From the Witcher to Cyberpunk: What’s it like to do concept art in CD Project Red

During the Game Access conference, we had the opportunity to meet Marek Madej, senior concept artist at CD Project Red, who worked on games like The Witcher 3 and Gwent and is also working on the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 game. In this interview, he told us about how he created characters, monsters and environments for The Witcher and despite his evasive answers; he even revealed some information about the highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 game.

What is the process of developing concept and character art for a game? How much input do you get from other members of the team?

It depends, because for example you have monsters, which is a bit different case and characters, which is also a bit different. With monsters, they are not that heavily dependent on the story, so sometimes we have to cooperate with game designers, like in terms of the fight and so on. Sometimes we do certain things based on the gameplay, like with the toad that’s supposed to have a long tongue and hit the character with toxic acid. But with characters that are in the story, we go to the story guys to check what they wrote. The thing that is important for us is what kind of impression the character should give to the player. And based on that, we try to design a character around it. Sometimes if it’s also connected to the quests, we go to quest designers and ask in which situation a character will look like - if it needs some visual elements connected to the story - and then we propose certain stuff and sometimes we get feedback from each other, but the ultimate decision is made by the art director.

How do you design creatures or enemies in the game? I know that you are working on Cyberpunk 2077, so is the process different when you design organic creatures in Witcher compared to mechanical or biomechanical characters in Cyberpunk?

I don’t know if I can tell a lot about the designing process in Cyberpunk now. It’s different, but I like this process of actually learning new things and realizing what’s important for the design. I just talk with the guy, who is studying some things connected to engineering and he’s basically studying…umm… (Loud music plays in the background) Sorry, it’s so loud. Maybe we could move somewhere where it’s silent?

After suggesting we go outside, Marek continues:

So what I wanted to say is I enjoy this process of learning about new things. Like, for example as I mentioned yesterday in my presentation with the boat, where I did not have any knowledge about sailing and I spent like two days searching about the stuff on the internet and asking a guy next to my desk, because he actually knows a lot (about sailing). And then I was implementing this to my concepts as much as I could, because when you do research by yourself, sometimes you cannot find everything on the internet. And I think that actually concepting is about that sometimes – it’s like how to create something that is believable and also looks cool for the audience. And I don’t care that much about what I design, if it’s basically something that excites me, it’s cool.

And which do you prefer, the fantasy or sci-fi designs?

I don’t know if I prefer fantasy. I enjoy making it, but at this moment it was oversaturated for me. I was also doing too much of it, so I enjoy doing other things recently, or in my spare time enjoy combining certain elements from fantasy and science fiction and putting them together.

So is it easier for you to work on this new project?

I don’t know it it’s easier, it’s definitely challenging and exciting.

You work on games from fantasy and sci-fi or cyberpunk genre, but do you take realistic elements into account when you design? For example armor weight, the environment, clothes practicality.

Yeah, obviously. Because it’s important in a way of functionality. Like, if you would try to design something from scratch, then you would struggle with coming up with the functionality. And people have already figured it out, they created armors this way, because they were functional and they worked and we are trying to take those solutions that were used and adapt them to the stuff we need.

And how do you achieve that? Do you do your own research on fabrics or animal anatomy?

I enjoy reading about those kinds of things. Like, when I was younger and I actually started to draw, it was when I saw Jurassic Park in the TV - it was just a trailer - and I saw those dinosaurs for the very first time I believe and it was so exciting for me, I just drew a bunch of dinosaurs and I started to play with them. And I was so into the dinosaurs I was excited to read about their anatomy and how they evolved into different things, so I believe also that in terms of being a concept artist you can focus on one subject and be excited about the subject, but it’s more about knowing this subject to the moment that you can create something new within this topic.

I love to read books about for example gladiators and about all those details they’ve had. Because all of those armors were designed in a way to make entertainment, so they didn’t have full protection, but they were covered so that there was some excitement in the fight. And there was also a story behind it - so there was a guy who was actually a fisherman and a guy who was a fish and they were fighting each other - so that was actually pretty interesting for me. So I’m constantly searching for those kinds of things. I’m trying to read books; mostly I do research on the internet. Whenever I have the possibility to talk to people that actually know some things about this stuff, I try to learn from them.

I even did clothes making workshops just to learn about how clothes are made, so it actually helped me a lot in terms of thinking about how to make the clothes. Because in the beginning I’ve had this problem that I was just drawing something and there was no way to actually make it believable and functional. It would be a problem to actually sew it later on as a cosplay.

So do you keep cosplayers in mind during the designing process?

Basically when we were working on The Witcher 3 there was not much thinking about it, but the cosplayers are obviously something that brings a lot to the marketing of the game. For me seeing all of those Witcher cosplays here, that’s something amazing. I did some illustrations, like drawings of those costumes and when somebody is wearing those kinds of thing, that’s something super cool.

Can you imagine your designs to work as a part of a gameplay mechanic? Like you have to dress up your character, so it can sustain cold weather or heat? Do you keep that in mind when you design?

That’s actually a part of the gameplay mechanics and also functionality and believability. We try to think about those things, but sometimes we don’t have that kind of mechanics in our game.

Where do you get inspiration from, especially now when you’re working on Cyberpunk 2077?

Hmmm … I need to avoid talking about Cyberpunk, so I’ll tell you where I search for inspiration in general. It’s connected to the question we’ve talked about before – I just try to read about technologies and watch some interesting videos these days, because that’s something super interesting for me. There are so many new ideas and projects that people are bringing and some of them sound great, but in the end they might not work. It’s like the story of the Concorde – it sounds awesome, you can fly super fast, but economically it didn’t work, so that’s why it just disappeared.

Do you take inspiration from any polish artists or game developers?

In terms of artists I love paintings of Józef Brandt, which is a polish naturalist painter. We took inspiration from Ivan Bilibin, this Russian illustrator. We also looked at paintings of Ivan Šiškin. There is also a book that was published in Poland made by Pawel Zych which is about Slavic creatures. Some of the designs I did were heavily based on the stuff that he did. But I believe that we got the rights from him to use a bunch of his creatures as an inspiration for our project.

How do you approach the source material for your game projects – for The Witcher – the books and for Cyberpunk 2020 – the role-playing game? How much do you take from them?

I’ve read the Witcher books before, but not necessarily all of them. And when I started working at CD Projekt, I actually became a fan of the Witcher while I was working on the game and I read all of the books and I was trying to do as much as I could in terms of how I perceive those characters, but some decisions were made by somebody else. For example, there was a discussion about Triss showing her bare chest, which was not necessarily appropriate considering the books, but then it was happening since The Witcher 1 and we couldn’t do that much.

So certain things were not necessarily taken into consideration, because somebody thought it would be cooler to look this way. In certain ways the descriptions of the monster were not that specific in the books, so we had a lot of space for imagination. In terms of the characters as Yennefer for example, we were trying to portray her as close to the books as we could.

Were you familiar with the Cyberpunk 2020 RPG before working on the game?

I knew that it existed, but I’ve never played it. I tried to play RPGs, but it was pretty hard for me to play those games with somebody and usually when I was playing, it was just D&D.

So you haven’t become a fan because of working on the project?

I like the genre; I love Blade Runner, I love Ghost in the Shell, but I’ve never played the pen and paper version. But some of the people in our company play it.

Will we see a bit of Blade Runner or Ghost in the Shell in your designs?

When you’re creating, you obviously take inspiration from things that you love - sometimes not even consciously - but you also want to create something new. So that’s the case for us and I believe that every creative person works this way.

Were there any particular moments when you felt your own designs would match a character much better than how the author imagined them?

Not really. I never actually thought about it, to be honest. Everybody can imagine a character in their own way. There were already a lot of drawings of characters from the Witcher books before the games, because people like to imagine stuff. There are some fanarts that changed the designs of the characters and that’s also cool – seeing all of the possibilities of the characters.

And also the characters were changing from game to game. Like Geralt from The Witcher 1 looks different than Geralt from The Witcher 2 and The Witcher 3.

Before CD Projekt Red you worked in Platige Images, who are now working on the upcoming Witcher TV series. Since you are very well familiar with both the game and the team working on the series, what are your thoughts about it? What do you anticipate?

I don’t know. I wish that the project will be great and that they will have even more audiences, but I don’t necessarily know anything about the production of the TV series.

Do you have any favorite games that you like for their art design? Any game art you can appreciate as an artist?

There are a lot of games that I like. I recently played God of War, which is amazing, it looks awesome. I love Dark Souls games and Bloodborne both gameplay-wise and art-wise. Those games are something that I would also love to work on. I also like a game that’s not so big called Soma, I love the story that was told in this game.

Thank you for the interview.