How to Hire the Perfect Art Director?

hey welcome welcome welcome welcome everybody and we have two fantastic art directors we got shiraz to long our director at moon active previously at king and rovio and then we got jack gilson our director at scopely previously at wooga and rovio how's it going guys yeah thank you great to be here yeah it did really good it's really good so so you guys jack is joining out of london or the outskirts of london and shiraz is in is in india at the moment and because my knowledge of india is very limited i don't know it's not mumbai it's not delhi but it's somewhere in between the italy of india yeah just on the tropic of canada well explained that it's the uh he lives in the italy of india yeah well the size of the state is equal and greatly and also the population how

about the uh how about the uh the outfits and the style pretty difficult well the food as well we're getting there we're getting there for sure but we're not yeah we're not we're not to talk about the geographical locations even though that would be a really fun topic um we're about to talk to some something something that i find extremely interesting because i've gone through this so many times and that is hiring a perfect art director and sadly art director is the role is the person that i had to let go the most and it's the person that i had to hire the most so i'm really trying to figure out and i'm sure a lot of people are trying to figure out how to how to hire our director when to hire an art director where to search for an art director how do you know that the uh the person is the right fit and all of that jazz so before we kick it off let's start with defining the role because in my time i've worked with many different art directors and they have nearly all been

just the position of each other like very very different and everybody is an art director so sure do you want to kick off and kind of define what you uh like how would you define an art director yeah uh so that's entirely true like uh when i was an artist working under different art directors i myself saw different directors are working with me and they arrange in always like there might be someone who is probably the best artist among the whole group uh very hands-on and then there are people who might not even have a drawing tablet on their computer so there's a there's a big difference like the same people sharing the same title but uh very different day-to-day work and my definition would go still very uh generic which is simply another director being a person who is responsible for the look of the game like the design director is in charge for how fun the game is the tech director r d director is responsible for how well the game plays the art director is naturally the person

who's responsible for the the look of it the the visual vision behind it um and then obviously whatever they do still need to fit into the marketability and the gameplay and should work seamlessly with the tech uh and they have to deliver stuff uh within the resources they have at hand uh however their core function still depends on how the game is gonna look like eventually like that's what their responsibility is and um coming back to like why you have seen so many of different art directors i think it comes with the situation of what their past experiences have been uh depending on where they work like what kind of company culture they had also the expectations from the senior leadership and it's also like the the kind of like the culture the people in the team they work with and probably most importantly their own individual choices of how they wanted to grow themselves and grow themselves as an artist like almost most of the people

start as an artist and then slowly over the course depending on how their trajectory goes across their career uh they sometimes like either continue to remain artists or start to lose it and it's mostly about opening ppt's and talking about stuff or relying on pinterest and stuff like that and in in in the defense of those people it's also not always possible to be very hands-on forever like you need to have a bird eye view on the project so that you're able to make more bigger impact and make big decisions which are uh going to be useful for the project and also it comes with lots of sacrifices right like you have to dedicate your time into recruitment or talent development improving pipeline all that kind of like stuff like with the schedule and sometimes like solving people issues takes a lot of your time so um it it comes with the balance and depending on what kind of balance everyone ends up with in their career it defines like what kind of person they

are and also sometimes it's very stupid if you are maybe by by just being hands-on and not caring about anything else like if you're locking yourself in the room and the team is sitting idle and you just get frustrated and you are starting to just take things on your own hand and um that can maybe even start to make the team feel a bit disengaged or feel the lack of ownership so someone who is like best with balancing all of those so that they are still inspiring contributing and at the same time giving the team the control and the ownership uh would be the best art director like you might still have to pick up stone to ignite the fire by rubbing it if it's quite dark but um whoever is the best team person uh and can manage the best team is probably a good art director in my god so and that's that's a very good point like it ultimately goes back to the look of the game and then you play around with the tech the marketability the resources those all have effect to it and of course game design has a huge

effect on on on what you're doing because it leads to a certain type of audience and then through that and so forth um jack how did you become an art director like i was like a conclusion that's that's that's a tricky question uh so i mean i started first i i started working in uh games back in 2006. um and i basically just worked up from junior artist upstart director um and i think yeah one of the things that you said about being an art director apart from being um hands-on as well is that you know there's lots of different sort of hats you have to wear as well um and there's one of the things that i always enjoy to wiggle with wearing lots of different hats and i think that's what helped me uh become the personal amateur director uh i've got a good background in tech i think that's useful to have really i'm more tech thinking when it comes to uh production um also i've got creative sites i think you've gotta be you've gotta be creative you have a tech side yourself you've gotta be good with people um i would say you have to be kind of

outgoing as well when you be an art director it's quite tricky if you're just uh introverted it's i find that more difficult for people i had to come out of that shell to become more extroverted to deal with people because it's a it's it's a real people job you know you are basically you know um a purveyor of taste for games uh and so you know if you've got a vision of this product and how you're gonna sell it uh using visuals you have to be able to explain yourself and you know really give a good uh you know reasoning behind the direction choice of what you're thinking um so i mean as long as you know not only have you got to be a decent artist but you've actually got me a really good as well to be able to sell things to actually get people talking and you get people discussing the kind of thing you're looking for in games um it's it's it's never as simple as oh this is this is pretty let's just do this you've got to really you know combat and push for something with a product lead or a general manager or something and uh and that's something i've always really found fun to do is just spying with people discussing ideas you know igniting thoughts behind why we

should do this um but yeah i mean if you want to if you're a kind of director the most important thing to do is make sure that you have a a good round knowledge of all the things all this all the fields you're going to work in within that product and i mean if you're going mobile you know you should be more focused on a bit of everything especially sort of you know the the audience you're aiming for whereas if it's triple a you know it's more different uh this is these art directors different areas in that in that field whereas you know if you're gonna work in mobile it's definitely more about knowing a lot more things than just focus on characters or art or buildings or backgrounds you've got to know a lot about everything really cheers did you always know knew that you want to be an art director like because jack said like he grew up from a junior artist out to an upper art director like was it for you also like the sort of like methodical approach that i'm gonna grow to this position and that's why i have to diversify and understand everything and um yeah like was it was it something

that you were pursuing yeah i mean i i didn't knew but i had ambitions towards it so as i was like much like how jack said started with a junior um starting to get bit senior i started to accept responsibilities and slowly like starting with a smaller team and then taking the lead responsibilities for handling a bigger team so uh the the exact thing with jack said about wanting to and having to wear different kind of hats uh that became the nature of my day-to-day and um i i started to like more than just being focused on making art but uh wanted to be engaged with more things and uh working with more people delegating work giving feedback uh and helping with the talent development and stuff like this with the people around me so and also i'm i'm a bit more like vocal i'm uh i'm not that introvert in general so that also helps like being being around and being uh being among the front runner uh so

this is this is something which laid the foundation for me getting into being an art lead and then overall becoming a director and then scooter director i think definitely the right there is one thing you got to think about when you when you get towards director roles you do definitely become more hands-off when it comes to art so i mean if if your goal is to be you know working on great art then our director may not be the best role to go for i mean there's obviously some art directors that can spend time on just drawing and painting and setting the scene and saying the sort of flavor for a game or something but after that really it comes down to paint overs and management i think you'll find our art directors will say that and still revert that back to you as well they'll echo that and um is it is it typical jack that that that people want to become an art director is it something that that you're pushing for like or is is it is it more that that there are clear distinction between let's say in a tech path like not everybody wants to be a cto there are people who want to be the distinguished

engineers and kind of be like super into their craft and just code amazing things and they'll get rewarded for it is it the same on the art team side that you can you know become a lead artist or a principal artist and that is equally uh respected inside the team as the people manager yeah i would say you know someone like a principal artist is probably predicted more in some ways right because they are just a fantastic artist knocking out beautiful pieces of work whereas the art director is yeah he's the is the ass that says no no need move more to left or more blue more green um so i think i i definitely believe that there are people that i know this for sure actually don't believe it i know there's people that want to stay as you know a lead artist or a concept artist um because i mean concept art is a really tricky one because that that has such a level experience from junior to just beyond director of the kind of artist you get who are just a concept artist and it's not just a concept morois it's such a huge thing um so yeah for sure i mean i

i wouldn't not respect someone that isn't a concept artist or an art director i mean everyone's everyone who respects everyone just equally really when it comes to as an art team you've got to be very yeah you'll be very careful with artists as well um they're they're they're tricky people to work with you know it's it's you that's why you gotta be great people is because you know you're looking at someone's work and you're critiquing it or you're explaining why it's good or bad or how to improve it so it's it's not like trying to tread on eggshells really sometimes when you're sort of you're an art director that's what i think you've got to think about too is you know artists can be very they're very creative but they're also people that can be very uh emotional and passionate so uh yeah you've got to be super careful and any any type of uh artist that exists it's the same thing really whether there's an art director art leads junior artist you still gotta be just as careful with them too because you know people pour their heart into making a piece of artwork so you gotta be very careful with how you sort of you know work with it

uh and some people say it that role they like they like to stay just painting and i think that's absolutely fantastic they should that's really that good yeah that's a that's a good point that that you made um regarding giving feedback so i've had experience not not even once not even twice where the the team didn't respect the art director and then they usually didn't respect the art director because of her or his uh drawing skills and ability to critique them and that seems to be i mean that well that has happened so many times where um yeah where the team just just kind of like revolted against the art director either by critical members leaving or or um or just complaining to the gm that that this is not the uh the right person so shiro's you have a very different background not different background but you have a sort of like a typical art director background where you've started from concept artists if i'm correct and

you're a visual development artist and through that you're very good at drawing and through that you have a very beautiful portfolio and through that you get a lot of respect from the team of artists that you're working with because you're able to critique them with a pen not with words and then you're able to to explain it because you that that's your background like is this mandatory or what are the other ways to to really engage with your team and kind of get that respect even if you're not you know the uh one of the best drawers in the team yeah uh so true i mean i don't think it's so necessary because there are successful eddies or multiple expertise like it could be some money one more specialized with the with the tech heart and then maybe from the from the animation background or actual production and might not really draw i think the the the initial phase of when you're joining the team and when you start with working a new team especially that team has not been built by you and has been

given to you those crucial first few weeks or months are most important that decide how the chemistry between the team and the ad is going to work and that's where i i feel that in my own experiences i found it successful if i'm engaging with everyone differently because just like jack said everyone is quite different and they're all mostly emotional because they are being artists they have been creating content and they put their love into it the the more one-two ones you are gonna have at the very beginning and when you start to meet people spend time with them uh hear their stories tell them about your own stories uh look at their uh accomplishments and what they have done in their career uh ask them to show their own work and then maybe even show your own stuff and what you have done that start to develop a bit of like a respect mutual respect among both of both the ideas as well as the person and they start to understand what are uh the way someone likes and doesn't like and it automatically as you grow your

experiences in 80 you start to discover people and learn about how flexible about are they about your own approach and then you can probably program your way of working with them according to their own way of dealing with things some might not like micromanagement and some others are not careful about details at a certain stage and you have to be really careful how you communicate about very detailed feedback to someone uh who's not really looking for those things uh someone else is just wanting to elevate their work and they're just very open that yeah i mean you could you could slap on my face about whatever feedback you have because i'm i'm wanting to improve my quality so uh all those learnings really help you choose how you should work with the people and uh obviously the way you communicate feedback and i'm very thankful that i worked at organizations where there were lots of coachings done towards how to give feedback and sometimes like on a surface level it felt very weird

like what is this plus plus feedback or positive feedback like you always have to cater your sentences in such a way that it doesn't hurt someone but slowly i started to recognize the values of those and i i tried to change my way of dealing with people and talking with them and then giving them feedback and also how clear and helpful it is is also what it need to be like it can't be too weak that you are just leaving the artist alone sometimes you have to be friends with them like sit with them um give a more detailed vision about what you're asking not just saying that hey i didn't like it and go go figure out something else so uh that's where it it kind of like builds a relationship uh honestly moving and uh that helps dealing with it and that's something that someone else can do who's not doing drawers as well it's just about framing their feedback jack how do you get the uh the respect of the art team other than you know wearing a black polo shirt and then the glasses

and and you know they are the silly tattoos and all that jazz um oh yeah yeah what what you know sharon says it's basically you know you just have to you know work with the artists closely uh show them the kind of stuff you've done as well the kind of vision you're trying to build with them to um and it's just really a case of just uh you know working with them to show that you're an artist uh and i think that's the most important thing to get respect is to to be able to you know stand on your own two feet and you know fight it out with uh with other artists show them show them what you can do um i think that's very important especially with much more if you join a team like if you go into a team that's got leads principles and you're an art director coming in from the outside uh like that's what is that what happens to me mostly when i join another team coming in to work with a team there's already an art director or principal artist in there too yeah it's really it's a case of just

you know they're already they're already senior right so they know exactly the kind of i guess the hoops you jump through to get to where you are and the skills you have the experience you you've gathered along the way um it's just you know you work with these people to you know define the vision and along the way they they start to see exactly the kind of person you are and the kind of art output you create um and really it's just about being a nice person right about being a nice guy you know don't be an just you know i don't think you've met many art directors like what are you talking about now you honestly at the end day right just be a nice guy and you and you you always get aware of people and you'll get you'll get the best work out of them okay all right well i've seen i've seen a nice gals and nice guys and i've seen ourselves not so nice especially in the role of an art director and um and that's that's really the challenging thing that you said like you have to earn the respect of your team of artists

that is such a challenging thing when you're coming in from the outside and they might have been going towards a different direction you're coming in and you're trying to sway them to a different direction and you have to have so much weight and so much support from above in order to do that and i just like even thinking about it about that i'm not sure i that's why i i think if you go into a new team um and you've been given the given the the the role to actually pivot the art style in different direction for example um i i don't think that's a big deal i think it's easy to do that kind of stuff as long as you explain to the team what exactly you're doing i've done this multiple times before where you have to actually pivot the art style or pivot something in a different direction from where you were going and you just do it with just you know good art you know good metaphors uh a good style guide that you're aiming to to go with uh and basically just as much information to really give something background and story um and if you give

it some kind of story dialect as well then you know people will start to understand exactly why you're doing this and i i do many guides where it's going through you know the transition from left to right black to white and it's very simple to do that as long as you do it well you know and it's clear cheers i have to ask you like look pivot in the art style so you're coming in as a new id do you what's the best approach to be the man with a plan or be the man with ears so basically just sitting down getting everybody's opinion and like what would you think giving people context and then pushing the team to make the switch or is it more fruitful in a case of a pivot where you just come in and and really underline the reasons and kind of provide a clear guide where where to head out yeah that's a really good situation uh i think uh in the beginning it requires uh you are new to the company you don't know

what the team has been facing uh they might have had a previous few months where they have already tried the stuff that you are trying to bring on the table and they are probably like tired of it like or or for whatever situation things didn't work and now they are a little more disengaged and demotivated so in the beginning it requires to have an ear uh i even like what i try to do is i try to take people on some off sites and uh maybe like spending the whole one day or two days with them um a new venue where you're just going and doing some sort of team building exercises uh especially like if all those people are still not mingling well between each other and then on the on the top level it's all fun and like we are having great food and everything and on the other side there's also lots of activities done to us where we are trying to understand what has been the history of the project uh what they have already tried before uh why things are not working according to them and what do they think uh could

improve and uh is needed and they are themselves gonna give answers to all those problems that things they've been facing and if you agree to them and um you you then whatever pivoting that you are about to do it could be addressed in such a way that it's kind of like answering and abiding to what they have been already hoping for um and additionally uh like exactly what jack said like coming with a very clear plan discussing them with them uh trying to feel that hey this is going to make this stuff better by searching such references style guide notes about what we can improve maybe even like doing some deconstruction sitting with the people looking at the competition and looking at those games and then inspiring each other those things really value uh and also it calls for a lot of uh appreciation to those people for their own hard work like i often time make sure that i'm

not really getting lost in the momentum project and forgetting about praising good work and uh i i always make sure that once in a while i'm going to individual direct messages on slack to people and uh thanking them for the good work they've been doing a recent artwork that they created which look really good and also sometimes organizing like a studio showcase or whenever there's a 2d update or maybe just an art update per month taking the entire team and showing around the work that we did in the past past weeks or past months which even didn't make through the final cut because of whatever rejections and multiple options were made so that the team feels that they are getting recognized for what they've been doing and they take your site then and they start to understand that yeah there's someone who cares for us and appreciates good work yeah yeah i asked it because this kind of applies to design and team leadership as well like i've been in cases where i've you know had to pivot the uh the direction and what i found to be the mistake and kind of my own diminishing trait was that i would be the man with a

plan and i would be like let's go let's go and come in and kind of like explain everything and and what it makes others do is they kind of like sit back and then what happens is like you're carrying all the weight and it's really hard to ignite the team to to support with everything because you've been such a driving force ahead with your own vision without really hearing everybody and getting everybody along and now they're just helping you instead of pushing forward so that's why that's why i kind of asked the question yeah one of the thing i would still add here is you should not be too sensitive about the i mean i'm not saying you should not be sensitive over the feelings of people but if you are able to see problems and you recognize that this is what's failing the project overall and the team overall you should have that courage enough to say no to things and then channel them in the right way otherwise you are going to fail it is going to be your first fall so you you have to come out across very strongly with what you feel about it best if you're getting

support from your leadership your other peers from design director to creative and your studio head and product lead but if you know that this is the wrong way of how we have been doing things in the past and this is the right way you need to continue educating for it and uh you need to enforce that otherwise if you start to make compromises and your own vision for what you initially brought in and now has starting to change just in order to flow with the river of how people have been doing work then i don't believe you are gonna be able to make enough of difference and you will just uh be part of the problem yeah yeah yeah the no that's and you know cheers is a nice man but we work together and and you're very insightful like when you see that that something is not working you're like this person gotta go she gotta go or he gotta go like it's not gonna and that also allows you to to see like when you bring in and you kind of bring the team together start talking with everybody start bringing everybody on board and there's always going to be a couple of people or one person who's

kind of not jumping on board you leave them off board because you gotta go and that's it and that's that's also a crucial fact like you can't have everybody like you eighty percent is the goal the rest twenty goodbye so that that's my br that's the way i see it and then that's you know that that's uh that's usually uh 80 20 rule is um is good anyways enough about me uh but let's talk about when to hire an art director what in your opinion would be a good start for the project like let's say we're working on a new game is our director the first person you bring in is it the person you can bring in after a concert validation is it a person you bring in production or pre-production jack when is the perfect time for our director to step in i mean i reckon my my perfect team will probably be um sign up with an art director to get the vision right working with the point lead or gm whatever whoever is in charge uh and maybe a couple of concept artists

along with you know the rest of teams needed like design or ui or whatever ux they needed to but just to get the the fundamental design and sort of flavor of the game you know get an art director and concept artist working on that start off with and then you know once you know that's kind of uh it's i guess we'll say approved but once it's you know looking like it's going in the right direction for what the the studio's need is uh then bringing someone more like a technical art kind of person to start a really good technical art sort of person then start break down exactly what you're gonna need to to do this kind of game as well um because i've always found so many issues with working on games is i've always joined the game you know halfway in or a quarter in or something and yeah it's it feels like the due diligence was kind of not done so you're then trying to pick up all the pieces like god we've got to fix this oh god this doesn't work we need this person here and i never it's so hard to always have the perfect team from the start i think that's such a bummer i think you do need to have your not the

perfect team but the right team to actually understand what they're going to build and how they're going to build it um because it's the the type of you know so many genres of games over the years and you see the same problems with every game it's just never the due diligence is done about how we're going to build a game from scratch correctly so i mean i would all start with the art director and the concept artists and the rest of the people they needed to make the the idea and the sort of the visual pass and then start drip feeding in you know senior members like a technical artist uh maybe an animator or something to then start you know once it starts sort of flooding out when you start to maybe go towards like a vertical slice you have the right people on board so you can also plan for how you're going to build this game in the future as well sure what's your what's your recommendation yeah i agree to what jack said um but it it also depends on what kind of uh team or game team that is

is it under a bigger company like uh you you already have stable uh multiple projects going on and that's a new prototyping team that you are completely confident that you are going to convert it into a game team which will move on then it makes sense to start investing on senior leadership into that phase however if it's a new startup or something like a indie team or a bunch of developers and designer combining themselves and forming to make a team and some very initial funding uh maybe in our director coming at that point of time might not really bring a lot of value in my opinion uh unless someone is really a journalist and is able to contribute at that very early phase of development when you have to do rapid prototyping and you are providing placeholder assets and um buying some stuff from the store and talking with the game designer and programmers and then just making something functional so that you are able to uh take it forward um so that kind of like generalist would probably bring more influence and

things from the get-go uh and then also one of the thing which i am always very careful about is that at the early phase if you give a big responsibility to someone thinking about yeah we formed a small team let's make this guy an art director because he had been making placeholder assets and all of that kind of thing but you need to think that afterwards this is going to get greenlit and then there will be more funding and this the demands are going to change on the art today it was just about providing placeholders and something temporary working tomorrow it's about elevating the whole benchmark quality and scaling the team and managing and focusing on details like visual development and quality of concept art and everything is that person appropriate to continue to be an art director so i wouldn't put a hat on that person almost immediately until like we really know that that person him or her is able to continue with the with the demands which are going to come in the future so still an ad can come at that stage but i

would probably put it at the point when the project is greenlit and now the moment is when you are building the team and your your focus is coming to defining the style choosing the theme and hiring the first few people like jack said like tech artist and concept artist and one animator and that's probably the most enjoyable phase for someone as well like uh the early phases when you are developing style guides and defining the look of it yeah those are oh yeah oh go ahead chris yeah one more thing which i was uh just feeling like is that it also depends on your channel work like sometimes your game is quite inspired like you're not gonna innovate anything you just know that there are these games which exist in the market we are following something from here we're dragging that from the other side that's where also an ad can help by coming in early because then the game developers and designers entirely know what they need to do and they're gonna make their game pitch according to it and you as an ad can start making some sort of like a visual pitch so it comes with all of that ppt uh with

great inspiration on what kind of look you're gonna promise for the game and that deck combined with the the functional build can be a good like pitch for the investors to start putting money into it great points uh so i don't know even which order i'll start with this so one was what you said you bring in a relatively not junior but but an artist in the beginning and that is a pretty generalist artist he or she does a good work in the beginning and then maybe gets another helping hand and kind of manages one person that person is still not an art director that was a field promotion and i've usually seen careers sidelined by these type of decisions because at some point when gets real and when the person has to be doing real art direction job with and hiring a big team and not even a big team even a medium-sized team and then searching into into like moving into different avenues and also uh coaching people that's not why they were in that position

originally they were doing something totally different and if you still keep that person as an art director and kind of expect that person to grow on the job into multiple different vectors at the same time without any kind of mentorship that person's career will be sidelined and there it's so many times that i would come to a studio and and see people with an art director title and like how did you become an art director like you've barely worked as an artist before like you were a 3d artist for for a while and now you're an art director and then you can clearly see in the game that there's multiple things failing you can see in the team that the multiple things are failing because the person is just not qualified to to hire to mentor to build on our team doesn't even have an idea of what our team would do so i would just um kind of to to everybody who is running teams and studios be very cautious before giving this title because it's not a reward it's a punishment for those people and they could have grown to be a very good art director but because you expedite their progress their confidence might be shut

forever and the only way go to go is to go backwards in their career and that never looks good so that's that's one point that i've seen in these field promotions go uh the second thing is the start of the project so i i agree with all of you and i've had multiple different stars for the project my favorite one is to start the project with an art director who is hands-on like if you have an art director that is who started off as a concept artist his or her career they're able to start drawing start guiding external artists to kind of go for different looks and feels and it's good to have that person from the beginning because you're jiving with him or her and that person is also driving with your initial tech team but i would do a caveat that you don't need an art director in the beginning even at a big company if the person is wrong because what can happen is they hire too big of a team from the beginning they start managing the team meanwhile you're trying to prove out the core concept of it so in

my experience i've actually had i have actually had a good experience of no artists for months while in development while just purchasing assets from unity store or unreal store and having the demo just playable with placeholder assets and then bring in our team in one swoop like the art director with four or five artists at the same time and what they enjoyed it they came and they're like oh we see the proportions we see everything we can take the build in our hand we can start skinning this the way we want to do and and we don't have to be worried about multiple different pivots to the core what's going to happen what's the angle what's this what's that like everything is already set but nothing has been painted so for them i remember they said like this is a this is the best type of a start to a project you already figured out what the game feels like let us figure out how it looks like that does sound a bit like though when a director uses the music from another film and then they ask the composer to make the music and it sounds just like the music from the other film i mean

there is that issue as well if you give if you give a team too much of a template to work from they literally they just paint over it and then fill in the gaps i mean that can work right that can work if that's what you're after for sure but if you're after simon maybe is more fresh than you maybe that me that i mean freshen you who wants freshness these days anyway so much coffee and what exists expression dude no jack i didn't mean that i said both of the things have worked and i said of course my my my you know preferred way is to start with an art director yeah yeah yeah make that as a core but i'm also just saying for the smaller studios out there listening you can actually ship a game and make it a good game without without having a single artist for a long while but that also works in a certain games where you're trying to prove a core maybe your core is a little bit different my experience was with building a different type of a core that we knew that we have to just prototype a lot because this hasn't been really done before and it wasn't really about the art style it's like how do we even make

this core work this idea yeah so having an artist would maybe even limited us to some way by pushing to certain direction because how can you develop characters when you don't even know what angle we'll be looking at and then so forth i don't i don't know sure you might say it's completely wrong but you know i don't think oh it's the thing that makes a game right that it helps to add the layers of the game to give it the complexity that the gloss is to shine that makes it look good if the game is fundamentally crap it's not going to be any good to play right so i think that that process was very good you don't actually potentially need an art team at the beginning you can listen to the unity asset store for example is fantastic for stuff i've done that in the past yeah built stuff with just those and then basically painted over it so she copied it over that yeah and it works it does work um so okay so we talked about when to hire an art director so what's up now that we have the when and there's no one right or wrong

opinion here and that's why i like having both of you here um what's a good source to find an art director you know other than i don't even know where to find like like where do you start looking i mean i would check contacts first uh yeah you were a lot of people in the past uh who were like good seniors or good juniors that was like 10 years ago and they were solid then you could look at the back now and see how they've improved or what they're up to nowadays um friends friends always good friends and colleagues man that's that that's really that's the guys that i go to first um for eddie if anyone's ever looking for an art director or technical artist i always go through the basically the sort of the rolodex find a couple of artists or tech tech guys and send them away with friends uh i think that's because as i said right if you know these people and you know they're good people to work with as well it's it's a clear it's a clear win i mean that's why directors use the same you know actors again because the yeah these people are solid and good or what

they what they do um so yeah otherwise if you if you're you know if you're like a person that's on the outside um looking for yeah an art director obviously you've got recruiters but yeah uh bart station's always quite a good place to just start looking through things um or speaking to people act uh you know you know if you're looking for junior artists or you know just artists another good place to look at would be sort of you know universities um and uh reaching out to campuses and stuff to find out more about how many people that they can recommend to show us what what's what would you be your suggestion yeah so uh jack already said about referrals and uh recruiters i think on on top of it there are maybe and apart from the universities saying um i think uh if you don't have much of contacts for example and maybe can't have the support from recruiters at the moment uh you can also

keep an eye on the art forums like for example art station where most of the artists have their portfolio and our directors are constantly pushing stuff about their own direction that they did on previous projects and you can look at their post to see like what kind of way they have directed the project before and how they push the quality or whatever game they've worked on and also maybe like keeping an eye on conferences uh and like gdc or any art conventions and things oriented to digital art and looking at speakers there some some of them are presenting their own case studies and their processes and giving talks and if if you start to feel that yeah these people are singing the same song of the kind of culture i'm trying to bring uh then maybe reaching out to those people and then oh sure you just limited the uh the people going to gdc the art director they're not going to get approved they're like wait companies are looking at who's talking and listening to them and actually trying to poach them oh well there are lots of round tables

as well so i i i know that there are the the sessions are fewer of course but uh at the same time there are lots of like side side activities around gdp uh art round tables and stuff whereas there's a group discussions and yeah yeah yeah exactly so um i i just i think conference is good trojan horse is great when i went there the first time went there was 2013 and that was a really good place to meet artists it was really really good so i mean that's a that's a that's also a good start actually meeting someone talking face to face look at their portfolio look at watching them talk if they're talking as well that's always yeah super super stuff to do i've hired a lot of people off from the bar that's yeah you have i even i i sometimes forgot but we were at the uh anecdotal this week we were in a in a little bit of an offside thing uh with other companies uh other startups and um and some of the other new founders actually said yeah i remember when i first met you you came in with bunch of drinks you gave me some then you put a hand around me and showed me a game you were working on and said come work with

me on this table from this experience so let's put it this way can i go i'm not an artist surprise i'm not an artist caveat for everybody can i go to two troy horses a unicorn which sounds like a preposterous name but can i go to this conference and just get people drinks and be like hey i loved your talk really like your visual development listen i'm working on this game it's super cool i'd love for you to join and build an art team can i do that why not i mean sorry sorry if i could find it why not obviously at thu i think uh it at least builds a platform where recruiters can connect with uh with the people they can hire there's a dedicated days for recruitment and if you can go as a recruiter great so you can also set up a table and people are going to apply to you otherwise as well the culture is like that that people are allowed to meet and

talk and after the whole day of session there is literally like a bar or food food area and people are talking and obviously there are a lot of people looking for jobs and um if you're a recruiter and you're going to start talking to people they're going to say yes i'm going where's the next one portugal yes yeah it's happening next let's go i'll bring my drink card i don't need a i don't need a table actually i'll do i'll do my like everybody else can have it i'll have my table in the bar yeah come with me just just grab three caps you'll be fine yeah yeah it's a alcoholic non-alcoholic drink whatever's your jazz but as long as you're good at art um all right so how do you test an art director like if you don't have an artist in on your team let's say you're you're building out a studio and we're not talking about like your no resource studio let's say you have resources like let's say well a latest example aristocrat just

initiated a studio or started a studio here in helsinki aristocrat has all the money and now they put in two guys like hey guys build a studio all right how do they find an art director other than uh so sorry we talked about how they find our job but how do they test when they find those art directors when they get the resumes and the art director will be like yeah i heard you guys have a lot of money i like your vision uh i want to be an art director on your team how do i test that person if i don't have existing artists on my team um so i can go first yeah do it do it i i think what you could do is maybe you can start asking their strategy of how how they approach art how they approach art direction for their team and what's their way of working their work style like um are they curious about the market they are constantly studying competition what's their um the standard of quality and leadership skills obviously these are part of general interviews which you generally do with any kind of person um

apart from it sometimes like the portfolio also tells a lot uh like uh honestly like for an artist the entire portfolio is the kind of art they create and the beautiful work that they've done in the past and for an art director it's uh it's a bit of a different however an ad can probably also bring lots of their own uh set of documents that define the vision like um if they they made some mood boards before or maybe like the style guide that they've done done in the past even the smallest or posted that they might have done in their past work where they gave a feedback to someone with a draw or note or whatsoever um when an ad clubs them together and present themselves uh you by looking at it you can kind of like imagine that yeah this this person is making sense and um i'm able to see from what this started on and then where they took the product by uh bringing their own things into it so um and you have seen that in my case right like when when i met you and when i was

giving an interview with you uh apart from just bringing the finished pieces or the quality pieces which i've done in the past i i brought those um those bigger pages where there were like my own writings and the do's and don'ts and all of that kind of type thing and that sometimes help the the other person understand about uh how you make difference uh so that's also one thing and in addition if if you are capable of providing an artist to someone uh you could maybe even give them a situation which is a real challenge on your own project uh and then ask them to come up with something like uh what would be their plan like how would they execute this uh would it be about building the team how would what kind of team composition would they come up with uh what would be their uh mood board or vision for the thing that you are trying to get created and in that two or three days of the weekend spent by their director and and the thing that they create for you as an artist uh that can tell you whether yeah this is this is exactly what i want

jack that's super tricky uh i mean you gotta think about who the interviewers are as well first like did they have it back do they even understand i mean are they just business people or are they do they have some kind of background in games no let's let's let's give let's that will be the most horrible situation uh but let's say business they should probably just maybe get a friend of an art director to do the interviews or do the sort of research for them let's say they're not business let's say they have like a product or design background all right that's that's just good then so i mean i i think if they're looking at this person as the first person in the studios within our background um i would imagine they're thinking about someone that is potentially more management with some hands-on as well because they've got to build up a team for the whole studio at some point so they've got to think about the artists that they're looking for there are directors they've got to hire as well post this art director it's going to be looking for creative people

technical people uh so this person has got to be really good with paperwork if we're really good with people uh they've got and they've got a good eye for you know uh for the style of games that the studio are planning to make so they've got to have this art director has got to have a business understand of the of the business itself right he's got to be a person or he she is going to be a person that understands exactly the kind of games that aristocrat make and also have a knowledge of that kind of product um so i mean i think you know the first person they're looking for is someone that's going to be a the flag carrier for the rest of the art team they bring in this person will not necessarily have to be the most creative but definitely the most management orientated person with a very solid background in the business and the games they're going to produce i'll give i'll give on my my example of how i've approached this hiring so the uh the the context is always that you have to hire as you said flat carrier or flagship that person has to

be um the one that that attracts other artists so what i've usually done is is two things i like to test on what you have said the plan i want to know what the plan is how many people when why and so forth to kind of see how the person is able to plan because as somebody who's in charge of the budget and in charge of the project i need to be able to trust the person's plan and support their planning so i need to test how well they plan and that's how they break down and like i would hire these people here and those people there this will be my starting team and then i'll bearing this i'll be done that and that leads to a very fruitful discussions between the art director and the gm where you can actually discuss about headcounts and and and time the second thing that i you that i look in in an art directory in the first art director is their art station presence because if you're trying to hire somebody who will bring others then you need to somebody who can who's you know who has a lot of

followers in our state yeah who has the reach who has the portfolio because when they come in and they plant their flag other artists will come in because they see their portfolio they want to work with this person because they know but by working with this person they will make their portfolio look better they don't even care about that much about the game about the company but they know that their portfolio will be leveled up after working with this person and that will move them ahead in their career and they will learn a lot of things so those are the kind of like two things and my suggestion to uh to all the um the the heads of studios at this point is to overpay for your art director do not do not try to count pennies here when you're hiring your your flag bearer if your company doesn't have the big name and if you don't have the uh the the art directors like you will save so much money by overpaying to your art director who is uh who is an art station rock star

because that person will bring you all the artists every time you hire an artist through a recruiter that's 15 to 30k a pop to a recruiter think about it and if you hire a great art director who has our station presence and that person brings you five six artists just through their resume that's 15 to 30 k a pop per artist so pay the man or pay the woman and then and you'll save money so that's uh that's my kind of like uh financial advice i'm sure you guys would agree with that one i agree to a certain level yes for sure yes so what are the sort of common mistakes when you're hiring an art director um i could go all right um common mistakes all right so i i think three two two or three things are important like first of all it's about if you have a kind of culture in your company and how fit are they for for

that kind of culture uh how comfortable are they with working with big teams or small teams so generally when you're interviewing someone you could kind of like get to know about what's their preference like they they are comfortable working on a small team or they like to have a bigger team where they are specialist in everything and if the environment requires someone to lead by an example so that that would be one uh the other thing is mostly about their own work style compared to the mindset of game development within the entire team i'm not talking about artists like everyone the designers the developer how how they take the product because everyone have a very different mindset of how the games are being developed some might have a very iterative approach like we start from something quite crappy and we improvise and improvise and improvise and afterwards like from all our learnings we are going to polish and polish and that definitely also happens with a very vision project as well but sometimes it's very iterative and in the other cases it's a big trust on quality from the very

beginning like you are you're just delivering perfection from the beginning and you have that approach that yeah we know what we want to make and we're gonna make that perfection from the way beginning so depending on the style because if if you are not iterative and you come with a mindset of i'm gonna deliver perfection then you start to focus too much on to the the quality and perfection at the first benchmarks and maybe there's a misfit for the rest of the team and how they are comfortable to working in uh and it also works the other way around where you just want to throw in some random stuff so that like see how we polish and polish because your vision has been always that this product will become great one year afterwards however the rest of the team is focused on building great looking work from the very beginning then again um you you're probably a mismatch and the the third thing would be the the main product need compared to your own specialization so if the product requires you to be um the product have all different needs right some of this might have be very

heavy on visual development something else might require a lot of animation uh maybe a lot of vfx as well uh the other ones might require story and emotion and all of that kind of like thing so if your expertise is not aligned to this and you you have a different expertise then again like uh you are hiring a wrong art director so if you are really looking for someone which is very uh content heavy and visual quality and that kind of like thing then you should go for art director who's more expert on the vista side and then same applies for the other stuff like animations and other things probably yeah i agree totally um just make sure you hide the the id that's right for what you're after the role the the sort of the game you're making essentially um don't just hire an art director because they're an art director or just because they're experienced you know sometimes more junior ad is sometimes actually better i find uh for certain things because they're just newer fresher hungrier um and yeah just the common mistake is hire

an ad that doesn't really understand the kind of uh product you're gonna make or hiring an ad from out of the field uh so someone from you know triple a because they're super starving characters you bring them into a mobile game they're gonna be like oh god you know we're not making these you know fifty thousand triangle characters we're making you know five thousand for example there's no characters five thousand but you know i mean it's like you need to make sure they actually understand that the the role and what they're gonna be be delivering on the platform yeah those those are great points uh from my perspective like the the mistakes have definitely been around the past of the the art director so kind of looking at their previous projects and a lot of like there there are a lot of art directors who are who kind of fake their past so they might not being that hands-on on multiple different things they might not even show that that these elements that they are portraying in their portfolio have been done by

somebody else um sometimes even in a a different studio than than what they were leading just an outsourcing studio so those are are quite challenging and and um you just have to be very careful as jack as you said like looking at somebody's background and let's say they've been at like you know supercell or you name it like any of these top mobile companies doesn't make it necessarily that they're gonna crush it at your company not at all exactly you have to understand how they work where those came in through so so don't be blown away when you see images from from top quotes in games because there's there's a story behind them and and um you have to understand what was the role of the art director in making that happen and i'm saying that that it's that it's bad that the that the art director just draws some kind of a key art themselves no that's they're not expected to do key art uh but they have to be very open and how it is they didn't mention it though if they never mentioned they did that if they're like yeah i did that and they

don't say it was a team effort you know i directed it and they don't i think that's that's the most annoying sort of director that exists is one that takes all the credit that's the one you don't want on your team yeah yeah and then it's definitely um yeah sometimes the other team effort is has been so gigantic when when yeah like when you take one person off the team the manager of that team and there were like 10 people doing this one thing and you said and you're like taking one so it's just like taking i don't know the person who textured it it's like he's not going to be able to redo it he just did a piece of it so so um and if the art director says like hey there was a 10 people and i could bring pretty much i can rebuild this team composure and make this type of stuff that's great but all i'm trying to say to everybody who's hiring our director is just to be very clear when you're asking questions about their portfolio uh how were these things done who was responsible for this and and may all a lot of time in our station you will see uh people tagging like okay the the concept was done by this the three was

done by that the animation was done by this and when i look at it i'm like okay that's great i can see your team forming up already so so that's positive to me rather than saying you know like i directed this okay with how many people external internal what was going on here so that's always a a challenging all right um before we before i let you guys go i want to talk about one more topic and that is the common pitfalls of an art director and this is something that i've sadly had to you know as i said in the beginning i've had to witness where the art direction our directors fail in their position so i'm kind of curious to hear from your perspective as like we talked about how to succeed but what are the typical fails and how do you help in in the role of an executive or a studio head or a teammate or another lead in the in the company to to help the art director to course correct and um yeah like what what are the what are the typical fails and how to help them to

course correct i mean i think you know it's kind of which is quite good actually wake up from the last the last topic is that you know if art directors come to you with this fantastic portfolio and it's like beautifully dazzling but then you find out they just did one thing on it which was they painted one character or something that and they tried to then continue to hide this and then do all your work then basically start doing your visual style guides and art guides all this kind of thing based on a lack of knowledge um the biggest pitfall director you can make is not asking for help or getting the right people to help them at the right time if they try to do everything themselves and they don't have the knowledge for it that's that's i've seen that happen so many times with with teams you know you've got a cracking person as an art director but they just have lack of knowledge and there may be characters or a lack of knowledge in like color theory and this can create so many many issues you know and i think that's the problem if an art director doesn't come across to someone else can knows when to ask for help or know when to get

the right people in that's a huge pitfall that's my first thought on that i'm sure shiraj has a few others yeah i i agree completely i think in order to help them like the um probably that's part of their second question where how do you help them like course correct um maybe what you could start doing is like spending more time with them understanding their own ideas and vision and how they want to operate like uh what's their ideal way of working and um in case you see that there are certain pitfalls like for example there's too much of workload like so many like the art director is getting overwhelmed because of so much of things not working uh one of the things that one could do is to give them maybe an art producer and that could be a really good thing like you the art director now has a dedicated art producer who is helping him or her uh manage the whole week like and it's not just about the work uh going to the artist but also the tasks that are at end of the art letter which he or she might be forgetting quite often and the

the art producer is gently reminding about hey we this week we had to make a list of all the outsourcing vendors we could reach out next week we have to have a call with a certain person in order to uh see whether they can create this key out for us so things like it and also um maybe if you're if there are sprints going on and there are like retrospectives done uh you could look at all those retro notes from the art and try to hear what the artists have been feeling and what are the the things that they feel are not working and then talk with your art director and like bring it up like hey i saw the retro notes and um i saw that lots of artists have been complaining about this like do you need any help like what do we do about this and then uh supporting that art director i think these are the areas where you can probably help course correct uh and fix the problems that are happening at the moment yeah getting overwhelmed by the now work they have to do and other stuff getting forgotten about like if you said art producer you can you can forget about time you know if you're just painting pretty pictures and you need

someone to help you make sure that the the whole team is working uh you know like clockwork not just you're just the one person doing everything also another thing is the micromanager that's a huge pitfall where the lead or the art director has to take every piece himself and paint over it i mean that's that's super annoying as well if someone if he's having to take if he's the basically a blocker for your product as well uh that's that's a huge issue you're gonna have to come across and get rid of as well yeah that's it's really important as a as a manager for the art director that in your weekly or bi-weekly one-on-ones you just keep asking them how can i help you and of course it's uh it's also important to have talks with everybody in the team so you understand the issues and usually what i try to understand is does the art director understand that he or she needs help because i usually understand that things are not working out production is we either halted or there's uh there's a little bit of a turmoil in the team one or two people might be leaving the team on the

art side like these are all red flags and at that point i i expect the art director to tell me what the help is and if that doesn't happen then it's a wrong art director and then the then you need to be thinking about contingency plans for that so so it's usually like yeah that's that's kind of like my thought process always like if the art director continues to have a plan that you can support that's excellent and for that they need to understand what's going on but if they lose their plan then then i don't know how to help in our director to to get the plan again yeah yeah one of the things which i also feel are often quite common and probably like the the wrong doings of uh when you're working as an auditor is favoritism when you start to favorite a certain people among the team and maybe that person is the one that you had or you might have known from the past and therefore you have that relationship with that person and you are constantly just relying on that person for most of the communication or

giving the main roles and sidelining the entire team because then maybe the person you are favoriting might be over performing or being 200 percent but you have to realize that all the other people in the team are feeling disengaged or unconnected with you and starting to feel a bit more inferior like the the director doesn't like me and they never reach out to me for good work and i'm always given the the most basic assignments compared to most challenging and the exciting one where i can also grow so my growth is tampered my impact on the project is tempered and they start to just treat it like a job and they they don't feel excited about working on it so their productivity goes down from 100 to 60 percent and eventually that makes the whole team balance becomes unstable so i don't really feel like doing favoritism in this it's very common because you always spot good artists and you like their work and you prefer them to do stuff because you know that uh it will eventually look good but it it kills the team balance and that's something which

leads to the failure of an art director as well yeah the problem with that is in most of the companies the art director like if you consider it it's it's um it's a team leadership job and they don't have full ownership of their team meaning they can't change their team it's like you have to win with this team and it's and it's a it's a it's a very weird proposition because if you can't make any changes to the team composure then how how can you win like are you some kind of a cult leader where you can get everybody behind whatever you're doing like i'm sure those type of people exist but most of the time you're in a rush you you have some kind of a pressure to execute and i understand that this type of favoritism happens because you you happen to have people you trust on your team and what that signals to me is you have people who you don't trust on your team and that itself is an issue like how can you have members on your team that you can't get assigned

you know legit tasks to because you know that they won't be able to deliver and of course we can have a discussion whether you tried or so forth and you could say just you know what they don't just don't have the skills it's like okay so why do we have this person on this team if you don't trust and then through that it creates this sort of like a bad feeling inside the team where there's an a class players and b class players because you're unable to to move them and then the b b class players not they're not b class forever but what is happening is they are unable to grow and their confidence is going down because you know they're not getting the support so it's not good for anybody it's not good for the art director it's not good for the pla for the people who are unable to progress because they're not being trusted because maybe the pace of the project is so far along or the style of the new art director is different than what they're comfortable with so what i'm trying to say is our directors need to have full control on who's on their team if you want them to have the ownership of the outcome of the uh

yeah yeah you agree hundred percent yeah jackie you're saying that i agree that's a very valid advice yeah yeah it's tricky because you do get you know some people on a team that are better than others and you do rely on it a bit further i guess that that could be seen as favoritism um i'm kind of laughing because there have been situations where we left later on with some of the art directors that joined my team later on they were talking about their previous project where they were given just absolute juniors to complete very difficult tasks and the executive would say well your goal is to level them up and he's like what like that's not like you can't teach somebody to be a senior during a project and then it was just like in the in these situations i know that they felt it's to be so completely unfair it would the same thing as you would give the executive some junior people to complete their job and just say well just level them up while you're

running and um yeah anyways uh those are funny scenarios not gonna mention any companies so before i start talking more i think it's time to end this podcast with with giving you guys the floor so please promote the open positions at scopely moon active promote your instagram your art station and tell people how they can get in touch with you apart from going to troy and horse is a unicorn conference and buying youtube that's that's right because it's so preposterous uh i mean yeah scope your door's got roles open for good artists and just check out linkedin and you can find out all our available roles on there um i was on this podcast today not speaking on behalf of scopely just myself these are my personal opinions just as a caveat right there just uh so a quick note at the end just in case um and you can find my stuff i'm on an art station just type in jack n gilson and you'll find my

beautiful amount of uh artwork from stuff i've worked on in the past uh and hopefully going to be working on some nft stuff very soon as well ooh descriptions it's the link is going to be in description and shiraz you got multiple channels to reach out to yeah so uh you can search for men in my name like shira sterling uh on aspiration it's basically our station.com or instagram.com however i manage my website more than this channel so it's shiraz.com or shirattalan.com and it also has the link to my email address and linkedin profile so someone need to read out they can reach out by email and i'm happy to talk about anything on whatever they need support on um additionally uh at moon active so while we we are always hiring uh we're always looking for good people definitely there's a courier page where we post uh the pressing job positions but uh honestly we are open for all kind of profiles depending on uh whenever someone wants to reach out to us and we

are always looking so um our pipeline is also quite expert driven so we have very much like a film pipeline where we have color key artists and layout artist and dedicated character designers and that kind of like people so uh pretty much open for people even working in the animation industry and films and stuff and definitely in games so um yeah all profiles are open and anyone can reach out to me directly as well and uh if they seem fitting to moon actor we'll definitely consider that and scope has multiple studios everywhere and moon active is fully remote correct uh well we have also an office uh where people go in tel aviv uh and also in london but um other than that like there are lots of artists who are working remotely from um all around the globe so if you wanna be if you wanna work at moon active and live in bali that's totally possible you just have to be really good uh that was that was probably the the best advertisement for moon active arts

jobs ever so anyways uh powerful jack gilson powerful stalang connect with these guys i can personally recommend working with with uh with both of you guys and um it was a pleasure and we shall talk offline everybody who listened thank you hope this was helpful actually i know this was helpful if you carried through this now you know how to hire an art director you know the pitfalls you know all of it and if you don't know connect with jack or connect with shiraz or connect with both so we're out thank you cheers guys bye thank you so much bye