This is a short spoken interview with CG artist Craig Mullins, who served as visual art consultant on Age of Empires Mobile for Tencent. Mullins describes his artistic process and preferences—favoring convincing realism over a photographic/3D look—how living in Hawaii influenced his ability to draw Chinese characters, and project details: he was asked to provide three sketches but delivered one, began work on Age of Empires in 2006, and referenced a series of ten illustrations that was "only 80% done". He also recounts personal anecdotes (living in the Hawaiian Islands, wildlife) and offers practical advice to artists about practicing and the costs of creativity.
Questions this video answers
2006.
Three sketches were requested; he provided one.
A series of 10 illustrations; "only 80% done" (as stated).
Chapters
They required three sketches from me, and I did only one. We had a very short period of time to do it. Hi, I'm Craig Mullins, and I am the visual art consultant on Age of Empires Mobile for Tencent. Whenever I cut the grass, they follow me around the tractor. You get tons of birds. You cut the grass, and there's just birds everywhere. I've wanted to live in the Hawaiian Islands since I was very, very young. The cultural diversity here is quite amazing. Living here that has helped me in drawing Chinese characters. This is what I was talking about, this basic design. To me, the aesthetic of this is that of a photograph. I tried to repaint it so that if you get back to here, it looks realistic. Getting in this amount of detail, this much contrast everywhere, you're very much locked into this aesthetic. Putting the characters back over the top, resolve them a little bit more. They wanted them to look younger because, you know, they want this character to be very powerful. I realize that these characters that they've been developing, they've worked very, very hard on them. The designs are beautiful, but they have been very open to my own ideas. You have to go from reality and make real decisions, possibly not technically easy decisions, to get where you want to go with something. I don't feel that, like, this character is in a real lighting situation. I don't want the photographic or 3D aesthetic. I do want it to be realistic. I do want it to be convincing as real. If you're gonna draw my head, the division of the side plane to the front plane, where the shadow goes on this brow here, an oil paint, you could probably just kind of glue all this together. Whatever you want it to be needs to not, I guess, be the limitation of the tool. If I'm painting with hard shapes, not only design it, but understand the structure of the skull. I started Age of Empires in 2006. I think there were a series of 10 illustrations. It's only 80% done right now, but the character work will just be as detailed. The way it is painted, I think, has more energy to it. They have told me several times, this is a poster of our game, which we have bled for, and we hope you take it as seriously as we do. Of course I do. If I were to say anything to artists in China that is, creativity is expensive and time consuming. Draw as much as you possibly can because you're always thinking and processing and observing it.
