By ArtiZen Editor & Zurab
ArtiZen: Where are you from?
Zurab: I am from Georgia in Europe.
ArtiZen: Wow, isn’t Georgia a state name in the United States?
Zurab: Yes, people always mistake Georgia as a country for Georgia State in the US.
“Georgia, a country at the intersection of Europe and Asia, is a former Soviet republic that’s home to Caucasus Mountain villages and black sea beaches. It’s famous for Vardzia, a sprawling cave monastery dating to the 12th century, and the ancient wine-growing region Kakheti. The capital, Tbilisi, is known for the diverse architecture and mazelike, cobblestone streets of its old town. ” —Wiki
Zurab is a game environment artist specializing in AAA 3D game environments. Starting early from his teenage years, Zurab has been involved in 3D art learning from each and every outside source he could find. He is currently working as a Senior Environment Artist at Sharkmob, a AAA studio in Sweden developing original, open-world shooter games.
(Zurab’s Art Portfolio on ArtStation)
In this interview, Zurab shared his personal craft-grinding path of environment art, his art style, the proudest piece of work which was covered by multiple game media sites, used in adobe substance painter demonstration at 2022 GDC, and his understanding about how to improve his art-craft.
1. CAN YOU INTRODUCE YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF CREATING GAME ENVIRONMENT AND WHAT PROMPTS YOU INTO THE ENVIRONMENT ART SPACE?
My passion for game arts sparked when I was about 7 years old.
watching the Discovery Channel on TV, an episode of “How it is Made” elaborated on Ubisoft’s game development process of “Price of Persia”. The game’s bright lighting, and general arts grabbed my attention and I wondered so much about how to make a game. Years later I started self-teaching by watching YouTube tutorials of game dev and learning about Maya, Z-brush, the early version of Blender, etc.
Besides watching tutorials, I also like to browse ArtStation for inspiration and self-improvement.
My starting job at Stormbringer studio provided me a great opportunity to understand the overall game-dev process as a whole, we worked on over 20 mobile/indie game projects, and I worked with programmers, and technical artists and took care of 3d, lighting, level design etc. However, with years going by, my longing for making AAA games grew stronger, so I took the chance and eventually transferred to work at an AAA studio.
Improving my art to higher standards and nailing down the specialization I wanted to follow, which ended up being environmental art.
2. WHAT’S YOUR DAILY JOB LIKE WORKING ON YOUR CURRENT PROJECT AT SHARKMOB? HOW DO YOU WORK WITH OTHER ARTISTS SUCH AS 2D/3D ARTISTS, ILLUSTRATORS, ANIMATORS AND NARRATIVE DESIGNERS?
(BloodHunt & Exoborne from Sharkmob)
We are currently working on two major projects: Exoborne, a Sharkmob original game created in Malmo, is a tactical, open-world shooter game set in an environment of United States torn apart by apocalyptic forces of nature.
We as artists are a very tight-knit group at work, as our work is co-dependent on each other, it is often that we sit down in a meeting and discuss how to proceed and what we want to do in a certain area or location in our games. It makes a great discussion because each discipline has its own outlook on the matter and it gives you insight on how they think and approach the situation, which in return helps you grow on a personal level.
3. HOW DO YOU IMPROVE YOUR SKILLS OVER THE YEARS, WHAT RESOURCES DO YOU GO TO FOR LEARNING AND INSPIRATION?
I love to check out what other artists are doing. I often spend one or two hours a day browsing different artworks on ArtStation, to see what’s out there, things to collect and save, look and analyze, and ask questions such as, what can be done differently or what can I learn from this.
One of the best ways I think an artist could improve is constructive criticism. It is something that my good friends at StormBringer Studios taught me and uses to this day. Their feedback was harsh at times but it was always constructive helping me improve and setting me up with a self-criticism mindset that is very helpful to this day.
I also mentored college students when I was at Stormbringer studio, we got funded by the university’s art program and I assisted in teaching students how game dev works in general, while also teaching them the foundations of art. Which in return helped me acquire management and mentorship experience.
4. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE GAMES? WHAT ARE THE GAMES THAT PUMPED NEW IDEAS FOR YOUR OWN WORK?
Bioshock, Borderlands, World of Warcraft, Darksiders, Overwatch, etc, are my most admired games. Some of them are over 10 old, but they still hold on their own due to the gorgeous and unique art direction and care that was put into making those games.
5. WHAT ENVIRONMENT THEMES/SCENE STYLE DO YOU PREFER?
Speaking of my favorite games, you might’ve noticed that they are all stylized, which is also my favorite art space. I love all things stylized and am trying to do something unique in said space. Something that will be representation of me, my emotions and the stories that I am trying to tell with my work.
6. TELL US A PIECE OF YOUR ARTWORK THAT YOU ARE PROUDEST OF, AND WHY? THE PROCESS OF CREATION.
The mysterious ZB Inn. https://www.artstation.com/artwork/YKKR4d
So far It’s my most popular work on social media, harvesting 105k views on LinkedIn, and followed by many media interviews and social media exposure. It was showcased by Adobe at the 2022 GDC, and covered and page-featured by 3D World Magazine.
This piece of work was inspired by Shawn Ma’s artwork “Suburban Inn”, right from the get-go, I knew I had to do it because it was so perfect and I could add so much of myself into it. So I started to brainstorm on its background, foreground, middle ground, overall composition, and how I wanted to approach it.
But I am most proud of it because it gave me a push and motivation to not give up on this project, even though I lost two hard drives and almost all the files twice in the process of making this artwork.
Art style
The art style abides by the very fundamental art principles: composition rules, color balance, mood and emotion. The angles are carefully chosen, and colors are tweaked with purpose. All the basic art rules were manifested in this work.
Unbeknownst to me it ended up grabbing a lot of attention on social media.
Technical skill
I started out by blocking out the shape for the building, I knew that getting the right perspective would be the toughest here, so the way I proceeded with it was to take my base block out shape of the building, throw it into Unreal Engine, and set up the camera there with the settings that I wanted to see on the given concept. Which is always helpful since I can just do any changes and quickly check how close or off I was in Unreal Engine.
A big part of the project was vegetation, such as grass, trees, ivies, flowers, bushes, etc. So I had to make sure they looked good and cohesive with the rest of the scene. I knew that everything would be moving but I didn’t want it to look just wobbly and simple. I wanted to get a feeling of wind blowing through the scene and at the same time, I wanted the effect to be done with materials because I knew it was possible and I wanted to learn how to properly do it. I ended up combining a few tutorials that I found online into one and made this controllable material that gave the wind feeling to all the vegetation in the scene. Each grass piece has a different swinging direction and its own flowing rhythm.
Emotion
Cozy, mysterious, warm.
I also want to convey a message that this building itself is somewhat maintained, but not too much. Someone is taking care of this building to some degree. It’s a serene environment, you hear nature sounds from the surroundings, showing signs of life. It’s a warm place, its peaceful, and yet you feel a bit uneasy with a slight sense of dread.
Zurab’s ArtStation:
https://www.artstation.com/devil13fhd
ArtiZen Media is authorized to use Zurab Barisashvili’s work for PR and promotion purposes, if you intend to repost this article, please contact ArtiZen for authorization.
