Vertex Week: using historical references in video game art with Jehanne Rousseau

Using historical references in video game art

Vertex Week 2022 welcomes Jehanne Rousseau, video game producer, co-founder and CEO of developer Spiders. Rousseau has been creating video games since 1999, and co-founded Spiders in 2008. Since then she has been instrumental in taking the studio from a small indie to a double-A developer on titles such as Greedfall and the forthcoming SteelRising.

In 2020 Rousseau received the Pegasus Prize for Personality of the Year from the Academy of Video Game Arts and Techniques. She was also awarded the Chevalier of the National Order of Merit medal.

Discover how Jehanne Rousseau and her team made use of historical references in their concept art for the video game SteelRising, in our exclusive Vertex Week 2022 video.

If you enjoyed Jehanne Rousseau's talk on using historical references in video game concept art then you'll also love Germán Reina Carmona tutorial on how to improve your character design for games. We also have a tutorial from acclaimed concept artist Thomas Scholes on how to master a modular concept art process. Both tutorials are exclusive to Vertex Week 2022 – see the full schedule below.

Click to enlarge (Image credit: Future)

If you want to get ahead in your video game art career then take a look at our guide to the best-drawing-tablets and the best tablets for animation. We also have brilliant advice to how to get a job as a video games artist

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Ian Dean
Editor, Digital Arts & 3D

Ian Dean is Editor, Digital Arts & 3D at Creativebloq, and the former editor of many leading magazines. These titles included ImagineFX, 3D World and leading video game title Official PlayStation Magazine. In his early career he wrote for music and film magazines including Uncut and SFX. Ian launched Xbox magazine X360 and edited PlayStation World. For Creative Bloq, Ian combines his experiences to bring the latest news on AI, digital art and video game art and tech, and more to Creative Bloq, and in his spare time he doodles in Procreate, ArtRage, and Rebelle while finding time to play Xbox and PS5. He's also a keen Cricut user and laser cutter fan, and is currently crafting on Glowforge and xTools M1.