Claire Hummel

Claire Hummel is an artist that I have been following for years, after finding her through Harry Potter fanart. Her art always has a lot of character, despite often having simple lines and colouring. She is now a production designer, after creating concept art and illustrations for different companies, so I looked at her blog and some interviews to look at what she considers to be most important when thinking about design.

- Illustration at RISD (Rhode Island School of Design)
focusing on rendering, design, storytelling etc

Quote from interview - "My process always starts with an idea or a prompt I want to work with- sometimes it’s brought on by some amazing reference I’ve stumbled across, but I usually want some intent or purpose to motivate my character design process. Who is this character? What’s their role, social standing, personality, career, genre, and universe? What do I want to get out of this piece?"

- Trust your instincts, know the rules before you break them, get a LOT of research and reference images. Some quick studies from reference before designing to internalise it and learn about it. Integrates reference into loose thumbnails and ideas before tightening up and adding details, thinking about silhouette. B&W is less distracting and helps to get the design and value structure down - "an early character sketch for a pitch meeting is going to be much looser than a fully-painted turntable that I’m going to pass off to a modeler."

Bioshock Infinite designs, illustration and concept at Neopets, character and costume work for Sunset Overdrive.

Is currently a production designer at HBO Digital Products.