Our five hours workshop in a dark pub’s basement with Concept Artist Ioan Dumitrescu as mentor was like meeting our conscience.
We laughed, we argued, we kissed our fears goodbye or at least had the daring thought that making an artwork out of your career is an artist’s life mission. And that almost never just happens, but it is being made. With hard work and struggle, you know the deal, we’re just here to remind you that. 🌞
Our conspiratorial meet up was again a joint event with the Amber peeps, a both our companies initiative to setup inspiring encounters between our teams and real cool artists we love. As we did it before in May 2019 with superstar Daniel Dociu.
Ioan Dumitrescu is a restless Romanian concept artist working in video games and film industry. Besides being an excellent artist with an immense portfolio, Dumitrescu has created the first ever community of game devs in Romania.
He made two of the greatest events in Romania dedicated to the video games industry – Behind the Iron Curtain-Concept Art Workshop, in 2010 and 2012.
This man with a dream succeeded to bring to Bucharest games industry top stars in times when we could have only dream about having a conversation with the giants. Back then, he felt the need to connect with his local peers and wanted to contribute to expanding their abilities and connections.
Nowadays he’s more into his art than community building, having suffered some heartbreaks when trying to bring together a crew of digital artists.
He thinks us Romanians we’re too competitive and not that open for dialogue and collaboration, as we were all educated in a system that valued more blind competition than real work and vocation. But he still accepted our invitation for an underground workshop with beers after.
And we thank him for that. He called the workshop “Take chances”.
Here’s some strong thoughts that we’ve all agreed upon during this session, also related to Ioan’s work ethics:
An artist is not an island
He or she needs a society:
- Mentorship
From an early age we learn by imitation, at first.
Shadowing your maestro and afterwards “killing” him/her to find your own path is Ioan’s suggested way of learning and getting inspiration.
School’s cool when it’s cool, if you don’t find there what you’re looking, run!
- A community
To give & receive feedback and help. To grow together a movement.
A support team also helps you to keep up with the industry standards by interacting with the others’ works. As Ioan did with the above mentioned first Concept Art based workshop happening in Eastern Europe, with invites such as Alessandro Baldasseroni, Alex Alvarez, Iain McCaig and others.
- A network, to get contracts, thus a professional career
Winter is coming, you need money to make the fire. Society works on money flow. Flow means information. Information is connection.
So you need to put your best work out there in order to be competitive.
Mojitos in summertime aren’t that bad also.
So you make art, you say. Where is it? What do you do with it?
Is it on Artstation? At the museum? On CGsociety, Facebook? Present it!
What do you do with your time?
There’s no rest for the wicked and that’s that. You are what you are most of your time.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
As a professional artist on the job market, always experiment and keep up with the latest techs & trends, don’t ever cease to outbetter yourself, or others will.
Your work must tell your side of the story, not some preconceived clichés. Don’t just wait for things to happen to you, but challenge your future.
Ioan experiments a lot with 3D tools (Max & Zbrush) for creating 2D artworks.
Cinema is a major inspiration source for him, citing directors such as Kubrick, Tarkovsky or Kazan. Besides being credited as concept artist for six Game of Thrones episodes, Assassin’s Creed Movie, Call of Duty Infinite Warfare, Transformers: The Last Knight, Beauty and the Beast, he wrote and directed his first short this year.
“La Tienne” is imagined in the French trenches of WW1 in March 1916 and follows a young girl’s interior battle and primal fears while enduring the horrors of war.
Ioan Dumitrescu on the net:
https://jonone.cgsociety.org
https://www.artstation.com/ioandumitrescu
https://www.facebook.com/Ioan-Dumitrescu-Design-564982913601487/
Until we meet again with a bold and brilliant artist, I’m over and out.
Georgiana Toea, Community Projects Manager AMC