Concept Artist Richard Anderson master concept artist interview

Concept Artist Richard Anderson Master artist interview.  He has been working on  the up coming Ridley Scott's movie Prometheus (see trailer below) and previously Guild Wars 2 Cinematic.




Richard and I have been working together for over five years and he's a great artist so I decided its time to interview him. Also I've been asking him to do some environment tutorials, it's finally finished. The amazing tutorial will be out in a couple of days. So yeah, some delicious tutorial from Richard Anderson is coming right out of the oven as of now. :)

Apart from his work in GuildWars and GuildWars 2, Richard's artwork has been published with ImagineFX, Spectrum, and many more.

So let's get start with the interview.

1.Why did you want to become a Concept Atist?

I always enjoyed comics, video games and movies. Once I found out that there were actual artist that draw and come up with all this stuff, I basically thought it was the coolest job ever for someone who loves to draw. I remember looking at random books and seeing stuff online that blew my mind, and then that’s all I wanted to do.

2. How is it in the ARenaNet and GuildWar2 team?

It’s the best! Having a director that helps and teaches is the best thing for someone who wants to move forward in there art, and the team, is insane! Everyday I look at what others are doing and am blown away by how much talent is here. It really really pushes you to do your best and work hard. It’s awesome. The game is cool to because it really allows a concept artist to really expand everything they do, there is so many different things that go into this game that you never get bored.

3. Where do you get your inspiration from?

My friends and fellow artist are a huge inspiration. I always find a lot of inspiration by looking at other artist. Classic illustrators like Robert Mcginnis, J.C. leyendecker, stuff is what I’ve been looking at lately.

4. Is your work completely digital or do you also use pencil and paper?

I do a lot of sketchbook stuff, I ride the bus, and go out and life draw a lot. My favorite thing to look at is sketchbooks, I really love to see how people work. And just lately I’ve been taking a watercolor class and messing with that. Not sure when I’ll show though, it’s a little embarresing.

5. Also, your work always has an impressionist/abstract quality to it, with very minimal details, because of this, are you conscious of trying to acheive this looseness, or is it something which always comes naturally?

I think it comes to what I feel looks right, every artist has a thing that their more keen to do and I think what im attracted to most in other art. My favorite stuff is always very stroke based and has a lot of energy so it kinda comes natural for me to try and mimic what I like to see.

6. What's your attitude towards color and do you use a color 'formula'? Do you reserve certain colors for certain moods?

Color is something like in my tutorial that you see me play with a lot of colors and kinda like the last question is something I just go for and do what looks right to me. Its important though to study and look at reference because that’s the way you can train your brain to know what you should do. Other times it’s a stylistic choice I think. So in general I think about the rules and relationships to color but I still just follow a lot of instinct I guess.


More interview with Richard Anderson, Daniel Dociu, and Jason Stoke about GuildWars2 and PAX. If you haven't seen it already.


Here are some of the art work by Richard Anderson:














Below is The finest art work for Concept Art Tutorial the first ever downloadable Video from Richard

enjoy the goodies, I hope you really like them :)



More to come!