because we shouldn't have to give our lives to do this thing. The point of doing a gamer job is that it's supposed to be fun and enriching and getting to make things that help people and matter. The cost can be too high and it's hard to see when you're in it.

[00:16:55] Jasmine: It's like already during uni, I was just stressing out so much I need to work on my portfolio. I was freelancing at the same time and doing all these things at once because I just wanted to be ready afterwards and it did help. I didn't have really much time for anything else in those four years and uni went by so fast. I was already working. I was like, "Okay, now I have to go back to full-time." Now countinuing the thing I already did for three years. It's hard to find that balance. It's good to stress that you don't have to be constantly stressed out about your career and always be like, "I need to work 24 hours a day to get somewhere."

Especially when you're so young. Most of us think after that that I didn't even know until I was 20 what I wanted to do. I got out of high school, I was doing things on and off for like couple years doing graphic design, doing calligraphy, doing working in a bike shop. I just didn't really know and then when I found three years, "Okay, I want to try this out, I don't know if it will get anywhere but I'll try it." I don't think you need to stress out so early. Especially when you said that 16-year-olds worrying about their portfolio is like, please don't.

It's such an ages thing as well in this industry sometimes that you need to be successful at a super young age and it's like, "No you don't have to. Your life doesn't end after 30. Stop. You have time.

[00:18:18] Ash: That's the thing for sure is I think that people on this rock that's flying through space at jillion miles an hour, we place so much importance on prodigies, like child prodigies and things like "Oh man, look at this little girl who can play some music something--" [crosstalk] and stuff like that. You don't really hear about or it's not really as celebrated as much as someone who started stuff way way way later. Not even 20s not even 30s, even later than that. It puts like this pressure on everyone because it's definitely gotten to me and ties into a little bit of what I said before we started recording stuff that's been on my mind lately is that, I am very good at working myself.

All of my hobbies are very skills-based. It's very easy to be like, "Oh, if I'm not working on it," because I know that working on stuff and little pieces is good. I think that most people understand that and I think that's what happens with artists as well is that I think that artists might be a little bit aware, a little bit too aware of time. I think we understand that like working at something like a little bit every day or sometimes a lot every day is going to pay some sort of return and it's just that because we can get so freaked out about losing time, maybe that we push ourselves to that degree and why you might have someone in their teenage years or whatever, who kind of understands, "Oh, I have to get ahead as soon as possible." It's really sacrificing. I can think about it and talk about it all day. I'm glad you're okay now, Lindsay, or that you're getting to be okay.

[00:20:24]

Lindsay: Thank you.

[00:20:24]

Ash: Stuff like that probably is a lot to unpack when you're on the other--

[00:20:35] Lindsay: Absolutely. It's been a journey and it's a hilarious irony because the points that you both previously made of the way-- because I totally when I was a teenager, I would give myself 12 hours a day. I would start a timer and be 12 hours of drawing a day. This is how we get better on just the transactional I station of life itself. The irony is-- I use concept art as an example a lot because it was my singular vision. Ironically, it didn't even-- I'm a concept artist, but also kind of not. It certainly applies to all different jobs within the industry and creative jobs that we sacrifice ourselves for that it's this idea of you sacrifice your life for the art, but the whole point of art is to communicate aspects of life that we want to share and present to people.

I think that's where we end up with a lot of games and artists where it all feels very samey and very derivative because it's a bunch of artists and all they do is make art and talk about art and look at art. You're not providing any interesting fuel for the machine that is your brain. I think that that was a huge lesson for me of my art gets better when I work less because my ideas are better when I have more things to pull from because I've experienced stuff and seen things and felt things. I'm not just this automaton who's always drawing in my apartment and not experiencing anything else.

My painting skills might've gotten better if I have kept doing nothing but studying 12 hours a day. The things I'd be painting would be more lifeless and they'd be less interesting and less visionary. I think there's a balance to strike and it's a great tragedy that this is a thing that we all do to ourselves. Jasmine, I'm sure that your experiences of, you say, you worked in a bike shop and stuff, I'm sure that made you so much of a better artist in the long run than if you just immediately got into as an 11-year-old being like, "Oh, I can do this part." I almost feel like my experience has been that I've had to re-meet myself.

I've had to refigure out who I am and why I'm here. My whole goal as a child even was to get into the games industry. Then I got into the games industry at 20. I was like, "What is my life now?" I was like, "What do I do?" I did the thing that I wanted to do. I basically had this weird period of my early 20s where I felt I had to learn how to be a person. I'll read books. I was listening to podcasts and just trying to do things. I felt I was just so aware of how one-dimensional my life was. Looks like a weird thing that is compulsory.

[00:23:11] Jasmine: It's kind of relatable. We're saying to Ash to this, let us use us for that. I need to find other hobbies outside of art, because I've became that person. I was spending so much time on my art on work. The times I didn't spend on uni stuff, I was working on freelance stuff that was art. Everything was just art. I was just sat down with my ride. I would to languages. I would like to learn how to dance, also read more books that I like.

I'm actually super into history. I should do more of that. Just research and do things that I enjoy it. Since I've been doing that for the past three months, I feel so much better and kind of find myself again how I was maybe before even doing art. That's just so nice to actually do. Many people forget that when they've been doing art for so long and that's all they become because it's such a huge part of our lives, but it shouldn't be the only part of our lives. I think that's a huge takeaway now. That's great that you also brought that up. I think.

[00:24:08] Ash: That's so lovely. That's so lovely. The whole point of art is to express something that only we can express. When we just get into these myopic cycles of only looking at art, that's not actually expressing yourself. That's you expressing the world that you've immersed oneself into. That's lovely. It's all about the spice.

[00:24:30] Lindsay: Now I'll actually do it. Eyes emoji.

[00:24:40] Ash: That's where friends bullying you comes in. I have a lot of friends that when I'm like, "What if I just pull an all-nighter?" and they're like, "Or you could not do that. Instead, come to dinner with us obviously in the before times or whatever. I feel sometimes I need a support network of other people to help me take care of myself and be a person with more than one dimension, when you faltered and having people that can take care of you, it's important.

[00:25:06] Jasmine: Absolutely important.

[00:25:10] Lindsay: Again, why community is so paramount? It was paramount before, and it was paramount now because if not for the community that I've been able to be a part of recently, I would not be playing games I do now. I wouldn't be relaxing watching videos on YouTube because whenever I message a friend or say in voice chat. Yes, I know I work all day, but if I'm going to do some more work, they're like, "What if exactly the same way?" They're like, "What if you just stop doing-- We don't have to do things all the time." Or, "What if you--" I don't know, did something much more indulgent for once because it's not-- I feel like a lot of people are-- well, maybe not a lot of people, I don't know a lot of people that, but I feel people like me are already driven. We were born driven. That's how we came out of the packaging is driven.

[00:26:10] Ash: So agree.

[00:26:11] Lindsay: I agree if I take a break today or this week, it's not going to be the end of the world. Even though I'm going to feel it's the end of the world, it's probably not going to be the end of the world. I needed to do a lot better on that for sure. Best we don't burnout.

[00:26:29] Ash: You'll get it. It's a process. There's a lot of forces in the world and society, even outside of the industry that capitalism [unintelligible 00:26:37] is our productivity. That's literally what the culture we're in is so hard for us to rally against, as an individual as well, because there are so many little ways that we are also told to, "No, keep working, keeping productive."

[00:26:53] Jasmine: Moving on from that topic. I was actually wondering if you could give us a small inside of what your current day-to-day work looks as an art director. Is there anything that you especially enjoy? Is that even something that may be is quite a challenge for you be quite interesting to know. I think for anyone just to see what you do as an art director currently.

[00:27:13] Lindsay: I love this question because I feel especially for people outside of the industry, there's a lot of mysticism about what art directors actually do. I didn't know what art directors did before I got into the industry. Even I was in the industry for a year or two before I was, "Oh, I understand what this job is. Just to give an overview, I would kind of break down the job of an art director as being two components or two big parts of the job. I'm sure you two know this, but for listeners-- [crosstalk] that's why I see it as there's the visionary part of it, and then there's the management part of it.

The visionary part is I think what a lot of people think of primarily when they think of art directors, it's figuring out what the game look like. Based on who do we want to play this game? What things does the player feel? What things does the player do? Helping to communicate what the game design is, a lot of that. It's both communication and eliciting feeling in the player. That usually is in the form of either-- for me, I usually do my own concept art.

I'm doing mood boards, visual research, pulling in other references, doing concept pieces to communicate what the style of the game is, what the pallet is, what the atmosphere is what the mood is. That's kind of the visionary role of it. Again, I think that's what people typically think of art directors as doing. The second part is the management aspect, which I would say is certainly a dominant amount of the job and becomes more of the proportion of the work you do the longer the project is.

In the initial stages, I'll be doing pretty much entirely visual development work on defining what a game looks like, but then the longer we get in production, it's less vis dev. Because you've already figured out what your plan is, and then it's just making sure people stick to that. I use the analogy of the first part of it is you're drawing a map for a journey that a lot of other people are going to take that you're not actually taking yourself.

You're drawing a map for your art team and what your job is every once in a while you point at the map and go, "Oh, let's stick to this path. Oh, we're veering off course here," and helping make the journey for the other people better and more pleasant and sticking to what you all agreed the journey was going to be. In that sense, it's funny because I think a lot of people have an idea. I think erroneously that art directors are the best artist on the team. If you're the art director, it's because you're the goodest. So disagree with that, but it's like art directors are the support class. You're not doing the most UPS. You're not the best taylor, but you are crucial for the team, you're doing the buffs. You're the Bard, you're the palate, and you're the shaman depending on what RPG you play, and it's like, you make every other person in your party better, but you yourself are not the best at any one thing, but you're so crucial for the team to keep it together. Passive buffs is definitely how I feel. With that in mind, what my day-to-day work is kind of differs depending on where I am in the project, early in a project. It could be all painting concept, or all doing visual research, things like that. Then later in the project, it's me guiding the art team.

It's making sure that they're following the vision, following what the concept art was to define what the style of the game is. A lot of times, that just involves a lot of me painting on top of other people's 3D models. Just doing iterative cycles for people who aren't super familiar with like art pipelines, it is iterative, meaning that you take a first pass then you have a big discussion about what things need to be tightened up or changed. Then you just keep working with the person on either processes basically like you do a sketch of a thing, usually, someone on the art team will do a first pass on a 3D model for an environment or something based on what the concept art is.

Then you talk about like, "Oh, can we get the highlights brighter here?" Or, "How about the textures on the leaves? Can we do this," and so I'll just do a paint over on someone on my art team 3D model. We have a chat about it. It's basically, you never going to fully 100% hit with the concept or the vision is, there's so many compromises you have to make usually because of technical limitations, or sometimes because what the plan is can change a little bit in the early stages of making a game. It's like I do a concept art, they do a 3D model, I paint on the 3D model, we chat, they change the 3D model, we basically repeat, repeat, repeat. Essentially, until you run out of time or money.

It never really done, it's just like done enough to be good. That's basically what my job is. It's just a lot of talking about art, a lot of talking about vision stuff. In a lot of cases, I had mentioned before that I see our tractors as being like a middle manager. I think it's not as glorious as people make it out to be and I would love to see us demystify the role as an industry that it's really like you're like a producer, but for art stuff, basically. [crosstalk] A lot of chatting about things and figuring stuff out. In a lot of cases, you're the conduit between the creative director and the rest of the art team. A lot of times in my role, I will be talking to the creative director who's the primary vision holder.

Then also talking to the producer, do we have things on track? I'll be talking to narrative designers, what do we want people to feel in this part of the game, and that will influence what the design of the art is. They're also talking to the game designer, like what mechanics are happening. What things are the player doing here because that all affects what the art needs to look like? You're like the glue in getting the Gestalt of the cohesive vision between art holding everything together. It's like art is what people see when they look at screenshots of the game when they're trying to figure out if they want to buy it or play it or not. In a lot of cases, I consider it the first handshake that the game gets to have with other people. It's your first impression. It's important to make it a good one, and also make sure that the art supports every other department in that way. Yes, that's really the job.

[00:33:39] Ash: Yes, is that.

[00:33:40] Lindsay: It's just that. [laughs]

[00:33:43] Jasmine: That's a whole lot. Especially the management part thing and a lot of jobs in our industry, people overlook the management side of it, they always just go out and sit and do art all day, zero management, but then I get confronted with management programs, even like JIRA, and Confluence, and purples, and all these things, and it's like, you need to do these things too that's how you get everything going, like continue to [unintelligible 00:34:06] finish. I think that's really interesting.

One thing I wanted to ask is, do you think there's something that especially in people who are new to the industry should be prepared for to work with an art directors? Is that something that you should keep in mind or prepare yourself that you get used to like having somebody like an art director working with because he wouldn't have to at university or even when you just do like little freelance gigs sometimes, it's just so disconnected from the project. Been good to know how you can prepare yourself?

[00:34:36] Lindsay: That's such a good question, my goodness. I think a big thing is trusting the art director, trusting the feedback that they're giving, and trusting that I see my job as-- I have a zoomed-out more macro-level view of what the project is. Sometimes I might give an artist a piece of feedback to change something that they love about a design or think is really cool, but it has to go because it is either too distracting it breaks the visual hierarchy of a scene, doesn't fit with the narrative team.

There's so many things that art director has to consider that actually have nothing to do with the design itself. As an art director, you have a macro view so that the artists on your team can have a micro view. I think the best thing that a new artist can do is just trust the art director is giving you feedback. It might be based on something that you can't see or don't have oversight on, and it is the right choice for the game.

I think that seeing stuff as the goal is making a game that is good that people like, the goal is not making one piece of art or one design, that's good. It's so hard to get into that mind state as new artists in the industry because the way we learn and the way we talk to each other is like, here's my 3D character I did, or here's my piece of concept art I did and you see that as the be all end all.

You have to realize that you are making one tiny piece of this huge thing that needs to work together in harmony. Just trusting that the art director is the person guiding you down this path. Just knowing that what they're asking is, for a reason, even if it's frustrating, even if it makes no sense. Even if you have to throw out like a drawing that you spent maybe six weeks on or like a design that you're figuring out for a long time and just being open to the fact that they are thinking about stuff, you don't have to think about, and that's where a lot of the feedback comes from. Then just especially that it's not about making a pretty picture, it's about making a good video game.

Sometimes those things aren't always in harmony. Sometimes you might design things in a way that don't make sense or seems not as cool of a drawing but it's going to make a better game, and that's why we're all here is to make cool games together collaboratively.

[00:36:49] Jasmine: That sounds interesting. I think a lot of that could apply even to your own art as you're doing your personal time I've got the big picture matters, and not that you should get too distract with micro details or worrying about all the small things nobody would notice because I always think to myself, in a game, if somebody would play my level or my environment, would they notice this? Should I spend another week fixing this? Maybe not? That's something that basically seems like art directors have to let people know that you shouldn't be worrying too much about all the small things like the big thing matters.

[00:37:25] Lindsay: So well said. I want to record that sound clip and make every new artist-- [crosstalk] It's so well said. I think that artists should constantly be asking themselves why am making this? What matters about this? What's important because it's so easy for us to get hyper-focused on things that don't actually matter that much. Like the ideas matter, sometimes more than the execution and asking oneself what's the point of this piece? Just making sure all the choices go to that towards what the point of the pieces? If effort is going towards something that is not the point of the piece, then maybe don't spend any effort there and make your life easier.

[00:38:06] Jasmine: Yes, so true.

[00:38:10] Ash: I think this is something going off of that a little bit. What Jasmine said, I definitely think that since we are game artists, and since we hang around a lot of game artists, it can be so easy to get like-- even when it comes to playing live games or whatever will be like oh man, look at this scene. It's like a normal person is not going to realize that that is as if is not going to break the immersion of this cutscene. What we do, and what I do is I look at the scene and I'm like I could never get away with this scene, even though it's in a game that makes money.

[laughter]

[00:38:53] Lindsay: I say this all the time that it's like, "The real key to being a good game artist is not to do your best every time because it's impossible." We are so limited on time and budgets and stuff. It's getting good enough that most people can't tell the difference between your 90% effort and your 70% effort. That even if you have a real shit day, and really like do not do your best effort and you're like, "That's not my best character design," but it's still good enough for most people because it's like we are artists talking to artists. We're not making art for other artists in most cases, we're making art for people who play video games.

There's a lot of stuff that happens in a video game, think about-- I think a lot about attention economy of the player. If the player is getting shot at by a big monster with a gun, they're probably not going to notice the texture seam on a jug that only shows up behind columns. The only people who are going to notice that are other environment artists who are like, "Wait." When I was playing Destiny too with friends I would constantly stop in the story mentions and to be like, "No. Look at this rug. Look at how good this rug is, guys. Stop," but most people aren't playing like that. You know what? Worst case scenario, if you have a little error that another environment artist notices, they get to feel smart. You still did something nice for them in a way. [laughs]

[00:40:16] Jasmine: It takes a lot of the pressure away as well. Especially for new people in the industry.

[00:40:20] Lindsay: Totally.

[00:40:21] Jasmine: They're always probably scared that they have to give their 1,000,000% because they're new and because they're getting into it. Hearing that most people don't even care that much and it's okay to give your 70% or 60%, that's so nice. That calms even me down. [chuckles] Just to be like, "It's fine. I don't need to do this all the time perfect. Nobody cares that much. It's just you who cares that much." [chuckles]

[00:40:41] Ash: Absolutely. I think maybe an even better way to think about it is kind of going off of what is the most important in the thing that you're working on. It's probably important if it's like of an asset or something that's a hero prop or something that they focus.

[00:41:00] Lindsay: Totally.

[00:41:00] Ash: Maybe you can put that 90% in there. However, the barely-seen, off-in-the-distance, might as well be an LOD object, that doesn't have to be.

[00:41:11] Jasmine: That can go.

[laughter]

[00:41:12] Ash: You don't have to go super deep on the bake for that. It can just work and be done. On my personal project, something that I've realized is that I worked really hard on a chandelier and I was like, "I have to get it just right. I have to put all this detail in it." Then I went in my scene and I'm like, "You barely see it in any of the shots."

[00:41:33] Jasmine: [unintelligible 00:41:35] [crosstalk]

[00:41:34] Ash: Yes. Or even other things like, "Oh, man, I worked really hard on my ceiling," which I am very proud of and I will be showing it because it has to be seen at this point but it just feels like, if I had planned it after-the-fact so where you can see it a little bit more, you probably wouldn't have seen it anyways. You probably won't see little objects like that. That's something I'm trying to remember about [unintelligible 00:42:04] planning projects.

[00:42:06] Lindsay: I think the ability to see that is the mark of a good artist in my opinion. Being a really truly great artist who's great to work with is just people who can think about where their effort goes in a way like that. The analogy I like to use is, "Are you making the Nathan Drake, or are you making a rock?" It's like, "Yes. Spend effort making the Nathan Drake very good because that's what the player sees a lot," but, the stuff that doesn't matter as much, you don't have to put as much effort in.

That's a big part of being an art director, too, is dictating the visual hierarchy of the game scene, like, "What is the player looking at the most? What are they looking at secondary?" Just making sure that the effort is appropriate to where things are on the hierarchy. As an individual artist on a team, especially new artists, being able to have that sight into it and say, "This is not as important so I'm not going to spend 50 hours on this vase that shows up on one scene."

That is the mark of a fantastic artist because it also alleviates some of the cognitive load that the art director has to do because they don't have to micromanage people and be like, "Why are you spending so much time rendering this crate texture that doesn't show up very much," and things like that. Just zooming out and asking ourselves questions a lot, as artists and especially new artists, is such a great way to be awesome to work with too.

[00:43:27] Jasmine: This is a really great point maybe to have a little break to have our guest to think about [unintelligible 00:43:36] [crosstalk]

[00:43:35] Ash: Reflect on yourself.

[00:43:37] Jasmine: Exactly. Yes.

[00:43:38] Lindsay: I have been.

[laughter]

[00:43:41] Jasmine: We'll be right back after that. See you soon.

[music]

[00:44:10] Ash: Welcome back to All Inclusive. Before the break, we talked about how Lindsay entered the industry and what it's like working as an art director. I know that we're supposed to be moving on to topic three but I had a really quick question or something that I was hoping that you could also clarify for us really quickly.

[00:44:27] Lindsay: Yes?

[00:44:28] Ash: What a concept artist is and isn't. I feel like something that I've seen amongst my friends is that someone will be like, "I want to be a concept artist or a character concept artist," or something like that. I think what people think it is versus what it is practically are two very different things. I was hoping you could go into that a little bit.

[00:44:56] Lindsay: I would love to because this is something I want to scream from every mountain top over and over until this thing is clarified in our industry. I see concept art and concept artists. You are a visual problem solver. You are not a illustrator who draws things that are themed like video games. I get it. It's fun to paint a dragon. It's fun to paint Sword Guy but that is not necessarily concept art. Concept art is like you are doing a design of something in order to, essentially, answer a question that the game is asking.

It's almost hard to describe but it's like, you are a designer, you are not an illustrator. Painting a dragon is not concept art. Someone saying, "There is a monster in this level. It lives in a cave. It needs to be bioluminescent. It is going to attack the player or character in this way and here's how you have to strike it for it to die." Then you doing the design thinking and the iterative process we talked about before to then conclude, "It should look like a big glowing dragon." That's concept art.

It's kind of about the process of designing something that fulfills a need that the game has. I think a lot of people think that, if you like to paint the subject matter that often appears in games, that is being a concept artist. It could be but, in many cases, it's not. We definitely have a perception, especially now but always, that concept art needs to be slick and hyper-rendered and really nicely illustrated and hundreds of hours into rendering a very shiny shield and stuff like that.

It goes back to the question we were talking about before the break of like, "What is the point of this piece? What is the story of this piece? Why does this matter?" I often ask that of people who have very beautifully rendered "concept art" pieces, illustrations that are maybe generic like Sword Guy. I've seen Sword Guy before. We've all seen Sword Guy before. It's a generic trope. If we see Sword Guy with a chrome shield that's really lovingly-rendered, I will ask the concept artist, "Is this a piece about this guy's shield? What is the point of this?"

It might be a piece about the guy's shield if that's the mechanic of that character, if it's a character that only works with shields. Then, furthermore, you can go, "Is this a piece about metal being shiny?" Sometimes that's where peoples' attention and effort goes to- really lovingly rendering things. Most of the concept art I do I would not put in a portfolio because it doesn't look good. A lot of it is napkin sketches. Stuff that I will live-draw during a meeting is what I do a lot now.

I'll screen-share and Photoshop with people that I'm on a video call with and just sketch out things while they're describing some design they need or something like that. They don't look good. All that they need to do is look good enough that it's clear what the 3D artist or person who's actually making the art for that thing that's going to show up in the game needs to be. It comes back to the map thing again. Concept art is a map for how to get to a place, a final design, that you are not, yourself, taking.

In a lot of cases, especially in AAA, you're doing concept art to give to a 3D artist. You're just giving them the blueprint for how to make what the final thing is. It also comes back to another thing we said before. It's about making a good video game. It's not about making a pretty painting. Though having a pretty painting is nice, if your concept art doesn't communicate the design details it needs to show a 3D artist how to effectively make that design and communicate it, then it wasn't a good piece of concept art.

All that matters is the final thing that the player sees. You're just helping the team get there. In that way, there's quite a bit of philosophical overlap with the way concept artists work and art directors work. They're different applications of the same level of zoomed-out thinking. At least for good concept artists. [chuckles] There's certainly a thing in the industry where we get shown a lot of stuff that's really marketing illustration and key art to make a game look juicy and cool.

Sometimes those are concept art but, chances are, that was not the gritty, elbows-deep in the mud figuring out what the thing is sort of concept art that you do early in a project to actually figure out what things look like. Usually, that stuff is made at the end of that process or even after the design is finalized because it looks cool and people like it. There's nothing wrong with making cool illustrations and wanting to look at nicely-rendered paintings but it's not the same kind of design thinking that concept art usually needs.

A lot of my actual concept art is fast, quick garbage, but it's important garbage that gets us to

where we need to go in a lot of cases. It's a great question.

[00:50:07] Ash: Yes. Since I've been getting more into art spaces and game development spaces, I now know the difference. I think it's something that's not really talked about because it is what we see. We buy the art book for our favorite video game. [unintelligible 00:50:27] that's what I want when it's just like actually that's not how it works. Now I'm finally going to topic three.

[00:50:36] Lindsay: Actually, can I make one more quick note on the similar thing. A lot of concept art is not about designing big things. There's one Nathan Drake in the Uncharted. How many rocks and crates are in Uncharted? A lot. How many doors, how many windows, how many light fixtures? A lot of what you're doing as concept art is not the big flashy important things. It's not just character work, it's not just creature designs. There's a lot of really mundane stuff. I've designed more toilets than dragons but the key is finding the fun in designing toilets and seeing that it's actually the exact same thing.

I remember when I was a young artist a lot of whether or not I enjoyed the job was really determined by what I was drawing. I feel like now I'm in a place where it's all visual problem-solving. You do the exact same visual problem solving, figuring out what this dragon should look like, as you do figuring out what a chair needs to look like. It's a really cool space to feel your brain flip over into like it's really fun to design a rock and figure out exactly why a rock needs to look that way. It's not glamorous but it's cool to realize that the non-glamorous stuff is just as or even more fun because you get to be creative with the mundane.

[00:51:57] Ash: For sure, good stuff. Glad we got that ironed out.

[00:52:01] Lindsay: Totally it's such a good question.

[00:52:03] Ash: No one can misunderstand anymore.

[00:52:07] Jasmine: You know the sound clip part that we can send to anyone who has this question [chuckles].

[00:52:14] Ash: Yes, I was bored for every time we need to talk about this again. Remember Lindsey said--

[00:52:21] Lindsay: It was so important to also make people not feel like they're not a real concept artist because I used to feel so down on myself that I was like I'm not rendering at the level that Craig Mullins does but that's not actually the job. I'm not a bad concept artist because I don't render like Craig Mullins, I'm a great concept artist because I have awesome ideas and that's what we should be focusing on.

[00:52:41] Ash: Also, way to pick the cream of the crop as like someone to compare yourself [inaudible 00:52:47]. [crosstalk] It's horrible.

[00:52:53] Lindsay: I'm not the best, I'm shit.

[00:52:56] Ash: For me, something doesn't really-- I don't really draw or paint or anything like that even though I love to do it like as like a fun thing one day. I see work from him and I can't fathom why a person would even want to compare them. I was like mentally or never-- even I know what happened but what choice to compare it to [unintelligible 00:53:17]. Moving on, art directing has a lot of leadership which you touched on before. I wanted to know what makes a good leader to you as it relates to working in creative spaces.

[00:53:35] Lindsay: I have sent all naughty notes, so it's just [unintelligible 00:53:38].

[00:53:38] Ash: We love naughty notes.

[00:53:40] Lindsay: I love to be organized even though I do this thing where I make notes and I don't look at them.

[00:53:46] Ash: Oh, are you me?

[00:53:46] Lindsay: This is what I do when I do talks too. I like crap all these notes, then I'm like anyway just go a manic terror about stuff. This is an amazing question of what makes someone a good leader. God, all this stuff is so interconnected. I think there is this idea, there's this stereotype of the art director who's this harsh, mean person who criticizes and tears work apart and denies artists from getting to do stuff they want and they're like a dictator. Yes, there are people in the industry like that, but I think that the stereotype is either untrue in some cases or needs to really change.

As artists, we're so aware of what's wrong with us. We're so aware of the things we're bad at. We hate so many things about our arts and by extension who we are in many cases. I used to think that critiquing by only pointing out flaws was the way you make stuff better, I used to say systemically destroy the weak parts. I'm just so realizing that's actually not the best way at all. This is just like such a pervasive thing for all of us, we know exactly what's wrong with us. We know exactly what's wrong with our work, both generally. Tell me 10 things that are your weakest things in art you want to fix?

We could rattle off 100 with no problem, but with seeing the things were successful at, we have so much more trouble seeing it because we've been trained in this pain Olympics culture of just constantly critiquing each other, focusing on the weak points and stuff like that. I find that this is also something that I learned; I briefly went back to the college that I went to teach part-time. All my friends who had worked with me were like, "Oh, man these kids are like you're going to destroy them with critiques." I was like, "No, I don't think so," and I got there I was like they don't need critiques.

Some of them I asked them how their day is going and they cry just because no one's been nice to them for so long. They certainly haven't been nice to themselves and it's like so many times as artists we need someone to point at what was good and saying this is really good, and also, be told this is enough and you're doing great. There are always things to change about art pieces and like do you need an art director to make sure people are sticking to the vision? The idea too of like a critique does not mean there's something wrong with art. A piece that you're making as an art director with an art team is conversation you're having.

Each iteration on a piece is you working collaboratively together to find the solution. Each iteration is one more step along that path of getting to where you need to go. It's not because the work is wrong or bad, it's just because it needs to be different and be changed. It's like when you're cooking something and you taste it and you're like, "Oh, it needs a little more salt, it needs a little more spice." It's not that you're a bad cook, and it's not that dish is garbage, it's just that it needs a little more salt. That's honestly what the job is as an art director and I think good leader is pointing out the things that are good.

We have so much trouble seeing that as a society then and then pointing out the things that need to be improved but not in the context of this is bad and you are a bad artist and your work is bad. It's like, no this needs to be different, we're all going to figure it out together. Games are not made by one person in most cases. They're made by a community of people and the game will be stronger if you see as a collaborative process that you have to do finding solutions with people instead of the art director who's criticizing the team and telling them their faults and stuff like that.

It's a matter of a good leader is someone who builds the team up and makes them believe in themselves and see things in themselves and in their art that they wouldn't be able to see if you aren't there. That's what I ended up getting into art direction for is I derive more pleasure from showing someone something they didn't know they could do than me doing it myself and being able to swoop in and be like, "Oh man, have you tried this?" Then they try and look well that looks great I love it. It's magic, it is such an amazing feeling and it's like why would you trade that for making someone feel like shit when they already probably feel like shit.

It's not going to make better work and it's not going to make a better game.

[00:58:03] Ash: Big time.

[00:58:04] Jasmine: That's so true because I think it's so easy just to go and say, oh this looks great bad. It's like great, thanks for letting me know but what am I supposed to do now? Many people even think that second step in feedback so that actually gives feedback that is aiming to help someone and build somebody up at the same time. I don't see that a lot especially when very established communities, even people give feedback by just being harsh and mean and horrible. That even when you look into these conversations, they don't even feel like even posting your work anymore because it's just harsh and taunting and scary.

Then have people go into a workspace thinking that it's the same suddenly and then you're even more closed off and don't want to even talk to anyone and show anything. It's like [unintelligible 00:58:51] to build confidence of an artist who even comfortable.

[00:58:56] Lindsay: We internalize it if that's the only way we get talked about. We just start saying it to ourselves before we even give anyone the "chance" to tear down our art because we just do it to ourselves immediately anyway. So much of it comes from like there are some really bad egos in our industry and a lot of people have a lot of insecurity. The most powerful thing and the most brave thing you can do as an art director, it's just say yes, it looks good, that looks great, we don't need to change anything about it.

I think that there are some people in lead positions where like-- I'm going to go on a bit of attention here but we pose the idea of art direction like it's the top of the ladder of being an artist. If you're the best artist, and you do the most career growth, you will eventually be an art director. It's so wrong because it's totally-- I am a middle manager, I talk to people and look at stuff. That's not in the same trajectory as someone who's a really great 3D character artist, and because we treat it like a thing that you have to like grind at Ubisoft for 16 years, even get the chance to be an art director.

It is a disservice to what the job is. Oh, and it's this idea of like, everyone feels so insecure both in being an art director because-- Not everyone, but it's easy to feel insecure and like you have to defend why your job exists by giving feedback on things. It's like, have you guys heard of this thing? There are different names for it but like green dogging is what my friends call it. The idea of you purposely put something incorrect in a piece for your art director to point out so they can feel like they did feedback. It's the idea of like, if there's a dog in the illustration, you make it green.

So, the art director can go, dogs are supposed to be green and then otherwise they're like, otherwise the piece is fine. It's like, I know so many concept artists who will intentionally put errors in the work that are easy to remove because a lot of like sometimes art directors will give feedback just because they feel they're supposed to because that's their job. I get it. It's like, if you are a ship captain and your ship never sinks because you never have to move the boat, was the shift captain necessary? If the concept artist is always nailing the design right on the first try, what is the point of your job?

I think that there's a level of courage it takes to be like, no, when my team makes the right call and they don't need input for me to recognize that and say, yes, let's do the next thing, looks great. I think that there's a problem in the industry where when you have to grind that hard to get to that job and there's so much ego and so much competition and proving and stuff like that, it makes it hard to just support people and trust them-

[01:01:41] Ash: Absolutely.

[01:01:42] Lindsay: -and be okay with saying things are all right.

[01:01:44] Ash: Something that I've spoken with a bunch of people about, especially in regards to critique is that I feel that at the end of the day, especially when it comes to students or people working on their portfolios or whatever pushing towards like a certain goal that they have, the goal is to always have someone try again. If something you're saying makes someone want to give up, then that's actually our problem. Because I feel like-

[01:02:15] Lindsay: Absolutely.

[01:02:16] Ash: -you said, it can be so easy for certain kinds of people to get egotistical with it and like there is this pride that people can have for themselves where they're like, I give really harsh critiques at X, Y and Z. To me that doesn't actually do anyone a service. It's just like, if you are giving critique with the hope that this thing that someone's working on is going to get better, why wouldn't you package it, critique it away or that person doesn't feel so frustrated that they want to give up on life, because so often also like people are just so connected to what they're doing and they're in the trenches and they're working really hard and spending hours and hours and hours on something that it becomes wrapped up in your sense of self.

I think because of what I've observed happening to other people, I have a friend who in school, they got a critique from an instructor that was basically like, this is bad art and I was furious because I'm just here like, what does that mean? What is someone supposed to do with this? Rather than saying or rather than breaking down, like why something isn't working, you just say, it's bad. Why? That doesn't actually help the person want to do things. It actually just makes them want to not work with it anymore. I feel like there is this weird self-glorifying thing where it's like, who can give the most harsh critique on one side and then on the receiving, it is who can withstand the harshest critique because I have a feeling-

[01:03:56] Lindsay: Exactly.

[01:03:57] Ash: -that the people who can withstand those harsh critiques are more or more likely to be similar people like if you are-

[01:04:06] Lindsay: Yes. Absolutely.

[01:04:07] Ash: -I don't want to use the word. It's not grooming. It's a different thing. If you are preparing people for their entrance into an art career a certain way and the only people who are making it past you, "Can only deal with you're a really harsh critique in a certain way," I feel like those people are going to be a lot similar and I wish that we didn't.

[01:04:31] Lindsay: It is a way of grooming though. It's a scary term to use, but if one tells young artists that pain and suffering and self-loathing are a compulsory related part of being successful and good enough, you are basically laying the groundwork for an industry that abuses and takes advantage of people and like games industry, not great to people, certainly not great to marginalized people in a lot of cases. It's like that's part of the foundation of it, is the saying, you must hate yourself this much to ride the game industry. It is not good for anybody.

[01:05:08] Jasmine: No.

[01:05:09] Lindsay: I remember thinking that when I was a teenager of, if you can't take the harsh critique, you're not cut out to be an artist. It's like, why? Why do we think that? Why do we think that, like the only people who are wired for harshness are good enough to do art, they're unrelated things? In a lot of cases, it's just like we're already used to having these systems of people being hard on each other. I think that it's like, that's why I'm so passionate about speaking this way because it's like, I don't think it makes better art either.

The more we question this and dismantle it and find healthy alternatives to making art that doesn't tear people down, it makes them feel good about themselves, heaven forbid. It's going to make a better and more sustainable industry where like- don't quote me on this, but I'm quite sure it's quite accurate. The average age for non-men, like femmes dropping out of the game industry is 30.

[01:06:08] Jasmine: Yes [unintelligible 01:06:09].

[01:06:09] Lindsay: Yes, because we're setting up this culture where people who don't look like most people who work in games, e.g., people who are not white and male are often given a lot of signals in both overt and subvert ways that they don't belong, that they don't look like everyone else there. Then when you package that with being told that your work is shit over and over again, it's like, no wonder this industry is not accessible to people because there's just harshness that is woven into the very fabric of the way that we think about things. It's just not necessary.

[01:06:42] Jasmine: No, it's not.

[01:06:45] Ash: It's not and I wish that in that same vein, I wish we would talk about more than just hard work. Dreese actually brought this up to be the other day earlier this week. Art is also about patience like when you work hard but it's also about being patient with yourself.

[01:07:10] Jasmine: Yes.

[01:07:11] Ash: As long as you're working on stuff, you have to just trust a little bit and just be patient with yourself and know that you're going to grow because you are putting in that hard work.

[01:07:25] Lindsay: Absolutely.

[01:07:25] Ash: It doesn't have to be.

[01:07:27] Lindsay: That's so lovely.

[01:07:27] Ash: I know. As shout out to Dreese someone was asking him maybe how his work is so good or whatever. He responded patience also, because he works very, very hard. He loves working on his stuff but the patience part is what I wish he would talk about more because like we said earlier, everything is so fast tracked. Everything is like I need it know you have 15-year old's stressing out about the game portfolios and things like that. It's also about waiting a little bit and just letting it bake in the oven a little bit more.

[01:07:59] Lindsay: Like a sustainable process for stuff because I really relate to it. I worked so hard in my teen years and early 20s and then I spent my mid and late 20s basically piecing myself together. I hated art for that period of my life. I didn't draw outside of work. It's like if I had just gone slower and loved myself and been okay with not being perfect and had a more sustainable approach, I would be better now.

I would have drawn more because I wouldn't have learned to hate the things so much that I was reticent to do it. I wouldn't have had to put all this time and effort into like learning how to love it again. It's like, we all need to slow down like the tortoise and the hare is maybe the most important fable for artists at this point.

[01:08:41] Jasmine: That's true, yes, because even like nowadays with social media and being online all the time, it makes that even faster. People think I need to be so fast because I've got an art station that has 10 new artworks from 10 different people. Why am I not doing anything? Why is my art not ready yet? That's the most toxic thought ever to start comparing your speed and how you do things with others who have a completely different background and completely different life and what they do in general. It's like, just leave that aside.

Just focus on your own path, your own thing, no matter how slow, fast or whatever you do. If you take shortcuts, if you take the long route, whatever Google maps tells you to do what you want.

[laughter]

It's your path and it's like patience is such a great point to bring up especially for young people. The younger you are, the more impatient you get sometimes. It's like I want this now. I want to go to do this right now in this instance for learning patients, it's a great skill and you can learn it. It takes a while but it's possible. It definitely is.

[01:09:46] Lindsay: You have time is something I would love to just write above the workstation of every artist. Like you have time. There's no rush. It's okay.

[01:09:53] Ash: Wow. I should do that. [crosstalk] I have a spot right here.

[01:10:00] Jasmine: As a last topic I would love to touch upon, you mentioned you have a lot of freelance experience. I think it's interesting that you now went back to studio work and I wondered how did all that experience you had from freelance helped you with your current position? Is there any like experiences you had that really made you grow in your current position to or made you conquer specific challenges that you may be facing. Is there anything that makes them both interlock with each other?

[01:10:27] Lindsay: Yes, absolutely. A lot of my freelance was as a hybrid art director concept artist. I mostly worked with Indies, I worked on a couple of ER projects and PC and console type things. I would be brought on the Indies is a smaller budget, so I would be brought on at the beginning of a project and basically do an art direction package. I would read their GDD and figure out what people do we want to play this game, what's the vibe, what is the actual gameplay? Then I did do all my art direction, visual research, making key concept art for important things.

A lot of times I would be defining the style, defining the color palette, maybe the main character if there was one or the way humans look in the world which can be a big keystone for the style of the game. I would put that package together and then be like bye and then leave the team. They wouldn't have the budget to keep me on all the time in a lot of cases. It was a really interesting experience from my first studio job I was at for five years and then suddenly I was on a new game every three months. It was a really cool experience to be able to just work on so many different things in a capacity as an art director.

Whereas if I was in Triple-A as an art director, you could art directing the same one project for three, four, five, six, seven, eight years, really long production cycles. I feel I got to practice being an art director and being visionary. I almost hate the word visionary because it sounds very like holier than now but vision definer. Just getting to work on so many different things with different teams and different people just made me better and more adaptive and more able to have that zoomed-out macro view of what games should be and why.

When you get into working in the industry, it can be hard to figure out where your own skills and tastes, and desires end and where the project itself begins because they can get so intertwined. Having the broad palette of games was just such a good learning experience and I also just got to meet a lot of really lovely people working on different projects and trying different things. It definitely made me adaptive and a bit of a style chameleon because there's two ways of doing art direction where some people have really powerful styles. When they get hired for a project, you're like, "Oh, it's going to be a game by first name, last name so it's going to look like these things."

I really pride myself on being a chameleon. I do have a style but I fit it based on what the game needs to be. A lot of my work all looks really different. It's really the flexibility of freelance and getting to work with different people. Being able to just practice having that zoomed-out macro view of a project now that I'm working at one studio and more in for the long term, it's nice to be able to always be the person who's like, hey what if we pull back a bit, why are we doing this? This conversation we're having, what are we actually trying to accomplish here?

I feel a little more detached is not the right word but there's like a healthy detachment in a Zen Buddhism way of seeing things for what they are and being able to constantly question why we're making the choices we're making. In a way that's just easier to practice when you're on a new project because everything's new, so it's easy to feel refreshed and not too deep in the weeds of things.

[01:14:06] Jasmine: It's nice to have both worlds because as you say with freelance you have such a good opportunity to actually hop on different projects. What some people might see as a disadvantage but I think that's great especially when you're maybe a bit newer or in the middle of your career. You get to figure out maybe what you enjoy doing, what projects you enjoy being on, and having so much experience gathered is always good, there's no disadvantage to that as you said, it helps you so much in your current role to having that view from a freelancer and being on different projects. That's so good.

[01:14:39] Lindsay: Even on almost like a stability standpoint, I also feel very stable in the game industry now which is probably a wild thing to say. Just seeing, there are so many studios and people and teams and I think this is also an exciting point in the industry where there's a lot of funding and the double-A spaces that were. It's like Indies with bigger budgets, teams of 20 people, or something like that. Before it was Triple-A only and then it's like Triple-A or Mobile. There's just so much stuff happening right now and I think it was so lovely to work in freelance and just to see that, oh my God, there's so many options and so many things I can do.

If one thing doesn't work out, there's like 20 other things you can do. I don't feel too freaked out. Like the contract cycles of this industry, people are constantly looking for work but I feel like I am my own job stability now. I know who I'm good to work with, I know I'm good at my job, I know that I like working with people and it will all be fine. I used to have this really strong vision when I was younger of here's exactly what I want to do and I'm exactly on this path. Now when people ask me what I want to do in five years, I'm like I don't know, we'll see what the industry looks like.

That might sound flighty but I think that belies how confident I am and just games is going to keep getting better and there's going to keep being more diverse people making more different things. There's so much variety in the kinds of games that are being made right now. That's so exciting, I think it's because people are finding other weird paths that don't look like the typical ones, we think we have to stick to. It's a big thing too, just like being freelancers maybe so optimistic. I'm always going to find my place in the industry and there's always going to be a place for me and for any people who look at the normal structures of like I'm going to work at one company for 30 years.

That sounds boring or whatever, there's just so many options out there and it was cool to get to see them and experience so many.

[01:16:37] Jasmine: Yes, people shouldn't limit themselves so much and be open to change and also to new things and not be too biting onto that one thing like, "Oh, I need to do this." Just be open, as you said there's so many cool projects that you don't even know about. They're all out there just waiting to be discovered by you or somebody discovering you and wanting you to work on it. Just be open, let the world get you.

[01:17:06] Lindsay: Such good advice.

[01:17:08] Ash: Something that I didn't really think about until you guys brought it up is how doing freelance right now is giving me experience that I would not be getting otherwise. Learning how to work with the team is a different learning curve no matter how charming I am as a person, talking to people on this [unintelligible 01:17:30] or just learning pipelines and things like that. Every team that I end up joining or every project that I work on, it compounds the stuff that I'm learning. It's teaching me that I should be more vocal about getting feedback sometimes.

Sometimes you get in your head and you're like, "Oh, no I want to be at this certain point before I show it so that the feedback that I get could be at the peak or whatever." Whereas in reality, I should've probably showed it four hours ago so that they could have caught that thing that I finish more hours later. Could have gotten that fixed up or whatever and so often people can think that one is greater than the other or one style is more worthwhile or monumental than the other like you said. It's only Triple-A or whatever or it's only this, it's only that. Whereas in reality if you give it a chance, there's probably a lot more variety and you might find a working situation that you really enjoy.

That's something that's opened my eyes with freelance stuff, is that there were things that I hadn't considered that I'm considering now and it's making me think in a different way than before. It doesn't feel as restrictive if that makes sense because actually there are more options than you think that there are. That's something that I would not be thinking about now had it not been for 2021 happening to me and becoming a freelancer all over [unintelligible 01:19:21]. It's good that maybe people are slowly coming around to realizing there's more out there than just one thing.

Not to say that you shouldn't reach for certain things or have something as your goal or whatever. Goals might not be this thing where it's like a destination, maybe just like a point and then after you get to that point, there's something else probably. It's more like gold [unintelligible 01:19:54], it's rather than a summit I feel probably.

[01:19:58] Lindsay: Letting the past change based on how you're experiencing the journey is like wisdom, letting yourself learn and be open at things. I love how it was just put so simply as being open. Like Jasmin say like, "Just being open to things." I've had students before have cool, weird art styles and cool, weird, interesting, different ways of looking at things and they're like, "Oh, I just want to work at Blizzard."

"I just want to work at whatever place that has the house style." It's like, "That's totally fine, but let life show you what it's going to give you because it might make you even happier." You're making the choice as a kid to like, "I want to work at Blizzard. I want to work on Uncharted or something like that," based on the information you have then and to just be open to the fact that life might show you that you can accomplish being happy and feeling creatively fulfilled in so many other ways. It's such a disservice to an individual artist to just say, "I'm going to be person who's part of company." It's like, "No, let company be defined by you."

The house styles of different companies we love like Blizzard, those were individual artist who defined what that is and I think it does a disservice to artists to just say like, "I'm going to be someone who draws exactly like this studio." Sure, you might be happy at that studio, but like exactly, just be open to the experiences that happen and let yourself be influenced by them and let yourself influence the things that are around you as well because this is what life is. Just letting yourself go with things and enjoy and have fun and explore and discover. What's the point if not that.

[01:21:37] Jasmine: That's so relatable because personally for a long time, I felt like I'm wrong or bad in a way that I don't have a dream studio, like a dream style to go to.

[01:21:48] Lindsay: Me too.

[01:21:51] Jasmine: It always feels so awkward when people are like, "What's your dream studio?" I'm like, "I don't know. Maybe I didn't meet it yet." Who knows, it's not like that I never thought of even because I just like to do what I like to do and if there's a project that I'm interested in, that's the [unintelligible 01:22:08] and I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to hold onto it." "I don't care if it's like studio X, Y, Z, it just has to be something I enjoy doing." Not many people seem to have this feeling. I always felt left out on having a dream place to go to. It's okay not to have that, just do what you want to do, but you don't have to figure things out.

[01:22:31] Ash: I don't have hopes for a dream studio, I just have hopes for the people that I work with. That's it. The team that I'm working with right now, they're in the company right now, a small group of people. There's a certain amount of anxiety that I'm going to have about working period because that's just me and that's built into me that I came out of the package. I know there was a day where I was sitting here trying to get work done, there was a lot of brain noise upstairs and it wasn't really getting done. I was stressed out about stuff and I messaged the chat.

I was like, "Hey, I got X, Y, and, Z, done. Sorry for not getting more done this morning because I'm just really stressed-out blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." One of the leads messaged back and was like, "That's okay. That happens to me too sometimes." Stuff like that really matters to me because like, "Oh, so people care about people here, and they take the time to be like, let us know if you're stressed out because you shouldn't--" Because I'll make jokes and calls and stuff is that like, "If I have problems with this concept, I'll just let you know before I cry myself to sleep later." They're like, "Please don't do that."

They don't even let me make jokes like that because they're like, "No if you're getting to that point, you should absolutely be asking for help. Please ask for help." Having environments like that is what matters to me more than an IP, honestly, because I don't know man, if the IP is cool when the people are not, I'm not going to want to be there. I'm not going to have [inaudible 01:24:11].

[01:24:12] Jasmine: It's not sustainable. It really isn't.

[01:24:13] Ash: No.

[01:24:15] Lindsay: Actually, I'm so glad that you have the experience of a supportive team like that because it makes [unintelligible 01:24:21]. I feel the same way. Who I'm working with matters to me so much more than what we're working on because it's like the whole point of making games and stuff is like creative collaboration. If you're having a blast collaborating with people because they have no egos because they're supportive because they trust each other, that is always going to be creatively, more fulfilling, and fun, and honestly probably make a better thing anyway, than if you're having to cry in the bathroom at work all of the time or feel like you can't share stuff.

I have a similar experience with my work. We are constantly like, "Hey, having a really bad mental health day, hate myself a whole lot, just going to cry and not work." Everyone's like, "We love you. Take care of yourself. It's totally fine." It's like, I don't care that I'm not working at Blizzard where I wanted to work when I was 14 because I don't know if I'd be getting treated as well. I want to be treated well and valued for what my contributions are. I don't think the bragging rights of an IP makes up for that if you don't have it otherwise. I think it's so, so wise,

[01:25:19] Jasmine: I think that's such a positive and also nice note to conclude our conversation. I feel like we're all reached basically the same direction into that. It's good to be open. It's good to want to experience different things and it's all just going to help you with anything you do anyways. Nothing is wrong, there's no wrong path in what we're doing. We got this. We're here for each other.

[01:25:49] Ash: Yes.

[01:25:50] Lindsay: Yes, for sure.

[01:25:52] Ash: Just be a good, cool person and it will work itself out, I think. The more of us that do that, the easier that gets.

[laughter]

[01:26:02] Lindsay: Nice.

[01:26:04] Ash: For sure.

[01:26:05] Jasmine: To anyone listening, we will include all of Lindsay's social media links in the description. You can find her on Twitter and on our website, but yet you can check them all out, and please make sure to do so.

[01:26:17] Ash: As always, if you want to suggest someone to join us on the podcast, someone who is a great positive force within their community, along with being great at what they do, please send us an email at allinclusivepodcast@gmail.com. That's all-inclusive with no spaces, pdcst@gmail.com. They can be a 2d artists, 3d artists, literally anyone. They just have to be cool. That's the criteria.

Anyone who has any suggestions for anyone to come on, just please feel free to let us know.

[01:26:51] Jasmine: Thank you, everyone, for joining us for another episode of All-Inclusive, we hope that you had just as much fun listening to us as we do talking, and you can find us on a couple of different social media channels. You can find these links also in the description and that's going to include Twitter, YouTube, and Spotify. Thanks again and we help you join us for another episode of All-inclusive.

[01:27:19] [END OF AUDIO]