Meet Rosy Fu | Game technical artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Rosy Fu and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Rosy, what inspires you?
Disco Elysium. I love role-playing games, and this one is incredibly unique. The abstract art style they chose and how well they blend 3d with 2d is one of the best I’ve seen in years.

Disco Elysium is a perfect example of a game combining multiple art forms: Music, story, poetry, and visual, all in perfect unison. It inspired me most to use game to communicate with the audience and tell a story. Everything in the game feels *Real*. All the characters, the world, and the history behind them are fictional, but the author is very honest to the player in many aspects: Revachol feels like an epitome of our world, and the struggle of the protagonist feels real. Their attention to detail makes this fictional world believable. When I control the character to walk around the harbor, I can almost smell the sea salt in the air.

After playing DE, I see the great potential of taking games as a way to push the boundary of immersive storytelling. As an artist, I hope to put my passion for traditional painting into creating game arts like this too.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I currently work as a technical artist at Naughty Dog. I am also a part-time oil paint artist. When I do oil painting, I like using the traditional way, like Caravaggio. I do underpainting first, then apply colored glazing, layer by layer, and then one final layer that varnishes the entire canvas. Surprisingly, this overlaps with how we create materials for game art assets more than I thought. With layered material, we ensure that it represents how a real-life object is made. Take a pistol as an example, in game we would break down the material into layers like dusts, scratches, clearcoat, rust, etc. And by finding the closest math model that can represent how certain materials respond to light, game artists can get the result they want with just some number tweaks. I also love pushing the highlight and slightly change the substance when doing traditional painting/ game arts. Giving skin color a taste of metal, or exaggerating the saturation and the anatomy. The idea of blurring the definition of day-to-day objects is fascinating.

Having the experience of making stylized animation during school also helped. However, nothing compares to having mentors and friends help along the way. To me, the key is not to hesitate to ask for help and embrace failures. It’s hard starting as a student with 0 industry experience. I remember sending out applications blindly and not receiving any reply for weeks. It’s important to know where your passion lies and keep on trying… Whenever I feel frustrated, I will watch the announcement trailer of Zelda: breath of the wild and immediately gain power, lol. A couple of failures give me the right to become a journalist. Find out why I fail; ask people already in my dream position. I think that’s the best way to learn.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
A little art tour that starts probably from Kline Academy of Art, the art studio where I do most of my oil painting work, I met lots of game artists, traditional artists there. Then Getty is a great place that exhibits many of my favorite paintings. The academy of moving pictures and LACMA are also great places to visit. Then probably antic places like jAdis, the last bookstore. As for food, I’d recommend k-town, sawtelle, and little Tokyo. One can’t get enough of good ramen;) Finally a ride along pch sea bay sounds fun.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I want to thank my sister Lily for believing in me and training my sense of art. She is a supportive friend, a great mentor, and an inspiring entrepreneur who shaped my life choice. Guided me through doubt and gave me the confidence to chase my dream. She’s the one who introduced me to the wondrous world of game and made me realize the potential behind it, the underrated art. Now that she runs a toy studio, she comes up with stories of her original characters. I want to one day, like her, develop my own indie games, spread this art form, and bring joy to people.

x x

Website: www.rosyfuart.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rosyfuart/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rong-rosy-fu-761b51151/