Click a track to filter sessions
Art
Defining & Achieving Visual Quality!
As John Lasseter put it, “Quality is the best business plan”. This sounds simple enough, the higher the Quality of our project, the more successful it will be, right? Yet in an ever-evolving industry, with myriad competing considerations, how do we go about achieving quality? By what standards do we go about defining and subsequently strategize achieving it?
Games industry veteran Erol Kentli delves into the varied considerations, including:
- Visual style and target platform
- To the relationship between scope and finesse
- The impact of autonomy and team engagement
- The perspectives of the development team & the qualitative expectations of the buying public, and how these might differ
- Establishing quality benchmarks, whilst simultaneously front-loading performance testing
- How we might apply a variety of established creative and management methodologies to the realm of visual beauty with a view to strategizing success!
Session Takeaway
- Insight into considerations around what Quality is, how it is perceived & the benefits of pursuing it.
- How we can strategically plan & scope for Quality.
- How we jolly-well achieve Quality!
Exploring Practical Applications of the 80:20 Rule in Concept Art
The Pareto Principle suggests that 80% of output comes from just 20% of input. For concept artists, this idea can be a powerful framework for deciding where to focus time, attention, and skill development, especially when working under tight deadlines and shifting project demands. In this session, a working concept artist will share how the 80/20 rule can be applied in practice: from rapidly learning new software and tools, to onboarding onto large, lore-heavy IPs, and prioritising daily tasks for maximum creative impact. The talk breaks down how to identify the set of features, skills, and decisions that consistently deliver extraordinary results. Attendees will leave with a practical, repeatable framework for improving efficiency, reducing wasted effort, and elevating their day-to-day performance as a concept artist in a production-focused environment.
Session Takeaway
- Using the 80/20 rule to understand softwares - what are the crucial elements we need to master to get the results we want?
- Creating workflows using the 80/20 rule.
- Using the 80/20 rule when trying to understand a new IP/lore/design principles.
- Planning and preparing for the end goal.
- Having an exit strategy to finish your concept pieces efficiently.
On the Lore Around Art
Who is the artist, what is the circumstance of the artwork's creation, what is the fabric it tries to weave and how are its parts connected?
Session Takeaway
- Why art can't stand on its own and always comes with a context.
- On the importance of said context. What does the artist bring along, it's surrounding and what part comes from our selves.
- On the importance of a red thread that weaves itself through a body of work.
- Be it PR, myth building or unfortunate circumstance, how the context drives or tanks the value of an artwork.
What Games Can Steal from Film Pipelines (and What They Shouldn’t)
Modern game development relies heavily on DCC tools such as Maya, Houdini, and Blender, yet these tools are often treated as isolated asset exporters rather than part of a cohesive pipeline.
In this session, I’ll share practical approaches for building more robust DCC pipelines for games by borrowing ideas from film and animation pipelines while also highlighting film workflows that break down in real-time production. Drawing on experience across film, animation, and game cinematics, I’ll cover which concepts translate well to games, which ones should be avoided, and how to adapt both without over-engineering.
The focus is on pipeline architecture and production realities rather than specific tools or code. Attendees will leave with concrete strategies for improving DCC pipelines to better support iteration, scale, and collaboration in modern game development.
Session Takeaway
- How stronger DCC pipeline structure improves iteration speed, stability, and collaboration across art, cinematics, and engineering.
- What kinds of pipeline capabilities games can benefit from, based on lessons learned from film and animation pipelines.
- Why investing in pipeline architecture and tooling pays off as teams and content scale.
