Stargate Worlds :: Bios and Pics :: Jake Johnson, Artist

Jake Johnson, Artist

My name is Jacob Johnson and I’m an Artist at Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment; my life has been very interesting. I grew up all over the US…moving back and forth from state to state due to my mother’s job. I usually say that I am from the San Francisco Bay Area, because I was born in Hayward CA. I call Castro Valley CA home because it’s where we always seemed to end up.

I have always loved to draw and create from my imagination. Expressing my thoughts into art is how I communicated my feelings toward life, and others. I found my self loving comic books, not really for the stories or the super heroes, but for the art style. I loved looking at Superman comics and trying to draw the characters on my own. I really didn’t know how to construct a character from scratch, so I would always trace the pages, taping the book on a window and using the light passing through as a light table. I soon grew past the comical super hero stage and moved into more mature themed comic books. I loved Dark Horse and Chaos comics. My favorite was Alien and Evil Ernie. I grew into drawing realistic creatures pretty fast. I would go to the library and check out books on how to draw. I always loved watching scary movies; I would enjoy pressing pause to draw the creatures, sometimes mixing and matching parts to create my own interpretation.

Over the years I dabbed into many mediums of art; painting, photography, and sculpture. In High School, I was a shop nut. Always working on cars and building things with wood and metal. It wasn’t long before I discovered welding, and I loved it! Soon I began making things in the shop out of molten steel and casting small sculptures from sand molds. I got involved with an off campus program offered to juniors who were interested in learning a trade skill. Of course I choose welding! I wanted to become a sculptor, making the huge structures you sometimes see in front of office buildings and in parks. After two years of taking this welding course, and graduating top of my class, I was well on my way to becoming what I wanted to be. But that’s not how it turned out after all. I soon realized that I was not living up to my true potential. So I decided a week before High School graduation to move to Monterey CA to live with my cousin Sean. From there I dabbed into computers and graphic arts, finding myself creating little slogans and logos. I soon wanted to become a graphic artist. I was searching for a creative outlet for all of my ideas. And I thought that this would be a great way to communicate my ideas to the world. So I enrolled into ITT Technical Institute in Hayward CA, taking courses in Illustrator and Photoshop, as well as HTML editing programs.

It wasn’t before long that I realized that being a graphic artist was too limiting in creativity for me. I looked into other colleges and found an art school here in Phoenix AZ. The Art Institute is where I made my home. I enrolled in their Game Art and Design program, wanting to become a concept artist like Feng Zhu.

I spent the next year learning and studying art styles and techniques to become more like my inspiration at the time. I went through many phases of art. First I wanted to be a concept artist, but I soon found out that everyone I met at the school wanted to be one as well. So I got introduced into the 3D world by some guys I had met. And from there on the rest was history. I found an unlimited medium for my creativity. I started character modeling pretty fast, but something was still missing for me. Character modeling appeared not to be what I had in mind; I felt it was too static for me.

While in college I would play games on my computer; but not to play them through as fast as I could. I would always look at the environments and see how they were constructed and built. It was intriguing, and I was engrossed at the level of exploration that I could encounter. That’s it, I found my calling. I found my love for environment art half way through my college career. I was soon learning the Unreal editor and making levels and environments of my own. I was heavily involved in online forums, constantly showing my work to other professionals and seeking their creative input on my work. I actually think I learned more from doing tutorials on my own then I ever did attending classes in college. So I decided to just stop going…just kidding!

After college I got a job offer from Nintendo and moved to Austin Texas to work with Todd Keller and Andrew Jones on Metroid Prime 3, at Retro Studios. When I first started I was in awe of the talent there at the studio. I learned more in my time there then I ever did in college. After Metroid it was time for me to head out so I was told about the Stargate Worlds title that was in preproduction at the time at Cheyenne, and I was very interested. Soon after my inquiry I got a job offer from them and I loaded up my car and headed out. So now I’m here, and it’s been a blast. Working with Unreal3 has been amazing. It’s hard to explain, but no one can tell you what making a game is like until you have been there. A lot of hard work and long hours go into these art pieces. And I am very glad to be a part of this creative industry.

Jake Johnson