Artist Profile

Simon Boxer

Concept Artist and Digital Painter
16/9/09

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Simon Boxer is a freelance concept artist, digital painter and graphic designer. He also works as the Art Director for RocketHands.

How did you get into art?
Originally I was interested in Fine Art – I studied TEE Art, but thought the career prospects weren’t so good, so I enrolled into Curtin University in Graphic Design in 2003 and from there decided I wanted to become a concept artist instead, but had a long way to go to reach a professional standard.

What do concept artists do?
A concept artist is a 2D artist. In my case, I design assets for videogames, including characters, environments and industrial/prop design. 3D artists turn these concept drawings and paintings into 3D objects which are animated and seen in the final game.

You are also a freelance digital painter – what does that involve?
Digital painting involves using digital software such as Corel Painter and Photoshop to create a painting. You start from a blank canvas, sketch your image and paint. The tools for digital painting have been around for years but it’s still an emerging artform. As a concept artist – it is a great medium to use for my exhibited art, due to my familiarity and its great versatility.

What are the job prospects for a concept artist?
I worked at Interzone Games for 2 years, as a result of incredibly good timing and probably a little luck. Interzone set up the Perth studio at the start of 2007, after I’d had a year of focussing on getting my art skills up to scratch having graduated from graphic design – a completely different discipline. Although any concept artist breaking into the industry will benefit from being able to offer a secondary skillset. The most common one is 3D expertise, but I had graphic design. I am also part of RocketHands, an independent developer that creates games for digital distribution. We have recently released debut our puzzle game RocketFuse on the iTunes App Store.

What are your aspirations?
Ultimately I would like to achieve versatility in my work, participating in exhibitions as well as undertaking projects as a freelance artist. In May I exhibited my works in Snapshot, a joint exhibition with Nick Lowe exploring our travel experiences. For me, the exhibition provided an opportunity to get back to the impressionistic, raw painting style I love after years of producing concept art. It also tested the waters to see if digital painting is a sellable medium, and the feedback was great. Creating and planning an exhibition made it all too evident that digital art is what I do best. It’s definitely a medium I want to focus on.

Any tips on how to get into concept art?
From our humble city of Perth I believe the best way to hone your skills is to go online and practise. I built up my experience by participating in forums, experimenting with the artform, looking at what professionals are doing and being critiqued by peers online.

Conceptart.org is a really great resource, founded by professional concept artists. Challenges are set such as ‘Character of the week’, where artists are given a brief and get to develop their ideas, poll on the submissions and receive critique from their peers. It is a fantastic way to build up your design skills as well as your artistic technique.

It is also necessary to have knowledge of the fundamentals of art, such as drawing, lighting, colour theory and so on to be able to develop rich concepts.

The future of digital art…
There are some really exciting developments in digital art, especially in printing technologies. Holographic printing is available in the US. RabbitHoles, 3D motion holograms are printed onto surface, creating a mini animation of up to 12 hundred frames. It would be great to get into.

Simon’s latest exhibition, Apple Cider Tea party will showcase his latest works in Digital Painting. Check out the details here

Want to know more about Simon and his works? Check out his sketch blog

For more on Simon click here »

Apple Cider Tea Party - An art exhibition of life and mortality

  • Passion - Simon Boxer

  • Be Free - Simon Boxer

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