Meet the Team #8- Martin Houlden (Concept Artist)
Welcome to the 8th edition of our Meet the Team interviews. This week we’ll be interviewing another one of our talented concept artists, Martin Houlden. Martin is one of the people responsible for visualising every detail of the updated Elite universe we are hoping to bring you, so that it is not only true to the series’ legacy, but is also unique from other science fiction. We start as usual by asking Martin to introduce himself:
Thanks, Ashley
My name is Martin Houlden and I'm a concept artist on Elite Dangerous! I've worked at Frontier for 4 years, starting out on Kinectimals before moving onto The Outsider and Kinect Disneyland Adventures, and now on Elite. Due to the nature of my discipline I’ve also been involved in a lot of early development work for pitches and ideas.
How did you get into concept art and what advice would you have to anyone else planning to get into it?
I started out, as a lot of artists do at a young age simply by loving playing video games and drawing for fun and my own amusement, and that never really went away. I was very lucky in having encouraging family and friends and a teacher at GCSE level that was happy to let me do exactly what I wanted for my projects. I went on to study Computer Games Art at university which also incorporated a placement year that I took at Blitz Games, where I learnt in 3 months more about the industry than I did in all the other years of formal education. I then went back to university to finish my BA, and after that came to Frontier!
My advice to anyone looking to come into the games industry as a concept artist would be find what you love about it, do what you love about it, keep at it and have fun! Be honest with yourself and pursue what it is that you enjoy about your craft, but also understand the professional requirements of it - it’s good to develop a set of core skills that are universal to any required art style, and to be able to draw closely to the style of another artist is incredibly valuable as early on you will likely be following in the art direction of someone else! Check out tutorials online and in magazines but take them with a pinch of salt - remember that the techniques are one thing and mental attitude is another, and don’t be too eager to bash out the 'ugly' parts of your art - they might be the parts that make your style unique once developed. What works for one person might not work for you or it might work but you just won’t find it enjoyable. Take time, love what you do and enjoy the journey!
(And take this advice with a pinch of salt too!)
When you applied to work for Frontier, were you secretly hoping you'd get to work on a new Elite?
Of course! I knew at that point that if it happened it wouldn’t be soon, but I even mentioned it in my interview I think. It really is an incredible honour to be working on a childhood dream, I try not to let it sink in too much lest I freak out!
How much experience did you have with the previous elite games prior to working for frontier?
My first experience was with Frontier Elite II on the Amiga. I must have only been about 10 at the time, so too young to really be any good at it but it didn’t stop me trying - the visuals and atmosphere kept me sat trying to figure out what I was supposed to do for hours at a time. It really felt like an exciting toy to me, where I felt anything could happen and it kept me hooked. I’ve not been back to Elite since all that time ago because frankly, I've been waiting for a new one!
Which games outside of Frontier Developments inspire you?
How long do you have? So many it’s difficult to know where to start, the culture as a whole and the diversity and history within it really fascinates me - there are few entertainment forms out there that really offer something for any mood, and my mood fluctuates a lot! Anything from vintage Atari 2600 games through to Treasure Shoot Em Ups, Naomi-board arcade games to baroque JRPGs, Metroidvanias to bespoke art house indie games. For inspiration, I think specifically for Elite I’ve spent more effort trying to *not* be inspired too heavily by games I love, such as the first Halo and the Mass Effect series, so I try to think of things from a more oblique angle whenever possible.
How challenging is it giving Elite: Dangerous its own distinctive style, with so much Science Fiction already out there?
It’s certainly a challenge, I’ll say that much. Luckily Elite sits in a position of having its own design terminology partly worked out through previous technical limitations. As well as this, David knows exactly what he wants and wants to make Elite Dangerous unique, and half the battle is won by having direction that isn’t aiming to be derivative.
Is it tricky to design a ship for current gen levels of detail, using the wire-frame models in the original game as a starting point?
It depends how you look at it. In some ways its very limiting but I prefer to see it as a starting point - as a concept artist you’re taught to visualise things in very primitive shapes and build upon it through layers, and much the same approach can be taken here, and in that regards it’s actually quite easy. Another thing I have found helpful is to think of older video game versions of things that have appeared in films yet are still recognisable - such as early Atari renditions of Star Wars ships. If you reverse engineer those primitive shapes back to the film versions, it makes sense, so I have tried to picture the original Elite as though it were an old video game version of a film, and trying to imagine what that film may have looked like. I’ve found it quite a fun way of thinking of it!
Where do you draw inspiration from for your designs? Do you have any major influences?
Depending on the phase there are two main points of reference - at an early stage I allow the subconscious to work out shapes as a starting point. This subconscious acts to me like a boiling vat of all the things I have ever seen and I let them come out without trying to control or even think about it too much. Then, once speaking to the rest of the design team to see if any of the sketches hold potential we will start to pinpoint specific things about the design that can be emphasised in line with a specific influence, and these influences can be vary varied, drawing on anything from nature, fashion, geometry, culture and other media, and then shaping it into something more tangible and definable. I find this to be the most effective way of coming up with original material, as starting too early with reference material can result in accidentally producing over-familiar works.
In all honesty though, it comes in stops and starts - there’s no definitive way of working something out. I don’t have a specific routine that I go through and as a result sometimes I can go through sheets and sheets of sketches and turn out nothing, yet on another occasion the first thing that comes to mind works out to be the best. This is surprisingly more frustrating than you might think because I still work through a lot of other alternatives after, only to find the first one was best after all!
The actual inspiration just depends on my mood. I try and surround myself with things to constantly stimulate my imagination, and sometimes, weirdly, the inspiration comes from something I’ve forgotten about and suddenly remembered!
Are you a long-standing fan of science fiction? If so, what are your favourite films/books/games in the genre?
Oh definitely. Right from an early age I was very lucky to have an uncle who was a total sci-fi nerd, and I’d spend a lot of my childhood with him as my babysitter, surrounded by Star Trek, Star Wars, Alien, Doctor Who, Terminator merchandise etc. He would take me to the cinema to watch all the latest animations and (kid friendly) sci-fi films. I think the first film series I truly fell in love with was the Alien universe - mostly through seeing my uncle's comics and features in magazines etc. I just wanted to look at the spaceships and sets! So my uncle would actually make me a copy of the films with all the 18 rated stuff cut out just so I could look at the sets and the gadgets. And the only time I would actually see the aliens themselves was in the crude C64, Amiga and SNES games, as well as the action figures my friends had. So the Alien films are the ones I, oddly for my age, have the longest affection for.
More recently my sci-fi tastes are quite broad. I love classic sci-fi such as Alien, Star Wars, 2001: Space Odyssey through Akira and Ghost in the Shell, Cowboy Bebop, Phantasy Star Online to more recent things such as Moon, Source Code and Primer. More recently I’ve finally taken the dip into Star Trek, starting with the original series, and must say I'm totally in love with it! There’s so much fantastic stuff out there, way too much to list
What element of ED are you most excited about?
Experiencing a real simulation of the galaxy! I've been fascinated with space since first laying eyes on the Space Shuttle as a kid and the first thing I ever wanted to do was work for NASA. I then later realised all I really wanted to do was draw spaceships all day, but that interest in exploring space has always been there and no game has managed to capture it quite like the original Elite games, and I can’t wait to see it brought into the 21st century.
What is your favourite ship from the Elite series?
The Falcon. The first time I ever saw Elite was firing up a copy (sorry David, I was a poor kid!) of Frontier Elite II on the Amiga and being totally blown away by the intro and the music. I was really into US Stealth planes at the time and it really looked like a space-ready Lockheed Blackbird and sparked my imagination no end.
Thanks to Martin for the interview and to you all for reading it! Next week’s interview will be with sound designer Jose Castro, who is extremely busy not only recording the various sound effects for Elite: Dangerous, but also the ambient tracks and of course composing the original score for the game. If you have any questions for Jose then let me know below!
Thanks, Ashley
