Guild Wars 2 Idea Artist Spotlight: Taylor Krahenbuhl

One of the newest additions to the ArenaNet concept art team, Taylor Krahenbuhl is a multi-faceted, multi-talented artist who understands the synergy between art & storytelling.

Q: Tell us a minimal bit about your background before you came to ArenaNet.

Taylor: I think I began drawing in the womb. For the longest time, all I can bear in mind is drawing & designing everything that I could get my hands on. Comic books, animation, illustration... anything that seemed fascinating to me at the time.

I began working professionally in 2006, largely for smaller freelance-type businesses doing storyboarding & character design. I got my feet wet doing value studies for particular sequences on the feature film Where the Wild Factors Are with my mentor & school professor Ryan Woodward. It was a storyboarding assistant gig with a tremendously short time frame, however it gave me an opportunity to see the story process from the point of view of a specialist who had been working in the business for countless years.

I studied at Brigham Young University, where I received my BFA in animation. While attending the school, I had a great deal of astonishing studio experience that genuinely shaped my desires & goals as an artist. I worked for Avalanche Program in Salt Lake as a concept artist working on titles such as Pixar's Toy Story three and Disney's Bolt. In 2008, I worked for a production team on a stop-motion animated film titled The Legend of Santa Claus.

After graduating from BYU, I was picked up by Walt Disney Animation Studios in Burbank to do storyboarding for a talent development program. It ended up being a writing, character-designing, & story-pitching tornado that was a excellent learning experience. I learned a lot about storytelling and striving for appealing character personalities in my styles.

After interning at Disney, I worked with one of a kind prospects as a freelance artist, doing mainly character designs & story sketches. Quite a few worth mentioning were a Tv-series pitch for a traditionally animated cartoon "Cheese Toastie Brain Monster" and an app set to come out in a few months titled, "My Beastly ABCs." I'm thrilled to come on board at ArenaNet as a concept artist.

Q: I love the watercolor impact in a large amount of your work - are you able to talk a little bit about your creative process and how you settle on an procedure to a piece?

Taylor: My design process virtually relentlessly begins with contemplating a silhouette/composition that appears distinctive and appealing to check out. I will sketch out on paper or digitally paint a number of different suggestions that give me a feeling of what the complete design will look like in just the silhouette form. The gesture, line of action, & personality of a character/creature ought to be solid at this stage. At this point I need to decide if I need to use color and render everything out or keep it grayscale.

Most of the time the degree of rendering on a piece directly correlates to the nature and time frame of the assignments. In the end, for me, it genuinely comes down to a feeling. I by and large try to ask myself if I have developed an interesting story in the end.

The tactic of having a more watercolor feel in my work came from experimenting with new brushes. I know that there are numberless methods of working. That is what I love about being an artist: you're consistently understanding.

Q: Do you find yourself returning to certain concepts, motifs, or themes within your work, or do your assignments genuinely dictate the types of items you explore?

Taylor: What I love about idea art is that themes, motifs, and concepts all seem to change dependent on the existing mood of the story in a Guild Wars 2 gold game or film. Right now, the notion department is targeting particular events specifically for Guild Wars 2 which I'd love to speak more about in due time.

As an artist, I find it refreshing to explore plenty of avenues before settling into a specific design. Regardless of whether the assignment is for an environment or a character, I find that referencing what other artists have done before, photography, or even paying close attention to what I am considering as I drive to work can all be amazing assets when exploring suggestions and themes.

Q: What are you looking forward to about working at ArenaNet?
Taylor: I wake up every morning wanting to tell stories; it is what drives me as an artist. I love the creative process behind designing a character, a world, a particular moment in a story, so I'm thrilled to bring my experience as a character designer and story artist to the ArenaNet team.

I'm also excited about working on concepts of characters, creatures, & environments, whether it's for the Guild Wars world or other assignments. Working in a collaborative environment with a lot of the most talented artists in the industry makes it possible for you to explore designs and methods of working that you never would have had the opportunity to do before.