Ryan Hall

Hello! Life is good! I’m currently working fulltime with Booyah in San Francisco and working on new personal ideas. I’ve been kicking around the idea of putting out a book, so most of my personal stuff lately has been geared to fulfill the body of work I feel the book needs.

Sketchbomb all started when I moved out to San Francisco about 2 and a half years ago. My friend Mike Henry was already living in the Bay Area and we immediately started talking about how we need to get a sketch group together. Right around that time, we heard about a cafe called “The Grove” just opening up a new location on 3rd and Mission and thought it was a perfect spot for all ages to grab some food and network while doing some theme-based drawings. We’ve been meeting there once a month and have opened up additional chapters in several other cities since then. All of the information for checking out art from the group, times and locations can be found at sketchbomb-sf.deviantart.com.

Yeah, I’ve been drawing as long as I can remember. My mom was working as a graphic designer / animator before I was born. The stuff she did involved a lot of drawing using traditional materials so I had a great teacher right off the bat. The first drawing I remember doing was an ice cream sundae. With my kid-brain logic I then concluded that if I can draw this, then I can draw super heroes! I filled up lined paper notebooks with any kind of hero I could come up with. As I got older, I studied any comic book and how-to-draw book I could get my hands on. Right around high school was when I started thinking about doing art as a profession. I got my first paid indie comic side gig when I was 16 and pushed on from there.

I try my best to mix my life experiences with my media-based influences. I’m heavily influenced by comic books, animation, movies, video games, and traditional art. However, I feel that adding inspirations from real life, as small or abstract as they may be, can really give art that extra element of uniqueness. I feel that balancing these two sources of inspiration has been effective in connecting with the viewer. I spend a lot of time drawing in cafes trying to come up with ideas based on the characters and environment around me. I feel most inspired whenever I’m pulled out of my day-to-day routine. Sometimes I’m stuck sitting at my desk, so I’ll usually listen to music, podcasts, and documentaries while drawing to help spark new ideas. As far as specific influential artists go, I’m a huge fan of Joe Madureira, Humberto Ramos, J. Scott Campbell, Norman Rockwell, Alphonse Mucha, Egon Schiele, and J.C. Leyendecker.

Glad to hear you dig the videos! I decided to make these because I remember how much I wanted to pick the brains of artists I followed. This aspect is pretty new to me so I’m still trying to get the knack of the editing part, haha. I usually start any piece with super rough, messy drawings in my sketchbook. The ideas are usually based off of a visualization I’ve had stuck in my mind for some reason or from the results of messing around on paper. Most of my initial roughs are illegible to everyone else. I try to keep my work as loose as possible up until the final lines or colors are put down because during the “cleanup phase” the motion and life of a piece can be lost very quickly. On any given piece, I usually spend the bulk of the time on the planning phase. I learned that if I get to the final stage and certain elements aren’t planned for, whether it be a character’s hand or something in the background, I end up spending a much larger amount of time trying to fix it or even having to redo the whole thing.

When I intend to have linework be my final product, I will use layers of tracing paper and light board the final lines on bristol when working traditionally. When working digitally, I tighten my lines across the span of several layers. (In Photoshop or Sketchbook Pro)

If I plan on painting something digitally, I normally don’t bring the piece to final lines. I usually just scan in my messy sketch and block in my colors on a separate layer at darker values than what I intend to be the final result. Once I have it all blocked in, I build my colors up and finish off the piece with highlights, popping in extreme shadows that are needed, and textures.

I think that applying digital techniques is an exponential additional amount of aspects to consider when someone is just starting out. I still believe that a pencil and paper is where to begin. Start with the basics to build a strong foundation. I suggest warming up with very quick gesture drawings whenever sitting down to draw. Draw everything you see and experiment with shapes. Once you feel comfortable with what you’re drawing it’s probably time to step out of that comfort zone and try drawing something new. Once a solid understanding of the basics is achieved is when I suggest an artist can start getting their feet wet in using digital tools.

Achieving a good technical skill level is the first step. Anyone can learn the technical side of rendering and drawing but what you do with it is what really matters. Companies are looking for artists that have new ideas, a sense of style, good design sense, can deliver under tight deadlines, and work well with others. I think that the best way to prove you can do these things to the typical video game company requires a well-versed portfolio showing a variety of subject matter: monsters, robots, humans, environments and UI elements if possible. Samples of these in digital color is a must, and process sketches are helpful. A lot of companies are looking for someone who is capable of style variation and a range of technical know-how. After getting the portfolio set up, the next big step is networking and showing people that you’re someone they can work with. I suggest posting work online on various art forums and blogs. Look around online for game design and art groups that meet in your town. Go to comic and video game conventions and talk to as many people as possible. Nothing will happen until you’re on someone’s radar.

Another thing that helped me when trying to land a gig was keeping an open mind as to what jobs I would take. I really wanted to start in games, but the only design job I could land at the time was working for a small landscaping design company doing marker renderings of rich people’s yards. Because I had that design experience under my belt, I was then able to land a production artist position at a mobile games company. I’ve also seen a good amount of people start out with internships, contract work, or a QA position and worked their way up to higher positions because they were already in the door. So keep your eyes open for various game related and general design jobs.

Yeah, Mike and I started contract work on No Zombies Allowed with Booyah. Now we’re working with them fulltime in-house and it’s been a great experience.

Because of the recent boom in mobile gaming, I think we’re in a great moment of time for 2D artists to have the opportunity to work on something awesome. Creating games and putting them out for the public to buy has never been this accessible. Game companies are sprouting up left and right but there are also a lot of teams struggling to keep the boat from sinking and scrambling to come up with another big hit. Because of how fast the industry is moving, jobs come and go with the drop of a hat. With this in mind, you should always be working on pushing your portfolio and skill set to anticipate changes in the field.

I love creating things for a living, but it’s not easy. I’ve worked fulltime in a studio environment and fulltime out of my house. Both of these have their ups and downs.

My daily studio schedule consists of a mix of tasks including drawing, digitally coloring assets, attending meetings with producers to discuss our schedule or review submitted art assets, formating art assets to work within the game(s), and I may be needed to shift gears to help out a programmer with technical adjustments at any moment.

My daily “work-at-home routine” would start with me making sure to wake up at a decent time. It’s easy to sleep in when there’s no one waiting on you at a specific time, but if I didn’t get started on work before noon, I would end up working much later than intended. I would usually check emails for my clients’ responses from the night before and then prioritize my tasks. If there were any quick things to take care of, I’d usually try to send those out first. Sometimes I would have to wait for feedback to make a move on anything, so I would make sure to be available to respond when information came in at any given time.To take on contract work fulltime requires a lot of networking to fill up a full slate of gigs and a ton of self discipline. Contract work is nice because you get to pace your work out of the comfort of your home, but working in a studio gives you the chance to work with a lot of cool people and takes away the stress of having to find a new gig week to week.

Working for someone else ultimately requires you to produce something they want. So, after a full day of any of these types of jobs, I usually try to get in at least an hour or 2 of personal work and make sure to draw more on the weekends. Work after work is hard, but it’s necessary to help you grow as an artist and pursue work that’s solely for you.

Thank you for setting this up! Hopefully some of the things I went over will be of some help to artists trying to break into the industry. Thanks again! It was great talking with you!