My name is Sean O'Daniels and I'm the concept designer for Shiny Entertainment. I've worked for major publishing and entertainment companies including Blizzard Entertainment, Vivendi Universal, UpperDeck and am now at Shiny Entertainment.
I never "wanted" to be an artist. I just thought I was one. I studied graphic design at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and while there, I taught myself illustration. After I left college, I knew that I needed to grow creatively so I left for Europe. In France I delved into art and promised myself to pursue a career in it. Upon returning, I landed a job with a small start-up game developer named Swinging Ape Studios and worked closely with the art director who saw my strengths in concept design. He soon had me designing all of the characters for the game Metal Arms: Glitch in the System.
After Metal Arms shipped, the company was purchased by Blizzard Entertainment and I began work on a title synonymous with its name, StarCraft Ghost. I'm now working at Shiny and have been here for 10 months. I've been working on concept art for The Golden Compass videogame as well as producing some promotional illustration. Before this project, I had never heard of The Golden Compass. Now, it's safe to say that I'm a complete fan. The author Philip Pullman is a great storyteller who combines important themes on so many different levels. I've enjoyed being immersed in Lyra's world and it was a great experience to see the progress of both the movie and game simultaneously.
When we began working on The Golden Compass game, there wasn't a great deal of reference material to work from. After all, we started long before the cameras began to roll. I knew the film's production designer, Dennis Gassner, would have his own vision of Lyra's world. With no direction or style guide to follow I tried to understand The Golden Compass and tried to imagine how Lyra saw her world.
My creative process typically starts out with research and lots of it! Then through visualization and art direction I try to establish a theme or "design" that correlates with the narrative. My techniques vary depending on the assets available. Sometimes I will block out and paint an environment very fast to visualize my idea. But if I have a lot of great photo references to work with I will always try to incorporate them as well. When it comes to designing, I do as many iterations as possible and review them with the Art Director. The process is very organic as things can change quickly. This kind of problem solving is what I enjoy the most.
