Meet Nicolas Collings

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nicolas Collings.

Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
I was born and raised in Belgium, where I graduated from computer graphics in 2005. During my last year of school, I got to do an internship in an animation studio owned by former Disney artists. This gave me the sparks and confidence to pursuit a career in that field as a character artist.

My first job after graduation was in a studio called Blue spirit. I was able to get an interview because in part the recruiter had work previously in the same studio where I did my internship the year before. My second job was at the game studio called Larian Studio. I got contacted by them after one of their employee was browsing a CG gallery online and at that same moment, the owner of the company look at his screen while passing by and saw my artwork.

During that time, I was doing a lot of personal projects and was active online on cg forums which helped me to grow some good networking with people around the world working in that same industry. Belgium is a small market and I was really driven to work on some bigger high profile projects. So I contacted one of the friends who worked at the time at Ubisoft Montreal. After she recommended me and forwarded my application, I was hired to work on the Assassin’s Creed franchise. This was huge for me because first I had the opportunity to work on a big title but this also meant that I had to leave my family to move to Montreal. It was a wonderful experience and it gave a big boost to my career.

It leads me to my next dream job, working for the animation studio Blur studio. I had an amazing experience working there on a lot of different game trailers. Moving from Montreal to Los Angeles was a bit stressful but very exciting too. I stayed there a bit over three years.

After that, I returned to video games and worked at Naughty Dog on the game Uncharted 4. I only stayed there eight months because I had an offer I couldn’t turn down to go work for Riot games.

Riot games is the game company who is making League of Legends. It is one of the biggest MOBA game for the last decade. They wanted to create a brand new animation team to make cg stories to explore the universe and characters of league of legends. I stayed there for four years and it was such an incredible experience to work with some of the best in the industry. Unfortunately, they decided to shutdown the team as they were not ready to commit on story strategies that would have provided us the content to create those cg shorts. I then returned to Blur Studio where I am currently still working.

Please tell us about your art.
Professionally I am doing 3d character models for animation and video game projects. In addition to sculpting them, I am also doing the texturing of those assets. What I love about it is that I get recreate the characters that millions of people have connected with while playing their favorite video games.

After work tho I like to practice my art fundamentals. I am learning to draw and paint in the academic process. I never been classically trained so it has been really fun to discovering it on my own. There is so much educational content online nowadays (which can be overwhelming) that you can learn by yourself without having to attend a school like the Florence Academy, etc. This endeavor has been really refreshing, it made me step away from the computer and having a more direct contact with my artworks. It feels more meaningful to me too because I can touch it and feel it. I am focusing my studies on human anatomy, figure and portrait painting. I am still relatively new to it but I hope I will be able to get to a point where I can expose some of my traditional work in galleries in the future.

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing artists today?
There is so much competition nowadays due to the number of art schools and specialized cg schools that exist, The number of students getting out every year makes it so hard for most of them to land a job. The skills level required is also much higher than it used to be due to the level of realism new games and movies are pursuing.

I also think with the booming of social platform like Instagram it has become really easy to follow many artists which is a good things in itself but It can also make you doubt of yourself by seeing all those amazing artists sharing amazing artworks. It creates I think a challenge for young artist to not try to go compare themselves to them and get discouraged or frustrated with their own work and learning progression.

How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
I have currently a few pieces displayed at the Gnomon Gallery. Gnomon is a cg school that host art events during the year aside of teaching. This event is a collection of artworks made by the artist from Blur Studio.

As for my professional work, it can be seen on my personal website or on Artstation.com an online cg gallery.

I have also started sharing on Instagram my traditional artistic journey where I share all my studies and original work too.

Contact Info:

• Website: nicolascollings.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicolascollingsart/
• Other: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolascollings/

Image Credit:
Nicolas Collings – Riot games (NicolasCollings_01_RiotGames_Animation), Nicolas Collings – Blur Studio (NicolasCollings_02_BlurStudioAnimation), Nicolas Collings – Ubisoft Montreal (NicolasCollings_03_Ubisoft_AssassinCreed); Nicolas Collings for the followings images: NicolasCollings_04_BargueStudy, NicolasCollings_05_SkeletonStudy,
NicolasCollings_06_PortraitDrawings, NicolasCollings_07_OilpaintingStudy

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