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Interview with Jesse van Dijk, concept artist

• by Andy Gongea
• Aug 1, 2008
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In these next few lines, we will talk to an awesome concept artist, with an incredible portfolio. Many of you will surely recognize his artwork – Jesse van Dijk.

I’m sure that our readers will be interested in finding out some information about yourself.
I’m Jesse van Dijk, and I’m a concept artist based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I work as a senior concept artist and production designer at W! Games in Amsterdam. Aside from that I also do freelance work. My background is in Industrial Design, which I think has had a profound influence on my work.

You are a concept artist. Could you explain for our readers what does your work imply?
What I do essentially is to visualize ideas. I work in a game studio where I mainly present the studio with glimpses of the world the studio’s building. I also work closely with game design, to provide them with visual feedback on ideas they have. Aside from that I do illustrations as well, such as book covers.

What do you find most enjoying about being a concept artist?
What I like best about it is you get to really imagine what it’s like to be in the world you’re trying to visualize. You have to think twice about anything you include in your imagery as you want your message to be as coherent and well thought-through as possible.

What’s the most challenging part of your work?
It’s always hard to hit the precise mark – that point where everyone in the project goes; “Yea, that’s what it needs to be exactly”. When it does, it is extremely rewarding.

What works are you most proud of and why?
As an artist your best work is always your next, at least that’s what you hope for. It’s very hard to suddenly drop all your self-criticism at some point and say “pfew, it’s done, and I’m so happy with it”. As for professional accomplishments, I’ve done a lot of stuff for my current employer that I haven’t been able to show to anyone, and as it’s my most recent large-scale body of work, it probably represents my best effort to date.

Considering that your portfolio is quite impressive, both creative and powerful works, what would you think of a proposal of collaborating or even working in the film industry?
That would be awesome. I love creating concept art for games; I would also love to work for film.

Please, tell us about your future plans. What surprises should we expect from Jesse in the upcoming period of time?
Possibly a continuation of my project Indigo, I’ve greatly enjoyed working on that. I’ve got some freelance stuff in the pipeline, which I can’t show yet, and all of the stuff I do at W! Games is also still under wraps. Stay tuned

For more artwork and much higher quality images, you can visit his online portfolio: http://www.jessevandijk.net