Leading Space Engineers art team
Starting from 2015 up to 2020 I had an honour to art lead a world renowned Space Engineers game which was released in 2019 and was a huge commercial success.
Space Engineers is a sandbox game about engineering, construction, exploration and survival in space and on planets. Starting from 2015 up to 2020 I was leading a team of extremely talented artists at Keen Software House setting up artistic pipelines and workflows as well as establishing visual language and unique visual style for this great game.
Aside from it I was a producer of one of the most sucessful DLCs for Space Engineers game – Sparks of the Future DLC. You can check Space Engineers game along with all of its DLCs here
Client: Keen Software House
Role: Art Lead
Category: GameDev
Date: August 2015 – 2020
What were my responsibilities as an Art Lead?
Briefly, my art team leading included:
- Supervising visual quality of all 3D and 2D art in-game assets
- Defining, keeping track and managing tasks in Jira
- Planning the work ahead based on available man power and time budget
- Managing and evaluating work coming from Outsourcing Studios
- Recruiting top talent, senior artists to the team (creating job descriptions/requirements, test assignment tasks, interviewing candidates)
- Creating Onboarding Art Guidelines for new art team members
- Creating pipelines and workflows for specific tasks in the team
- Cross-team management of Art tasks (with Coders and QA)
- Regular SyncUps and feedback rounds for the whole team
- Quick paint-over sketches and concepts as part of feedback
- Creating all kinds of promo materials needed for marketing the game and its DLCs on all store platforms, dedicated Live Streams and social networks
- Creating end screens for DLC video trailers showcasing all key content items
- Creating in-game brand logos, DLC icons, badges and various minor UI elements for various parts of the game
Doing quick 2D sketches and brainstorming
Doing 2D sketches and quick paint-orvers either digitally or on paper was and stil is part of my daily job. All of these ideas are then being brainstormed with designers and artists on our regular SyncUps and Brainstorm meetings where we exhange ideas making sure visuals get in line with players’ needs and with game mechanics overall. Here’s just a few examples of paint-overs and quick sketches I did which were then used as references by our 3D artists who did final 3D models later on.
Doing quick 3D block-outs as well as Final Quality models
I also modelled lots of in-game assets for Space Engineers starting from rough block-outs to the final qulity models which I then implemented inside of the game itself.
Creating all kinds of Promotional Materials
I was also responsible for creating all kinds of promotional materials such as Hero Banners and official Screenshots needed for marketing Space Engineers game along with all of its DLCs on all platforms such as Steam, Playstation and Xbox (Microsoft) stores as well as preparing promo materials for dedicated Live Streams providing visual presence on all social networks. Marketing materials included: Hero Banners and their adaptations, Screenshots and Promo Banners showcasing key parts and premium items of the game and DLCs, Promotional Banners for Release Live Streams and external Ads.
My Very SPECIAL thanks!
All of this wouldn’t be possible without Keen’s Great Team of incredibly talented and passionate Artists, Coders, Designers, Testers and many other talented people who contributed their time, skills and passion to make the end product looking as awesome as possible! You’re my heroes guys!
And, of course, my special thanks go to the head of Keen SWH – Marek Rosa! Thank you for believing in me, thanks for all the support and attentiveness you have always shown and continue showing to me. I truly value and appreciate it!
Artists whose work was presented here: Jan Trauske, Jan Golmic, Radek Stepan, Kristian Renaerts, Natiq Aghayev
All rights belong to © Keen Software House
