Leavon is a freelance concept Artist, he mainly works in the gaming areas. He began his career when he was 15 and he got a job creating comics. He got his first job creating games at 17, once he was 18 he decided to go to college to get some qualifications to help him pursue his dream career. He took and Art & Design course at Chesterfield College although he was more interested in Graphic Design he really enjoyed the course. He believes that the life drawing he took part in during his time at college is one of the main reasons he has come so far in his career, he still takes life drawing classes as he believes it is a great help for his character drawings, being able to draw body shapes and in the right proportion.
He started off with very basic characters and was working in 2D. His first gaming job was inspired by the works of Walt Disney. As he progressed and got more and more gaming jobs his character designs improved and he began using different applications such as Photoshop, this gave him the chance to explore working in 3D and he loved it!
He got to work on a Pirates of the Caribbean game for Xbox 360, photographs were taken from the set of the movies to give him a good idea on skin colour textures etc.
He also shows an interest in fantasy art using brush and pen and ink. He looks at anatomy using parts of the human body and muscle structures to get inspiration for creatures and aliens.
He has worked on statues to, and as he has never worked on the design of animals before he decided to create a Russian statue of a horse and its rider. He said that it was great to get a chance to to work on this project because as a character artist you never a chance to use environmental pieces.
He also discussed with us that a lot of people ask him if he ever gets a chance to create his own projects, and he told us that he has a lot of spare time and he uses this to create his own projects, he’s currently working on a project that he is hoping one day will become a film.
Although a lot of the projects he has worked on have fell through he said the experience has been great and having the chance to work on them has been unbelievable. He regrets working on a lot of the projects he has worked on though as he didn’t get the experience he expected.
Sometimes he draws straight into Photoshop using a graphics tablet instead of sketching the images, although sometimes he will sketch an image and then take a photo and upload it to his computer to then edit on Photoshop. He uses various effects on images when editing in Photoshop such as mirroring the image or blurring it etc. Likes to explore new techniques and make his work look more interesting.
When designing characters before he sends them off to the customers he has to have more than one photo, preferably 3 from all angles.
He designs his images in photoshop and then uses an application called Z-Brush to add sculpture to the images. Z-Brush is a sculpting product associated with the Lord of the Rings movies and games.
I found his work really interesting and I liked the fact that he shows a great interest in his work and has a lot of passion. I am not interested in character drawing for a future career but I found a lot of tips he gave us useful.
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