Tell us a bit about yourself, who you are and where you are?
My name is Adam Williamson, last year I graduated from Staffordshire University in Games Design and am now a Junior Lighting Artist for Cloud Imperium, based in the Midlands. I enjoy playing a variety of video games and play golf in my spare time.
What was your educational and career journey into this role?
So, I went to Staffordshire University on a game’s art course for 3 years. Whilst I was at university, I spent a lot of my time learning the basics of 3D and had a big love and focus on environment art specifically. Once graduated I looked into different roles that were possible in the industry and saw that becoming a lighting artist was a career path. When creating my environments one thing I developed a passion for was the lighting, so after graduating I spent a lot of time learning the process of lighting and eventually landed myself my first job in the industry.
Explain your role as if I have zero knowledge about it?
This is a question that I always struggle explaining to people. A lighting artists role is basically someone who needs to set the mood of a scene. We are given an environment which has been fully textured and modelled. After that our job is to go in and put lights in to capture the mood. We usually have a general direction the Art Director would like it to go in. On top of that there are a lot of other things to think about like leading the player, so they know were to go, then there are other technical things to do in the role, as an example would be optimisation.
Breakdown your average day at work?
A general workday starts with a meeting with the lighting team to go over what we are working on and if there are any problems that we need to talk over and discuss where we are up to on scenes. The rest of the day consists of performing the work previously discussed, usually through trial and error. We also have weekly meetings with the Art Director and Producers where we showcase what we have done that week.
What is your most favourite thing with your role?
One of my favourite things would be that I get to wake up every day and do something that I am passionate about. I love the amount of creative freedom I have and being able to show that in my work. I also love the people who I work with everyday who I learn a lot from, as I am still very new to the industry.
What is the hardest part with your role?
Imposter Syndrome. This is the hardest part of the role and I know it is something all artists struggle with. The main thing for me is to talk to people about it and having support from friends and family helps a lot. Also, with working from home can be challenging with people’s mental health, especially as I have never met the rest of the team in person. If you are struggling, then please talk to someone as you’re not alone!
What are the important skills to do your role?
I think having the understanding of colour theory, value structure and how light works are all core skills for lighting artists. In the role there are also a lot of other things that are important such as, completing work to deadlines and being able to communicate with other team members.
What software do you use most during your workflow and end result?
In terms of software when doing lighting for my portfolio pieces the main ones I would use are UE4 (Not had a chance to dig into UE5 yet) but can’t wait. In addition, after using unreal when I want to do some colour grading I use a mixture of photoshop and resolve.
If you could go back in time, what would you do differently or tell yourself in this context?
This is a bit of an easy question for me. As I don’t think I would have done anything differently because I am really happy now with the role I am in and the company. I think if I had to, I would say to be a bit more confident as sometimes I can be a bit shy in certain situations.
What are your recommended articles or videos to help someone get started with this role?
There are a load of amazing articles out there for people to dig into to learn more about lighting. Firstly, I would say from experience a great place to be is in game dev discords. Here you can talk to industry people and get some amazing feedback on your work which helped me a lot getting started. There are a load out there but a few I would recommend are
Experience Points: https://discord.com/invite/exp-points
Maria&Light bulbs: https://discord.com/invite/GaA3krfWkE
Lighting Bot: https://discord.com/invite/q3aPZqFdA9
I would also recommend checking out some of these links to help you get started as these were really helpful for myself as well.
Tim Simpson: https://youtube.com/c/PolygonAcademy
Exp Points Tutorials:
https://www.exp-points.com/exp-tutorials-florent-tunno-fundamentals-of-lighting-part-1
https://www.exp-points.com/exp-tutorials-florent-tunno-fundamentals-of-lighting-part-2
https://www.exp-points.com/lighting-theory-for-games-maria-yue-exp
Hopefully some of this information can help you get started!
What can someone do to improve their lighting without sitting in-front of the PC?
Go for a walk. This way you can see how light reacts in the real world and you can get so much inspiration from outside. I like to take a lot of photos on my phone when I’m out to keep for inspiration.
Here are Adam’s artstation and linkedin.
ArtStation – Adam Williamson 💡
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