We have another great installment to the STAMP Artist Feature series. This artist enters the arena all the way from the other side of the world, Korea. Cecil moved to the states as a teenager where he set out to take the concept art world by storm. By proving his skill and passion, he moved up in the industry very quickly working on movie titles and top video game titles such as, Final Fantasy and the God of War series. Relax and enjoy the inspiration and information provided by our discussion…

STAMP: Introduce yourself. Where are you from and what is something you want the world to know about you?
Cecil: Hello everyone! I was born in Seoul, Korea and I moved to Los Angeles when I was 18. My name, Cecil is actually my Catholic baptism name and I began using it as my first name when I moved to the states. My native name is Hong-Sik Kim. I focus on concept art for the gaming and entertainment industry and I have been teaching at Artcenter and Otis college of Art and Design. I also am a concept art department head in Otis College of Art and Design where I am more involved with design classes and courses. I have always been fascinated with huge man-made structures such as freeways and buildings and how perspective draws our eyes into composition. Any oversized canvas paintings are always amazing to look at. I admire all the painters both traditional and digital.

STAMP: When did you become interested in art?
Cecil: During my elementary school years, I stumbled upon local art competition where I won first art award with a watercolor landscape painting in Korea. When I was in 5th grade I started getting attention from teachers from school. I became interested in art and got encouraged to enter a few more competitions. I didn’t see it as a special talent but it was interesting for a little kid to receive people’s responses. Then for a while, art was something I felt comfortable doing in art classes however it wasn’t until high school senior year that I suddenly began to see art as my alternative choice to go the college.

Studying for college in Korea was extremely competitive and overwhelming for me and I wasn’t ready for it. Instead of studying science and math, my interests for art, music, literature and even history were growing. I knew I had to step back from all the academic studies and seriously figure out what I was better at… which was art. Late 80s were a pretty unstable time with all the political scandals and riots in South Korea. Luckily our family got issued an immigrant visa from the US and I had a chance to start a new education there.

STAMP: What is your medium of choice and why?
Cecil: For now most of my daily works; both professional and personal are done in digital medium using Photoshop. I tried to work in my favorite medium; Oil and graphite for group gallery shows and etc. Charcoal is also an awesome dry medium that I can play with for hours. I don’t really like acrylic paints, however I know it’s an excellent durable medium since it dries fast and easy to work with. Once I move to a new studio, I can start working on some oversize canvases and big charcoal drawings.

STAMP: Did you study at an art school? If so which one and how was that experience? If not, do you wish you did?
Cecil: First I took art lessons in private ateliers in Seoul, Korea among a group of college students during winter break when I was a kid. All thanks to my mother who had obsessive admiration for artists. Yes, she always told me how awesome artists were and signed me up at Atelier during winter breaks. There I learned basic rendering technique by studying classical roman busts and watercolor still life. It was a very important part of my art training since it was my first experience surrounded by art students in a serious environment.

Then after I moved to the US, I took up courses in life drawings, design theory, and illustration classes at a community college. I began to see myself wanting to pursue a career in art. So I went to ArtCenter in Pasadena California to study Fine Art and Illustration. Artcenter taught me how to be a soldier, a humble artist and responsible professional. I mean, homework and intense training required discipline and commitment to survive the school. It was the most intense 3 years of my life both physically and mentally. Now as I look back on it, it felt as long as 10 years working at Sony. At Artcenter, there were endless resources for inspiration for a young student. The best time of my life.

STAMP: What influenced you take the route of becoming a video game concept artist?
Cecil: It was when I started to understand that everything in video games has to be created in 3D-digital assets. It was late 1980s so most of game visuals were pretty simple and hard angular polygons and I always wonder why game visuals were so simple and unfinished compared to feature animation films such as Toy story and other Pixar’s films. Then I found out all 3D assets in games needed to be scripted and programmed in order for us to interact and control in limited memory space which game consoles can provide with.

I was so attracted by the fact that every creative process will evolve as technology advances and it allows us to be more creative and expressive. It was like stepping into unknown fantasy world. As far as for a narrative side, I am a big fan of intense screenplay directors such as Martin Scorsese or Woody Allen. As I understood how the gaming industry will explode as an emerging entertainment phenomena, I could see it was a matter of time until the gaming experience would be as sophisticated and subtle as those films. It’s heading that direction already…!

STAMP: Some may be unaware that you are apart of the world famous, highly popular God of War series. How did this happen?
Cecil: Sony Santa Monica Studio was my new home and a new start departing from Final Fantasy IX team and Squaresoft. At Sony, we all had one ultimate goal; tobring out a brand new original IP and tell the world who we were. Everyone worked hard through some rough times, overcame crisis and we carefully crafted a nearly perfect game. Maybe because it was our first and also last chance, everyone knew we had to exceed what’s considered to be good in every facets on God of War production. Otherwise we will be forgotten after couple weeks of release. We didn’t want to cut corners and we wanted to make sure we deliver something worthy more than what customers paying for. For a long time, it seemed to be difficult to separate the God of War series from myself since it took 8 years of my life with Sony. Regardless of [the hardships], I am still a big fan of our games. Soundtrack and bold cinematic presentation always ascend me into awesome adventure.

STAMP: When creating work on the level of God of War; something that was based on ancient Greek Mythology, how much research went into finding resource materials and how much was your creativity?
Cecil: Anything related to ancient Greek mythology becomes a useful reference. I have checked out books from public libraries, purchased books from museum stores, thousands of google search images were collected and shared among team artists. Even our game designers use references for inspiration and made blueprints for level design and combat scenarios. Even during God of War 3 production, we went back and looked at what’s been done in the two previous titles to repeat most of them Greek designs. However, there must be something original from my own creativity as well. Surprisingly, those are not necessarily design details in architecture, it can be more like landscape composition or lighting and color decision, UI elements as well as creating dramatic gameplay set- up. We needed to think like Greeks to really understood what they feared and loved. The core of the God of War series was not rooted in hack and slash action; it is about truly bringing the audience back into the Greek period and making them believe that’s what truly happened. We were telling tales from more than couple thousand years old. With state of the art-computer generated imagery, we better had given it some justice.

STAMP: How has working on a series of this magnitude, God of War, made you a better artist?
Cecil: The experience taught me how to be humble. I witnessed team member’s careers and lives rise and fall over period of 8 years including mine. It was all about the relationship with other members of the team. I learned to be patient and started to see what it takes to bring out a quality product with high production values. Everything we do, it needs to be perfect because we respected our audience and fans. As far as being a better artist, definitely it gave me a long test run to see if I can be responsible for a mega project. Anticipation on God of War 3 was so high, we felt it from day 1 until it got shipped. It’s almost like working on a project with fans. I learned to work under pure pressure.

STAMP: Do you mind explaining the process of creating a video game level for our visitors? Can you give some insight?
Cecil: Yes! It starts with our game director’s verbal pitch. He will tell me backstory about location, core gameplay.The level, climate, mood, scale, architectural style, cinematic examples, phasing of the game – all that was roughly drafted in director’s head. From there I begin hi-level concept paintings to summarize his vision. Once the overall aesthetic look has been decided, then level designers will model out basic 3D level. It’s a playable level with some puzzle mechanics working. Then I grab some screenshots from the designer’s level and start designing details in the level and mostly problem solving on why certain things are in there, what they represent and stuff.

STAMP: What is the toughest part of being a video game concept artist? What is the reward?
Cecil: Toughest part of being a game concept artist is being able to work through criticism and feedbacks. Some concepts will go through weeks of revisions and tweaks. Imagine you will be working on one subject matter for average 2 years. Production allows you to work on different things depending on which phase we are in the production, however, you are not working for yourself so you will be working to realize and inspire the team’s vision. You really need to be a team player and open to criticism. However, the rewarding part is if the game does well, there will be millions of people who will be playing through and experiencing your artistic vision.

STAMP: Do you feel your schooling has helped with your development as an artist or do you lean more towards your real world experience?
Cecil: Experience from school is important since you do make more mistakes and failures when you are students. That directly applies to real world experience where you become more responsible and become more reliable. So I should say they both are important in different level.

STAMP: How did you feel when you first noticed your work being published? Seeing the Ballistic publishing of the art of God of War 3 and the Gnome DVDs.
Cecil: It’s a mixed feeling of excitement and also a little bit intimidating. I always wanted to be honest about my abilities. Some artists advise me to show only the best work all the time. However, I had a different thought. Even though I have been working for more than 15 years, as far as art education goes, I am still a student. So rather than editing my true skills and showing only the best, I felt more comfortable with just showing how I try to be a better artist. Now, I started to see why some folks warned me, however it’s kind of late to change it. I still think art is about sharing and learning rather than working against competition… and it feels better to me. Gnomon DVDs are pretty daunting task since I had to record myself talking about my work process. It was not easy at all.

STAMP: What made you venture off into teaching?
Cecil: I would need to thank my friend Nathan Ota for giving me the opportunity to try teaching. I was so nervous that I blacked out couple times in first class. I like teaching and working with students. It’s a good way for me to remind myself how my teachers had inspired me and changed how I approached the creative process.

STAMP: What are your challenges as an artist?
Cecil: Being able to see myself in the future and being able to invest myself in the right direction. Knowing what I need to do to be a better artist is one thing but actually putting myself through long committed training is the most difficult part of being an artist for me.

STAMP: What role do you feel the internet has on art? Positive or negative?
Cecil: Mostly positive. Art is easily accessible to general public with almost no cost nowadays. The audience will know what’s good design or good art, what deserves to be looked at and appreciated. Hard work and emotionally honest works of art will always reach out to the audience. I like the fact that more and more people are talking more about art in daily topics and it’s exciting for artists to have more opportunities and creative avenues to express themselves.

STAMP: Do u feel like your work is evolving.
Cecil: Not at this moment. However I can say I am getting more experienced at what I am doing professionally. Maybe after spending months just working for myself and freely exploring personal style with favorite subject matter, I might see mywork evolving, but right now, I am just preparing for the launch.

STAMP: What advice would you give a young artist just starting or trying to get started?
Cecil: Being an artist does not guarantee easy life. It actually complicates a lot of personal life issues and your relationship with others. However you get to do what you like to do and if you do it right, you might be able to make a living. It’s a fair trade because you might not become a millionaire however you will be happy with what you are doing with your career. I often see students and other artists thinking too lowly of themselves and afraid of the competition ahead. Art is not about a competition and it’s about creative process. You need to be able to enjoy the process and stay positive while you are doing art. That’s the only way to go through this life time commitment. It’s a slow, slow process to be good at one thing so you might as well enjoy doing it step by step. Also you are responsible for your art and yourself. You need to work hard to feed yourself to feel content and happy.

STAMP: What can we expect in the future from you?
Cecil: I am planning to launch a design company that will do concept art, web-design, print media, IP development. The official launch will be in early August.

STAMP: Do you agree with the overall objective of STAMP Magazine?
Cecil: I really like the simple layout and how it introduces different artists all the time. Especially from different fields of art. I am flattered to be included among great illustrators and artists and thank you again, Stamp Magazine. I would like to see if Stamp magazine focuses on artists who work on similar topic or subject matter and do a group interview or article on them. That will be cool. Also do a tribute article for artists, architects we got inspired from and why we love their work. It will be great study for readers both conceptually and academically.

To see more from Cecil and get updates news visit his website at http://www.cecilkim.com/