Over the past three years, we have grown an amazing community of professional designers, artists, and students. We work closely with the community to further develop Gravity Sketch to better fit their workflows. Every day we speak with customers and users to gain insights and a better understanding of how they work, what motivates them and what we can do better as a team.
As we expand our focus into the collaborative space and workflows which include a variety of roles from designers, to engineers, to clients; we are reaching out to key community members to gather insights and feedback. We are sharing some answers from a few typical questions we ask in our sessions, we are calling this the Five Questions series.
Today we are sharing answers from Min Guen – Concept Artist at Microsoft (@minguen.art on Instagram)
How did you first discover Gravity Sketch and what drew your attention?
Back in 2019 I attended Jama Jurabaev’s workshop in Vancouver where he shared about his work as a concept artist and showed us some design techniques. One of the demos he did was in VR with the use of Gravity Sketch. I couldn’t help but notice how fast and intuitive it looked, but as a person who never tried VR back then it was hard for me to comprehend it and I didn’t think I would be using VR for my designs. Later once I actually had a chance to try out Gravity Sketch, I instantly loved the simplicity of the application, compared to other 3D packages it was pretty easy to learn.
How did you integrate Gravity Sketch into your workflow?
As a concept artist working in film and video game industries, it is important to be able to sketch out ideas fast. I love working on keyframes and environment pieces that tell a story. And I think Gravity Sketch is perfect for the job because it allows me to sculpt and compose my scenes quickly. Regarding the workflow, I usually sculpt my subjects in VR and build the rest in Blender 3D and later do the finishing touches in Photoshop.
What excites you about remote virtual collaboration (co-creation) in this current work climate?
First, it’s super fun! I look at it as a great way to hang out with my artist fellows while creating something cool in VR. And as long as you have internet – you can collaborate with anyone in the world. In times when everyone is self-isolated due to the pandemic, how else would we do that?
Where do you feel Co-creation could have the biggest impact in the entire design process?
Teaching is the first thing that comes to my mind. Streaming VR and making demo workshops for a small online class. Also, collaboration work between designers and the team, where we can quickly validate and iterate on the idea.
What words of wisdom would you share with people who are considering diving into VR design for the first time?
Learning a new medium can be overwhelming at first so try to be strategic. The key is to be consistent and deliberate with your goals. Having good fundamentals is always recommended. Understanding composition, anatomy and simply how things work will make your designs look believable. For creators who are just starting out and perhaps lack in fundamentals- try not to design anything just yet, but instead try recreate real things as you will get much more value from studying real-life objects. Choose a topic for your studies (something interesting like vehicles, dragons or monsters), find some good photo references, set goals for what look and finish you want to achieve, and always try to hit that mark. Then, as you gain confidence, gradually level up by choosing tougher goals and objectives.
