Today we’d like to introduce you to Igor Artyomenko.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Igor. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I was born in a small mining town in Kazakhstan, which you barely can see on a map. My father worked in a coal mine, my grandfather worked in a coal mine and I may have had a similar fate. However, everything turned out a little bit differently, because I love to draw. I really love drawing and when I was small, I was constantly drawing even during my classes at school. I also had a passion for computer games. After graduating high school, my parents didn’t want me to study at an art school, so I started studying to be an engineer. In 2010, at the age of 20, I visited the United States for three months. I lived in New York, worked as a dishwasher in a restaurant, but I was strongly impacted by this experience and had a desire to do something ambitious and interesting, something that I love. I bought a graphic tablet and laptop and when I returned home to Kazakhstan, I started drawing.
I was lucky enough to find my first job two years later. In my last year of college, I was already writing my thesis, working as an engineer in a factory, and drawing in the evenings. I started to create content for mobile games, magazines, covers for rock bands that nobody has ever heard of before (and will probably never hear about) and generally took any job. However, after that, I was firmly established in the computer game industry. The turning point for me was in 2015 when I started working on a great game called “Banner Saga.” This company invited me to the USA and I ended up in the wonderful city of Austin, Texas. After a few years, I interviewed with Riot Games and currently live in an equally wonderful city – Los Angeles, California.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
From the outside, it might seem that nothing contributed to this: no one in my family was an artist, I didn’t have an art school in my hometown to study art and I had and still have certain problems with my vision. I was born with a condition called amblyopia. My eyes were relatively healthy, but they see differently, so the brain “turns off” one of my eyes, because it can’t combine the image from two eyes into one. So I was practically blind in one eye and still am. I’m currently treating my right eye and still I hope for some improvements.
I also want to mention that I’m very lucky and many good events have happened to me. I was listening to my instincts when I started learning computer graphics on the Internet. Back in those days, there wasn’t much information in Russian and I didn’t have the tools needed to learn. Although, once again, I was lucky and now I have it all!
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I work as a concept artist for a large company called Riot Games, known for League of Legends. I create concepts of environments for video games. I also constantly make personal illustrations and sketches, which you can see below. I am very proud to work for such a large and famous company, it is an honor for me. When you find yourself in an environment where you are surrounded by very talented and successful people, you start to feel uncomfortable that you are not as good as you would like to be. And the only way to get out of this discomfort is to get better. That’s why I wanted to move here.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Initially, the team that created “the Banner Saga” had only two artists and I was one of them. I’ve done a huge amount of content and I treat this project almost like my own. So I am very proud of this. And of course, I’m glad that I was lucky to get into Riot Games. But I hope that the most interesting things are just ahead. Trying to find my own personal style like all artists. And going to learn 3D and always want to learn something new. Perhaps in the future I will draw less and do other more managerial work. Maybe I’ll start my own business or open my own studio. I also love and am interested in cinema. But for now, I would like to stay here, make my life better and just enjoy it. Surfing, biking, taking photos and of course always doing Art!
Contact Info:
- Website: haryarti.art
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/haryarti
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/igor.artyomenko
- Twitter: twitter.com/IArtyomenko
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