Concept Art Portfolio TEMP

- JASON YAO

LOOKING FOR IN-OFFICE POSITION (Preferred) But open to remote work.

Hi there, I’m a emotional impact driven Concept Designer. I don’t follow the usual concept art rules so much as try my damnest to make sure the player feels what is intended and strongly come across in the designs. As such I actively seek out a lot of feedback from those around me regardless of discipline as well as pull strongly from personal + external visual wells.

Besides my process, I am also skilled in handpainting, photobashing and 3D.

Rigging, animation and in-game prototyping as the need arises.

"Characters with charm-"

I don't believe character design stops at simply looking visually good. Characters are in my opinion the easiest way to grab and engage an audience. The who matters so much. I believe a character concept should charm not just the player but the team too.

It should sell who they are, why they matter.

Character design is what got me into the industry and although I've grown in skill designing other subjects: I will never fall out of love with character design.

HIGH-END MOTORCYCLE DESIGN

I love motorcycles.

Well, I never did before I started this project. But I think it's important for concept designers to know how to deep dive for projects that require it. This project's specifications needed a mixture of believability and accuracy along with making a flamboyant statement. This project included almost a month of sketching, research and even buying my own motorcycle & learning to ride.

Why go that far? Because I have an insatiable love for learning. I'm a world builder at heart and I want to see through not just my own eyes. But the eyes of people who truly love the subject matters that I'm designing for.

DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

A vision of a city (WIP ONGOING)

(Composition here is a bit lopsided because this is meant to go as a two page spread on a physical hardcover book. So in the centre of the page would be the spine of the book and so I adjusted for it, but online it may feel in-balanced or heavy on one side

This? This is Iron City.

I've been working on an art book and worldbuilding project for the last 8 months. Fuelled by passion. Let me introduce you to Iron City.

If it sounds familiar, this is my re-imagining of Iron Town from Princess Mononoke. It's a sprawling metropolis, taking inspiration from Art Deco era New York and the iconic Haussman architecture found in Paris. At the centre of the story is the Dragon Tree.

I don't want to go too deep into this project, but I wanted to showcase how comfortable I am with 3D and design thinking regarding environments. I believe proficiency and effectiveness in a 3D package such as Blender is essential for effective environment design & communication.

Blender working file.

City planning & road layout design

Other Environment Concept Work

Revolver Design Project (On-going DEVELOPMENT WIP)

This is a sneak preview of my latest project to expand my knowledge of weapon design for AAA game as it's always been a gap in my skillset and something I wanted to cover. I'm currently engrossed in learning all there is to know about how revolvers function to design a fictional fantasy revolver which pushes visuals while still remaining grounded in believability.

(Below are slides)

This was an art test I completed for Facepunch last year for the Concept Artist position. It took just under 2 weeks to complete.

It was a really fun learning experience to design for a sequel of a game I loved a lot growing up.

I'm thankful for the opportunity and it lit a fire under me to grow at the time and I can confidently say I'm twice the artist I am now than I was back then.

I ran and managed an annual art challenge.

This is called Kimodameshi (Clickable link to our social media).

This is an event where I lead a team of 8 volunteers to create art as well as moderate the event. I also designed how the event works as well as prototyped & built the javascript code that ran the event functions on Discord.

Promotional poster I designed and created for announcing the event on social media.

My art direction efforts lead the rest of the content my team created for the event.

This included the creation of our "What is Kimo?" explanation comic as well as the character design of our event mascot (Which saw the creation of over 80 pieces of fan art created by our event go-ers during the course of a month). This was just this year.

I took over leadership of the event in 2022 and through effective use of gamification & marketing, I grew our annual attendance from 600 to 1500+ in one year (the event only runs once a year and for 1 month). This year's reach grew further to 2000+ and we had attendance and completion from larger influences and artists like Thomas Chamberlain Keen & Sinix (Youtube 1.15 Million Subscribers).

We had workshops by experienced artists such as those from Magic The Gathering as well as members of the community almost everyday of the event, it was also part of my responsibility to make sure the time & scheduling of these were organized well and did not conflict with one another. Once I had a good system in place, I delegated this task to my team and focused on other things.

Below is a look at our social media, but feel free to check out our page.

Each year we design a new look for our mascot Scissor-chan (and this year we had two!)

I don't think there's any better way to show how much love we see every year from the community besides the fan-art they create of her. Below are a small selection of fanart by the community from this year!

(PLEASE NOTE THIS IS NOT MY WORK. I ONLY ART DIRECTED THE ORIGINAL DESIGN FOR SCISSORCHAN).