Concept Artists

2.1

A lot of the time, when I include images in my research subpages, they are not actual snapshots from whatever piece of media I'm referencing; they will instead be pieces of concept art. This is because a lot of the time taking a singular snapshot from a film or game does not allow you to properly visualise what it feels like to be in that game, or watching the film. It doesn't do the worldbuilding justice; there's no build-up, no panoramas, no awe. Concept art, however, it literally designed to give whoever is looking at it an accurate feel for whatever that particular environment or thing is — to pitch an idea, or give the people who are making the final models/scenes something inspiring to work off, or to give the marketing team something cool to show potential audiences.

When you see a piece of concept art in my subpages, often you are seeing works from the same person multiple times. It is typically the lead concept artist, the art director, or just an important member of the team. I would like to have a look into these concept artists, and attempt to gain some information from their expertise.

Cory Strader

For our previous project where we had to make a video essay, our tutors suggested that we reach out to a professional who worked on whatever piece of media we were looking into — in my case, I wanted to find someone who had worked on Subnautica who was willing to answer some questions. The first person I turned my eye to was the brilliant Cory Strader, the art director and concept artist at Unknown Worlds, who has worked on all three of their games (including, of course, Subnautica). I reached out to Strader on ArtStation, a portfolio website, and got a response just two days later. After emailing back and forth with Strader, we organised a time and date to do an interview, and I mocked up some questions to ask him that I thought might be useful for my research. It was a real honour to get to speak with someone who actually worked on this game, since I have been a fan of Subnautica and its sequels for about eight years now. Not only as a student and a researcher, but also as a fan of this game, I was overjoyed to be able to speak with Strader and get some steadfast information on this game straight from the horse's mouth.

Strader's Work

When I say that Strader's concept art is absolutely gorgeous, and played a huge part in how the final game was perceived and enjoyed aesthetically, I am not exaggerating. Strader has made countless pieces of very important artwork, mostly for the biomes and creatures of this game, that display all parts of the process. You can see these creatures in their infancy, and how they change and adapt and are optimised for a gaming environment. This concept art captures the essence of these feelings, and while a lot of them are functionally simplified in the final game, the concept art still displays the feelings these creatures and biomes are designed to evoke.

For example, if you look at the top left piece of concept art, you can see Strader blocking out the crabsnake, and what will become the Jellyshroom cave — the way that the crabsnake is shown to move in this image is not actually how they move in the game, as the coding and rig do not allow for this much movement, however this is eel-like movement is exactly how the crabsnake is supposed to be interpreted. Furthermore, the central-left image of a warper (a creature which can teleport the player from one area to another) captures the shock and fear the player will fear when being zapped away by one of these creatures, even if the way this teleportation is visually depicted does not match up with how it happens in-game.

This artwork is not only stunning, but it paves the way for further developments, and sets the grounds for the creature's aesthetic, void of any technical considerations.

The print you see below is my personal favourite of Strader's work — I love the colours, the perspectives, and the exploration of space and lighting. While this is not how the bone fields (part of the lost river) end up looking, you can absolutely see the concept beginning to emerge, especially with the creature swimming out of the skull (which looks almost exactly like how the river prowler ends up looking in the final game).

Of course, Strader didn't just do natural environments. He also created a lot of concepts for different mechanical elements of the game, such as the lifepod or the modification station workbench, as you can see to the right and bottom.

I personally find the concept to the right, the early lifepod interior concept, very interesting — if you look at how the lifepod ends up looking in the final game you can really see how they took pretty much everything in the concept as it is, except for the fabricator, which turns out much different in the final game. This is just another example of these concepts growing and evolving with the game, and showing the different stages of completion during the production process.

The Interview

A lot of the questions I gave Strader were mostly constructed specifically for that video essay project, which was a deep dive into the fear and horror aspects of Subnautica. I will skip over the questions I asked Strader that were more specifically surrounding those areas, however if you would like to watch the full 20-minute interview it is up on YouTube; I would highly recommend watching it, as it is fascinating.

These are the questions I asked in the interview:

Were the creatures of Subnautica designed with real life animals in mind as inspiration, and can you give an example of this?
Which area of the game do you think is the scariest, and why?
What colours and lighting do you tend to use when designing scary/dangerous environments, verses safe/familiar ones?
How important do you think the concept art of a game is, in regards to how the players eventually perceive and enjoy the gameplay?
Did the artists and designers of Subnautica consider the psychology of fear and horror when creating the environments and creatures?

Due to the direction of the questions, I will only be discussing questions 1, 3, and 4.

Question 1

This primarily links back to my worldbuilding subpage, and my understanding that these alien creatures all take inspiration from earthly animals — this then also supports some statements I made in my cosmic horror research, discussing how Subnautica uses phobias relating to of certain kinds of animals to create scarier creatures in the game. In confirming this, Strader would validate a lot of my research comparing the types of fear this game utilises, linking back to our natural fears of things more commonly found here on earth. Strader gave me the answer I had assumed, and shed some light on the concept art process this requires.

Question 1.mp4

In this part of the interview, Strader gives me a few examples of creatures in Subnautica that have been inspired by earthly creatures — some of these are more obvious, such as the ampeel in Subnautica, which is a direct reference to an electric eel in real life, or the rabbit ray, which is, of course, a combination of a rabbit and a stingray. These are two of the more obvious creatures that take inspiration from real-life animals. However, Strader states that while the basics might seem obvious and simple, everything about each creature is created from pages and pages of reference material, and their texture, eyes, face, or behaviour might all come from different sources.

This reference he made to utilising reference material is also very useful in that it shows the concept art process, and gives me some tips on how professional artists create alien creatures — as you can see in the primary research subheadings of some of my worldbuilding pages, this is already something I've been doing, however Strader reiterates how important it is to gather immense amounts of inspiration, images, and reference material before you even start sketching. After all, you cannot create in a void.

Question 3

This question is a lot more directed at the concept-art side of Strader's job, and how he utilised his illustration skills to try to capture the essence of these biomes. I wanted to know exactly how he thinks these biomes convey their intended purpose, and why the team created them this way. The answers I got were satisfying, and gave me a lot to think on when it comes to perspectives, lighting, and colour. It made me think about this game in a way I hadn't before, and made me look a bit closer at why certain biomes look a certain way, and what implications that might have.

Question 3.mp4

Strader mentions the Lost River, and discusses how the green hues are often used in horror — this seems to be one of the few biomes that they actually fully intended to be a horror environment, and you can see that in the devs' use of green, cloudy lighting that resembles poison. He talks about the impact the sun can have on an underwater environment, and how the friendlier areas are more naturally lit, and so less threatening. Although, Strader mentioned how this gave the devs less control over those areas, and what type of lighting they wanted to portray.

Question 4.mp4

Question 4

This question is probably the most useful for me as it regards this project specifically; I wanted to know in what way Strader thinks the concept art impacts the game, and the player's experience with it, partially to help with my primary research. I want to hear from a successful concept artist exactly how and why it is useful and impactful for informing the final game, which is, of course, the whole point.

Strader discusses in his answer how he believes it is important for “concept art to support game design” — he implies that concept art is not meant to be art void from technicality, but is meant to work hand-in-hand with the final game developers. He talks about how concept art sets the basis for the aesthetics and the design, and a lot of the time informs the backstory or lore of a creature or technology, which of course affects the final game massively. Giving individualised appearances to the various biomes, technologies, and creatures is extremely significant not only for immersion but also for marketing and brand identity, and all of this is informed by the concept art. What you're in those initial stages of development you feel immense amounts of excitement; at this point, the game can take on any form, and it's up to you to begin digging at the bones and unearthing what the final form of the game will appear like.

John Howe

John Howe, a 66-year-old illustrator from Canada, was one of Peter Jackson's main concept artists alongside Alan Lee. He worked on The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the new Netflix series The Rings of Power. He has illustrated several books and done many covers over his time as an illustrator, all fantasy; he illustrated classics such as Beowulf and various Brothers Grimm tales, and he has also illustrated the covers for many modern works of fantasy, such as Robin Hobbs' works.

Howe's art style differs tremendously from Strader's, and is a lot more whimsical and classical, where Strader's is more modern and vibrant. Of course this is partially due to the differing genres they worked on, however it is important to note that concept art, as long as it is creating concepts for things, is all very important. Howe's work is absolutely stunning, and if you look at the examples below, you can see how his concept art almost directly influenced the final shots in the film.

This is an excerpt from a master class that Howe did sometime in or before 2020 — in it, he discusses some of the ways he created quick concepts and ideas during the making of Lord of the Rings. Often times, we think of concept art as this glamorous position where you are tasked with making beautiful, intricate paintings and works of art. However, people forget that the vast majority of it is the nitty-gritties of making small adjustments, quick sketches, and frequently rushed ideas, especially in the film industry.

Howe discusses in this lecture how he put loads of references, iconography, and hints to Norse Mythology in his work, however nobody every really noticed or cared. This is a common downside to pulling in loads of reference material, as sometimes you get into an echo chamber of reference and good ideas and forget that 90% of it will be overlooked by the general populace. Either from its subtlety or from its general unknown-ness, most of your references and inspirations will most likely remain unnoticed.

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