Grace Liu on the Art Behind Uniquely Stylized Games

I’ve always loved manga and games. I think the first time I tried digital art—using a mouse—was after seeing someone else post their work on a gaming bulletin board when I was in high-school. Things got more serious when I had the chance to use a Wacom tablet for a college course. I was very careful with my money, but I made the decision to buy one after the class was over, and began doing bad World of Warcraft fan-art immediately.

I’m not sure I have a style, but my friends often tell me they recognize my work. I have never purposefully tried to guide my style, so I believe my “style” might simply be a mixture of my unique technical mistakes, personal way of seeing things, plus lots of influences from artists I like.

Battle Chasers: Night War was in every way a dream project for me. I had a lot of freedom on environment concepts, got great art directions, made a lot of the environment assets, made many of the combat backgrounds and environment illustrations, colored some of Joe Mad’s amazing character illustrations and concepts, made the world map, and last but not least, I helped with the fishing mini game. The small team size meant I got to wear many hats and try many things. I had a lot of fun and learned a ton.

I got hired into the industry as a 3D artist who can also concept, and have been a hybrid since. I think hybrid artists are relatively rare, and not universally necessary, but I find my 2D skills give me a lot of creative freedom when I work mostly in 3D, and my 3D experiences give my 2D concepts more practicality. I also enjoy being able to contribute both to pre-production and production phases of the project. Being able to both visualize the initial concept and also have a hand in bringing the final assets into games is a very satisfying experience.

I usually start with either pencil or digital doodles, just letting my brain loose in order to go through a round of pretty terrible sketches. I would hopefully find a few nuggets of ideas in there and begin seriously digging through references. I don’t have very tidy linework and often give up on the drawing stage a little prematurely to figure things out in the painting stage. This is a fairly inefficient process but I find myself thinking clearer in values and colors than I do in lines.

Do I get brownie points for saying Joe Mad? Seriously though, as someone relatively uninitiated to American comics, I find Joe’s art very attractive, possibly because I can see the manga influence in his work, but also the organic feeling of his pencil lines.

I worked on the Summoner’s Rift map update with a group of some of the most talented and passionate people I’ve ever met. The level of care the team put into delivering quality content as well as actually communicating with and listening to players left a lasting impression. Some of the most memorable moments happened during our internal game jams, which were 2-3 day events that happened 2-3 times a year, during which people freely formed teams to work on whatever they wanted, from technology and tools to entire mini games to more game modes for LoL. People were so passionate about the project that many stayed for all-nighters, and as the nights turned to early mornings, the jokes get sillier but somehow funnier.

Have a goal. I should be able to look at your portfolio and quickly have an idea of what kind of artist you are, what types of teams you may fit in, and where you are trying to go with your art. One of the major goals every aspiring artist should have is making a professional level, rather than a student level portfolio. As you get out of schools, you will be competing on a professional level, and your work should be at least almost ready to go into actual games.

The bars are constantly rising and there are so many super impressive, creative, productive artists out there. Comparing to just 10 years ago, art talent in the game industry has overall leveled up several times over. It’s both a bit scary and also super inspiring to look around and discover several artists with amazing work every week. I personally love this feeling.

That’s a great question. I was asked this question during my interview at Blizzard for the Diablo 3 team almost 8 years ago, and my answer today is the same with my answer then: I will hopefully always be making games I love with a team of people who care. Exactly what and where isn’t as important. I hope I will always be surrounded by people who motivate each other to get better.