My Favourite Game

The illustrator and animator on creating his distinctive vector art and the merits of playing meditative games

Illustrator James Gilleard on the merits of meditative games

You need only admire a few pieces of James Gilleard’s artwork to establish a familiarity with his style. His work is found in magazines and websites, and even on the cover of a limited-edition Hellboy Blu-ray. Here, Gilleard reveals how games have played a role in his art. Did videogames play a part in your desire to become an artist? The Sega Saturn was my first console, and the art that was on-screen was inspiring. I can remember doing a picture of Tomb Raider when I was in Year 9. So there was definitely a crossover. To what extent has your style been influenced by videogames? I’ve always had this in the back of my head, to draw in vector, the geometric style. I really think that comes from the first Tomb Raider, again. The first few games were built on blocks, with fairly low-res textures on top. There’s a picture of a mountain that I did; I was thinking of Tomb Raider while I was doing that. How do you create your pieces? It’s all done in Adobe Illustrator. I sketch everything first. Then I put it into vector, I draw it all in, and then it goes into Photoshop. Then I add textures, and lighting. The Last Guardian one was fairly quick. Because I’m doing this on the side of commercial work, it’s evenings and stuff, so difficult to put a timeframe on. Maybe three or four evenings, that one. Do you get much time to play? Not really. It depends. At one point I was playing No Man’s Sky a lot, just because I found it really relaxing to play. I enjoyed just walking around and not particularly doing anything. Those are the sorts of games I really like, where you’re not doing missions. I prefer those relaxing games. So I play that, and the other day I was playing Abzû for the second time. But the last month or so, I haven’t played games, really. So laid-back games work best for you? Definitely, yeah. Journey, Abzû, Monument Valley I love. Those kinds of things where it’s telling a narrative rather than challenging you with quests, or crafting; things that take a lot of time, and don’t really get you anywhere. I prefer those shorter games. Ico was the first game I played like that while I was at university, and it was relaxing, but I enjoyed the narrative within the game. Then Shadow Of The Colossus, that’s one of my favourite games of all time. It’s intense at points, but then there’s large portions of the game where you’re just running around the landscape, which is quite relaxing. Is there one game that stands out to you in terms of its art? That’s tough, but if I had to choose, I would probably say Shadow Of The Colossus. It’s just so unusual, and it tells a story in a way that only a game can tell a story. Rather than trying to ape movies or having loads of cutscenes, it tells a story in an interactive way. Is drawing art based on videogames easier or harder than other subjects? I think it’s maybe a bit more difficult, because certainly with No Man’s Sky, it’s really difficult to sum that game up in one picture. That’s what I realised when I was doing it. That’s why I did four! Shadow Of The Colossus, you can sum that up in one image, I think. But I still found it difficult to get the style that I would usually do correct. If I was just drawing a scene in Japan, for example, I can abstract that quite a lot. But with those games, it was difficult to abstract it so much, and still get the feeling of the game. In some ways it’s easier, because you’ve got the obvious reference points. But in other ways it’s harder, because even Shadow Of The Colossus, there are so many parts of that game that you could choose. It was choosing the most iconic image, for me, that was toughest. In the end I just chose my favourite colossus. I thought that was the best way to go about it. I started with maybe five, sketching and even putting them into vector, and thinking, ‘Maybe this doesn’t convey what this game is’. I whittled it down to the one from the point in the game where I can remember thinking, ‘Wow, this is just absolutely incredible’.

“With those games, it was difficult to abstract it so much, and still get the feeling of the game”

What’s your favourite game of all time? The first game that got me into games properly was Tomb Raider. So probably it has to be that one. And I think that has influenced my taste in games. They’re all fairly slow-paced, quite calm.