Guerrilla Spotlight: Gael Chauvet
Coming from a small village in the countryside of France, Gael Chauvet spent most of her time doing creative arts before joining Guerrilla to create eye-catching marketing artwork for LEGO® Horizon Adventures™!
We chatted to Gael on how she got into the industry, the most important aspects in creating marketing art and a fun story from working on LEGO Horizon Adventures.
Hi Gael - we're so excited to have you! Can you please introduce yourself to our readers? Where are you from?
Hi, I am an illustrator and concept artist from France! I live in Montpellier, one of France's sunniest cities, not very far from the sea and where we eat very well.
What were some of your hobbies growing up?
I grew up in a small village in the countryside of France, Endoufielle, approximately 400 inhabitants, and twice as many ducks and chickens. There wasn’t much to do there, so I’d spend most of my time at home drawing, painting, doing creative arts, reading mangas and playing video games.
My bedroom looked like Howl’s bedroom in Howl’s Moving Castle (Studio Ghibli). It was full of stuff and I made it a personal mission to cover every single square centimeter of my walls. It was like a creative cave where I’d lock myself in and draw anime characters for hours. Luckily my parents were pretty lenient and went along with my drawing frenzies; they’d get me art supplies and lots of mangas to get inspired from!
What were you doing before you joined us at Guerrilla?
After high school I went to Montpellier to study 3D art for animation and the VFX industry. After I graduated in 2016, I got a job at Ubisoft Montpellier as a Marketing Artist. I had no idea what a Marketing Artist was, but I was good at 2D and 3D, so it seemed a great fit! I got to work on many Ubisoft franchises and learned a lot. After a while, I decided to go freelance: this way, depending on the mission, I could either do character design, concept art, 2D illustrations or 3D marketing art. I like jumping from one world to another, it keeps (freelancing) life interesting!
As a freelancer I got to work on many fun and diverse projects, both in video and animation. Right before I joined Guerrilla, I was painting 2D cinematics for Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, which was really cool.
What do you do at Guerrilla?
I am in charge of creating the marketing artworks for LEGO Horizon Adventures! Marketing artworks are basically all illustrations that are used to (visually) communicate important aspects of a game: box art, posters, social media art, etc. It’s a pretty peculiar task, where you have to handle many jobs at once!
I start with concept art, which includes sketching, looking for composition for the artwork,and trying colors and moods. I then build up my artwork in a 3D scene where I either get 3D models from the game, or I model and rig the 3D characters and props myself. I pose my characters, lay out the background, create shaders and textures, and when everything is in place, I adjust the lighting. I then render a picture of my 3D scene, and head to Photoshop, where I spend a lot of time iterating and adding VFXuntil it looks cool.
Marketing artwork for a game like LEGO Horizon Adventures takes a lot of time because everything needs to look pixel perfect, no matter where you zoom in the picture. It can take months to finish and get everyone in the team excited!
What was your reaction when you were told you'd be working on LEGO Horizon Adventures?
I was really surprised! I was absolutely not expecting a video game collaboration between Horizon and the LEGO Group! When I saw the amazing graphics of the game I thought: “Yeah, this is definitely going to be a great project, I want to be a part of it!”, so I joined the team.
You've been instrumental in LEGO Horizon Adventures' key art; are there any fun stories about the composition or the process you'd like to share?
The nicest thing about making LEGO artworks was that, in order to understand perfectly how LEGO bricks work and how they look, I have had to build a lot of actual LEGO sets! It was super fun and it really helped to visualize what I was trying to recreate in 3D.
A fun story I’d like to share is the chaotic journey of the key art’s bunny. When I was gathering references for the artwork I found out about the tiny LEGO bunnies in one of the game’s concept art. I immediately decided that I wanted one in the key art because they looked super cute. I did not expect the discussions the bunny would cause in review meetings for almost three months! Every week we would discuss its fate, some people on the team absolutely loved it, some people thought it didn’t fit the mood, and every week I would start reviews in apprehension “Is the bunny going to stay?”.
After a couple months, we found out the bunnies were not going to be in the game anymore (I was really sad about that) BUT luckily we learned there were still going to be squirrels in the game, so the bunny got changed into a squirrel! But we were still unsure about whether it should stay in the key art or not: sometimes it was too big in the picture, another time it didn’t fit and looked like it was going to be attacked by a machine, or it looked too childish for what mood we were going for. To distract the attention from the squirrel I eventually put a chicken in a tree, it didn’t help. In the end, the decision was made: “The chicken can stay but the squirrel needs to go”.
You've also created character posters for Aloy, Varl, Erend, and Teersa. Which one was your favorite one to work on (if you can choose!)?
My favorite one was definitely Teersa, because of the chickens.
It always makes me happy to put cute animals in my artworks (as you may have gathered from the bunny story), so I try to fit in as many as I can. I managed to sneak some in most of the LEGO Horizon Adventures artworks I made, so you can try to find them all!
What are important factors you consider in creating marketing art specifically?
The first thing to think about is what feeling you want your artwork to inspire. Do you want it to look dynamic and fun? Calm and gentle? Super dramatic?
Always keep the feeling you’re going for in mind, and use the tools at your disposal to push it as far as you can. For example, if I’m going for dynamic and fun, I can use a composition exploding from the center, big contrast in hue, value and saturation, variety in the shape language like circles, squares, triangles, big lines versus short ones, a tilted camera angle, motion blur, and so on. There are a lot of little tricks that can emphasize what you’re trying to convey with your image!
A very important thing to also have in mind is to keep your silhouettes clean and readable, especially for characters. You want the viewer’s eye to understand at first glance what’s going on, and to travel easily across the picture.
Where do you draw your inspiration from when creating art pieces? And how do you get "in the zone"?
Anything visual, like a cool drawing style in a comic book, the composition of a photograph, beautiful lighting in a movie, the colors of a tree’s leaves in a street, etc. If my eyes can see it, I can get inspired from it!
To get in the zone when I’m not really motivated, I usually start by looking at art references on the internet via Pinterest and Instagram, to get hyped by cool things I see, or sometimes I start taking screenshots of the game I’m working on. Gathering material and references can be a good way to get inspired.
How do you avoid creative blocks for yourself? Do you also work on your own projects?
I always have my own projects on the side, like a visual novel I make or characters I want to develop. I don’t get to draw a lot when I make marketing artworks as there’s lots of 3D going on, so I often start missing drawing. These side projects allow me to create things that make me happy and to get ideas out of my head and put them on paper.
I used to struggle a lot with creative blocks for my own projects because I would put too much stake on them. Since I don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to personal projects I used to put a lot of pressure on myself and think things like “It’s the only drawing you’ve had the time to make in three months, it’d better be absolutely amazing!”. Because of this, drawing became stressful and stopped being fun. Now I’m learning again how to draw things just because they make me happy! I still get anxious from time to time when it comes to drawing for myself, but it’s getting better.
What have you enjoyed seeing from our community when assets you've worked on are being released into the wilds?
I love looking at the comment sections on the YouTube trailers of games I work on; they are usually super positive and remind me that there are actual people who are enjoying the games we make. This keeps me motivated, so thank you commenters!
Do you have any tips and tricks for aspiring (marketing) artists out there?
I would advise any aspiring artist to focus on drawing/painting/making things they genuinely like. When you start working in this industry and you don’t have a portfolio yet, you can lose yourself by making the things you think your future employers want to see. For example, you like cute stylized 3D art, you scroll on Art Station and see all these super realistic sci-fi artworks, and you start to think, “Oh wait, maybe I should be making sci-fi artworks too, even though I don’t like that. It looks more popular and it might get me a job.”
I think it’s a trap, and you’ll end up working mostly on games you don’t like and make you unhappy. It’s far healthier and more efficient to focus your time and energy on making artworks about things you really care about, and in the style you really like. That way your portfolio will be a perfect representation of you, and employers will contact you for projects that actually fit your personality and style.
You can admire more of Gael's work on Art Station.
