Tattooing Oranges and Riot Games

Tattoo and Oranges

One summer, broke and frustrated, I bought a tattoo machine and started tattooing oranges.

I was doing crappy freelance jobs here and there, earning maybe €300 a month. Some clients tried to trick me; one didn’t pay (a now well-known game outsourcing studio).

Also bought my first squatty potty, but let’s continue.

I kept sending my portfolio around every day and making new artworks.

Meanwhile my savings were disappearing, and my hopes of breaking through as a concept artist were fading.

Then an email arrived: West Studio.

First Shot

West was reaching out about a big project.

I joined the call and one of the art directors I admired (Mingchen Shen) was there.

My English wasn’t great, and I didn’t think my portfolio was there yet, so yeah, I was nervous.

But I did my best to play it cool.
Don’t look desperate please.

Big project, kind people, and good money.

I didn’t fully believe it until the contract arrived a couple of days later.

Then my career changed, I started working on creating art for Valorant (Riot Games) with West Studio.

Avoiding Concept Art, Again.

Valorant was my first proper job in games (thank you, West Studio). It’s funny because if you look at my work, it doesn’t match the game style at first.

You never know all the different needs of the art for a game and the opportunities these can bring, even the apparently small ones.

West contacted me to work specifically on Sprays. But that kind of task opened the door to bigger asignments for the game like Props, Environment Art and full Illustrations.

I mentioned the importance of building a unique portfolio, not just doing concept art, but growing as an artist outside that box.

A personal project I made for fun (Meaningless Adventure) got me visibility online and then my first work opportunites landed.

It wasn’t really one project or one post; it was the compound effect of years of making things and showing them.

Here’s what came from that attention. This was the first one.

Art for Valorant

Initially I was hired to produce Sprays, (“Graffitis” you can use during a match in Valorant to paint on surfaces):

After delivering those, I got to work on new stuff like Gun Buddies:

These are charms to decorate your weapon:

Then came prop design and rendering:

This was tricky because I had to render realistically, something I was trying to avoid on my own work.

But luckily it was a skill I had in my toolkit. Very handy to know in production.
(I will share with you what I believe every artist should learn)

Later, a huge challenge with environment concept art:

I was sweating blood painting this.

Then came some player card illustrations. Really fun to make and I learnt a lot:

Closing the Loop

This was the chance I’d been waiting for. Once it arrived I did everything I could to deliver.

More opportunities came around the same time, will share those experiences too.

Even though sometimes waiting for the one shot can be frustrating, be patient and keep going.

Work now so that when the opportunity arrives, you’re ready.

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