The Mind Behind the Artwork: Trophies of War

MP: Manu Pratap (THREE COLONIST) KB: Kevin Brunt (RIOT GAMES)

MP: May you please introduce yourself?

KB: My name is Kevin Brunt, I am a senior 3D Environment Artist at Riot Games, and I have worked in franchises such as Battlefield, Resident Evil, Sleeping Dog, Plants VS Zombies for a few years. At present, I am working on the VALORANT.

MP: How long have you been in the Game Industry?

KB: I have been working for over ten years, started my journey in Motion Capture in 2011, got my first Environment opportunity within six months, and worked on Resident Evil. Eventually, I hoped for a few studios before joining EA for 9-10 years. Thereafter, I had a short stint and recently joined Riot Games as a Senior Environment Artist.

MP: I heard a story related to the TROPHIES OF WAR that occurred in the past, Ossuary of Custoza, Italy, that holds the remains of more than 4000 soldiers, I read about it, and the bones of 800 martyrs are on display at the Otranto Cathedral.

What are these crowns in your artwork trying to depict, curious to know the story?

KB: When I initially started the project, the goal was to practice organic sculpting, and I decided to go with a human skull. As I moved further, I got my feet wet creating it, and I started gathering more references, trying out tattoo designs, planning unique pieces. Mostly, I used Pinterest and Google for the ref collections. Randomly, I found this tattoo design that showed a bunch of skulls, all strapped together. Eventually, I thought of using something somewhat similar. In addition to it, I started positioning skulls together. I did not have a story at first but eventually spun it to be a bunch of kings defeated over a bunch of battles in a crusade. Initially, it was just supposed to be one piece, but ideas came along and turned out to be a few more characters. The plan got pretty challenging over the span of the year. The original name of the project was supposed to be “Fallen Kings”. But a month before I would present it, I realized that “Trophies of War” feel metaphorical.

Earlier, the skull piece at the bottom had the crown. In the meantime, I was going through a mentorship with a friend, and we were figuring out to make it more interesting. We were talking over how to spice up the visual quality? I wanted it to look more tribal at the bottom, so I decided to get rid of one of the crowns. I cut back on certain things and removed assets as they were becoming...hmm...I don't want to say that visually distracting, but too much on the piece. I had hair at one point on some of them. Indeed, there was so much to do. So I end up having the skull back. I think it is becoming visually vigorous.

MP: How long did the art take to finish?

KB: As it was not a production asset per se, I did not entirely have to go by studio time. I started it about two years back, might be even longer, while I have been streaming art on Twitch. At that moment, I somewhere started the project. My career got busy, and I had trouble doing the portfolio with the studio work. Eventually, I had kind of an epiphany at one point in the project when I thought I was going to post it. Probably a year or so ago. But I had some great feedback from a friend. Somehow, it changed me, how I wanted to take the project? I then redid all the texturing. I redid all the ropes, almost three times, and webs too. I was trying to push the quality as it became a personal project of doing work, over and over, trying to raise the quality bar. I did burn out in between, as you know, if things get longer than three months, a little frustration rises. So I work on different pieces in between to get my mind off. I stranded the project so many times. It probably took me about six months to get to a point where I could post it. If I had to do it again, it would perhaps not take so much time as a lot of it was learning and experience. Personal projects are to overcome limits.

MP: Your asset has such a detailed job but putting those eats up a gruesome amount of time when doing it from scratch. Did you do it from zero, or have a library of assets and textures which help to speed up the process?

KB: Most of the part of this project was being concluded from scratch. There was a skull that I utilized for the reference. But these I sculpted in Zbrush. I would never use the reference skull as the whole point of the project was to learn. In terms of materials and textures, I used substance painter. Indeed, they are custom materials for this project. The ropes were crafted from zero. But for gemstones, I downloaded a pack online as I did not want to model it. It was easy to do, but looking forward to saving time.

MP: The ropes look magnificent. Would you please share the tricks and techniques?

KB: There are a bunch of tricks. I had used floating cards as we do in vegetation. I created an outer shell that follows the ropes and the rest of the rope spirals around it to create the volume. Four strips follow each rope that was the awful work to do. I made the atlas of alphas. Eventually, when I had the project assembled, I was trying to raise the caliber to the point, where it wasn’t technically a run time. I used the displacement map on ropes, so they look convincing. I avoid the gamey look, what we call it sometimes, where we usually see the facets. The trick with the card strips, and the cone shells running around and across, helped me get the torn and frayed feel. I ended up doing the ropes almost thrice. Even it can take forever to place those things.

MP: Did you plan the light and story for the scene or partially progress with trial and testing?

Would you light on the rendering process?

Has there a specific goal to achieve?

KB Initially, I had been working on Marmoset Toolbag 3. At that instant Marmoset 4 came out. I wanted to try Raytracing, so I progressed the project towards it, which changed the process for the lighting.

In the initial stage, Ray tracing was a little challenging as I was never used to it to any extent. The process of acquiring new understanding and figuring was always on the fly. If I talk about the project, had a mindset. I wanted that to make dramatic, so I focused on remnant artists and renaissance paintings. I went with the strong key light in my renders and had a few point lights to fill the space. The concern for me was to maintain the contrast in the composition.

MP: Are you getting regular critiques from seniors, colleagues, or peers while in the process?

KB: I am not shy to share my work. All the time open to feedback. My circle is full of professional people. These people have strong critical eyes. They have been working in the industry for over ten years. A few of them are the principal artist, easily will not admire the work, but in addition to it, they point out all the flaws. Assessments help you to train your eyes and analyze your artwork better. It helps in improving.

Texture Maps:

One of the biggest goals was to push my texturing level. As I said, I ended up doing a mentorship of Joshua Lynch. The goal was to find the contrast between materials, recognize them, read the areas. Screwing up the texture is easy in PBR, as you know. You have to push things a little further. For instance, a material that might be shinier in the game engine does not mean it will match another material close to it. To make things technically correct, I use the technique of shifting the value in Photoshop. I import them into Photoshop, the base of grey, HSV value 128, then migrate the colors over top of it, which helps me understand the correct value. Making things black and white will not give you the perfect definition of a roughness map. If you do not do that, you might end up painting the brightness of a blue, red, yellow, or something else. Yellow might be darker than blue, even though yellow looks brighter than blue. There are a lot of colors theory principles behind that. My priority is not to go dark or light on spots.

MP: How did you make the spider web? Magnificent work on the webs of spiders. Did you use any tricks or techniques? Maybe it is worth sharing with the community.

KB: I used so many tricks as it was one of the complex parts of the project. Indeed, I try to make them as close to nature. The challenge was to make silhouettes readable from every angle. The placement needs to be logical and realistic. I counter so many issues while testing. In the meantime, I created an atlas too. Initially, I started with a brush pack of Photoshop found online. Later, I discovered a substance designer node that allowed me to create a base of the spider webs. I used those to generate spider web meshes. There are spiders and cobwebs. Eventually, I designed the atlas and imported those into Photoshop to paint over. Although, I tried Zbrush tools which I found online. Where I could string out webbing between a point and another point. All work concludes that I settled on a UE 4 pack. I used that as a hybrid and did some paint over it. Set dressing of the rope cards and spider webs took quite a hell of a time.

MP: What was the most tricky part of your work? Did you counter any creative blocks during this asset, and how did you overcome them, if any?

KB: Honestly, a bit of everything. The asset has certain stages of what was hard and easy. A few things were familiar. In the initial phase, it was figuring out how to make an appealing skull. The crowns were the easiest things to get over. Though, gemstone rendering with realistic refractions made me explore more. Figuring out the ropes and webs was itself a challenge. I am an environment artist, but this is more of character art. I always try to challenge myself in personal work. Probably, the determined job was to keep everything unique. Every prop itself was a hero. The challenge was making each piece so that it speaks for itself. Indeed, the main goal was to have an asset that could resonate and stand-alone on Art Station.

MP: Few people are juniors in the community. Any advice would you offer to them or newcomers? Which sort of struggles does benefit them to move forward, to be get hired by AAA Studios?

KB: Oh gosh! That's a big question. I can spend an hour talking about that.

From my POV, every younger or less experienced artist is trying to get a job or recognition in the industry. As an advice, you should work on the stuff you love the most. It will keep you motivated, and slowly you will craft your portfolio. But at the same time, you should aim wider, make diverse content to suit several studios. Probably, you want to work on a dash of realism, make it similar to a studio's genre so that it gets you recognition on the game but try not to replicate the work. Let your work have more range, and try not to box yourself. The broad range of your work will help you get more studios in the lineup. Another thing, you should be patient, work on your art and strive toward more experience.

I have seen artists, who want to get a job immediately, they have hardly made anything. Even though talking to juniors who worked with me in the past, they wished to be seniors soon. Indeed they joined the studio recently. They are unaware of what a senior role means.

MP: If we skip anything important, please take a step further and elaborate on it. Kevin, we appreciate your time and efforts for the community.

KB: Finishing this project has been liberating as I have been through a long journey throughout the project. Jumping to different studios, joining things, meeting new people, at the same time the whole pandemic being hit, working as a lead, leaving the job, hoping to studios, joined the Riot. I spent two years or so, but that was an exciting journey. Now, I feel proud when I look back. I got frustrating many times while on the project. It resonates with many artists in the community. Honor from social media makes me glad. Sometimes, we are never proud of our work. But now I am pretty happy, that's all over, and I can move to new things.

MP: If I ask you, what do you want to fix in the Trophies of War. What comes first in your mind?

KB: Oh gosh! So many things.

I want to improvise the gem renders. I want to change the placement for a few of the webs. If you look at the top, there is a spear. I hardly show it off in the presentation. There are tons of details. Honestly, I have been struggling to present it. Indeed, I put more than 50 cameras for rendering but finally got to the 17. In terms of polishing the art, there is so much to do. You have to put the pencil down at a certain point. In the future, I want to explore hair. As I said, I wanted to put long hair on the skull.

Kevin, we thank you very much for such a lovely talk!

Uncut edition of the talk is available on YouTube: