It is hard to believe that Star Wars: Shatterpoint from Atomic Mass Games has been out for less than two years. The core box and squad packs can be found in almost every gaming store. It is hard to ignore the striking artwork that adorns all releases of the game. I want to find out a bit more about what happens behind the scenes and the people who help to create such fantastic, stylised artwork for a galaxy far, far away. Art Director at Atomic Mass Games, Preston Stone, was gracious enough to spend some time answering my questions about his journey into Star Wars: Shatterpoint and helping to create the art for the game.
Jedi News: What was your experience of Star Wars growing up?
Preston: I remember watching the original trilogy on VHS and going to the theater to see the rerelease of Return of the Jedi (and being excited about the little Jedi Knight Luke action figure that they gave out) and all of the prequel films. I also remember getting a really cool model kit of Darth Vader and badly injuring myself with a hobby knife when I was carving off excess plastic. Kids, have your parents handle the sharp objects when hobbying.
JN: Who was your favourite Star Wars character?
Preston: In the films, it’s probably Han Solo, but now it’s Sabine Wren from Star Wars: Rebels.
JN: Who were your favourite artists growing up?
Preston: Alex Ross has been an artist I’ve admired since high school. His ability to create realistic interpretations of characters and hyper complex scenes feels unmatched still. He’s also on the list of dream artists to work with.
JN: What made you decide to become an artist/art director?
Preston: Doing art in some capacity has always been non-negotiable. I’ve been drawing since I had the ability to form thought and memory. Creating is a need. I was working as a professional illustrator for various games for nearly about five years and got to a really good place with my skills. However, my ability to market myself and get consistent work from clients was lacking, so I made the decision to move into art direction mostly to earn a more stable living. Unbeknownst to me, the role as art director would be incredibly enlightening and serve to improve my art skills even more through the study of other artists’ work and need to break down what works and doesn’t work for each art piece.
JN: How did you get the job directing for Star Wars: Shatterpoint?
Preston: I had become something of a Star Wars specialist in my time at Fantasy Flight Games and was directing all of their minis games back in 2020. When the games all moved to the new Atomic Mass Games studio, I moved with them, and I was then officially the Star Wars art director. Star Wars: Shatterpoint was an awesome opportunity to be a part of developing the holistic style for a game from the ground up.
JN: The artwork and miniatures are very closely linked, who decides on the overall pose and look of the character?
Preston: This is a team effort, but I and the creative director, Dallas, do most of the pose sketches for our Star Wars games. The art and sculpting teams meet to talk about options, and when we land on a pose we like, we put it on a concept document which describes the character height, era, clothing and weaponry, and any other specific details. That then goes to the sculpting team to make a fully detailed 3D version. At the same time, on the art side, I’m working from the same references that sculpting is, and in some instances, sending reference of the mini sculpting created to the illustrators to ensure we match the details. Ideally, we end up with a mini and art that feel similar.
JN: The characters in Star Wars all have real representations, whether it be in animation form or actors/actresses, how easy or difficult is it to capture the likeness of a character?
Preston: Because of the animation-inspired style of Star Wars: Shatterpoint, translating from an animated reference is the easiest, as there is very little interpretation of detail, and mostly an issue of rendering differently. The hardest thing to do is to interpret a real person from film into an animated character. It’s not only difficult to create a stylized likeness, but you’re also dealing with many individuals’ perspectives on if that stylized interpretation is a successful one or not, so it’s a bit of a delicate dance to achieve something you’re excited about and everyone around you sees as recognizable.
JN: Has there ever been a character that has been difficult to draw or direct for?
Preston: Some characters demand higher scrutiny and accuracy of detail than others; there is basically zero tolerance on the details of a main character like Ahsoka, for example. Broadly speaking, it can be a challenge in direction to express that you want near perfect accuracy but also that you want action and proportions to be slightly exaggerated for interest in the silhouette of the figure. Everyone interprets characters differently, so sometimes this ends up with something that feels wrong to some and awesome to others.
JN: What is your process for creating a piece, from start to finish?
Preston: Once the development team lets me know that I need to make art, I’ll write art briefs for everything that we need done. When I’m happy with the art briefs, I reach out to artists who I think will be best for each product (for Shatterpoint, I prefer to have one artist on each expansion so that it feels most stylistically cohesive within that one box). The artists who accept work have three main phases they work through: pose sketches (I like to see 3–6 rough pose options per character, though if you’re a madman like Patrick Brown, you might turn in 20 nearly fully inked poses), inks (these are the final details without color), and full-color illustration.
JN: There are so many ways to go about illustrating a character, from pencil and pen to digital technology. Which is your preferred method for illustrating and/or directing?
Preston: For Star Wars: Shatterpoint, we aim for a very clean animation-inspired style; we want clean and colorful cel-shading and inks that feel sharp. Because we can’t veer from that, there’s no other option besides a digital approach for the final. But if you’re asking me a personal question, what’s my favorite media to work in, I really like drawing in silverpoint/metalpoint (basically, drawing with precious metals on a grounded surface) and I like painting with watercolor.
JN: Who has been your favourite character to illustrate/direct for so far?
Preston: I know it’s not one character, but I really liked working on the whole squad of Inquisitors from the Obi-Wan Kenobi series. Because of the need to be super secret with the details of those characters, I had to illustrate all of those characters in-house. I was really happy with the lightsaber effects that I came up with to show the swirling movement of their spinning blades, and I thought the likenesses turned out great without feeling too much like a one-to-one copy of the realistic characters from the show.
JN: Is there any character you would really like to create art for in the game?
Preston: If I were to illustrate art myself, I always like the challenge of attempting to create the most iconic version of important characters; Maul and Asajj would probably be top of my list right now. For directing, I probably can’t give you a specific name, but I tend to like the secondary characters and more creature-based designs because there is more room for interpretation, and we can push proportion and action more.
JN: When you walk into a gaming store that sells Shatterpoint, it’s your illustrations that adorn the boxes. How does that feel, knowing gamers (whether they play the game or not) are being exposed to your artwork?
Preston: Haha, well, I remember when I first started in this whole game art world, being super excited to see art I worked on displayed on a product in a store, but now I’ve been doing this long enough that I just start critiquing myself and what could have been better or what was successful. What gets me excited now is actually a big display of all of the stuff we created as a studio together and people playing the game that our studio made. It’s just awesome to see a collection of everything we accomplished as a studio so far and see that our game is being enjoyed in the world.
JN: For budding artists, what advice would you give to them if they wanted to get into the gaming industry?
Preston: If you want to work as a freelance illustrator with studios and get the attention of art directors, YOU NEED A PORTFOLIO! Put together 12–15 pieces of your very best finished art relevant to the industry you wish to work in, on an online portfolio. Make sure an art director can easily see all of your work at a glance and keep sending major updates to the folks you want to work with. Our submission email is Artists@asmodee.com (this goes to us, Fantasy Flight Games, and other studios interested in working with freelance illustrators). Keep curating your portfolio to only be the best of the best (don’t be afraid of getting rid of the work that you’ve improved beyond. It’s not good enough to represent you anymore), and present selections of work most relevant to the industry you wish to work in (don’t show me a still life study in charcoal and tell me you can do Shatterpoint art. Show me awesome cel-shaded original characters in rad poses and show me that you fit in the context of our game). Also, unless all you want to do is fan art, there’s no need to present art that isn’t wholly your original creation. I can tell when someone will be good for Star Wars without them drawing Star Wars characters, and you will benefit in the long run by owning more of your original work. Don’t stop promoting yourself and patting yourself on the back publicly, find opportunities to meet art directors in person and get critiques from them, and try to seek out what you feel is the top work in the industry of interest and try to surpass it in some aspect (avoid internal mental comparisons of your worth as a person. We’re looking for positive growth in art quality and clearer goals to aim for, not a mental trauma. Everyone grows in art at a different pace, and you can excel in some areas, highlighting those, while working to improve on others).
A huge thank you to Preston for taking the time to talk with us and delve into all the artwork for Shatterpoint. You only have to walk into any gaming shop that stocks the game to see how immediately eye-catching the artwork for the game is. I would also like to say a big thank you to Ross Thompson for making all of this possible! As always, keep your eyes on Jedi News as we update you with everything Shatterpoint, from news, reviews and interviews.
The post Jedi News Interview: Preston Stone – Art Director, Atomic Mass Games appeared first on Jedi News.
