Cristina Laviña Ferez is an illustrator and concept artist born in Barcelona and based in Los Angeles.
She has worked for companies such as Opus Artz, Blackbird Interactive, reaching the position of Lead Concept Artist at Respawn Entertainment, where she worked on the acclaimed action video game Apex Legends.
It has been a long time since Cristina passed through the classrooms of Joso to take the Manga course.
It was in 2003, being this a special course.
For the first time (and finally, we are not going to fool ourselves) we had a class where the number of women predominated.
A paradigm shift that opened the doors to the next generations full of talent.
Today, being the Main Character Concept Artist at Wildlight Entertainment, Cristina tells us about her experience during the creation of Apex Legends.
Apex Legends.
“I was very fortunate to have an Art Director of the caliber of Jung Park. Jung ParkI was given free rein to work on the parts of the project that I liked the most.
At that time we were preparing the artbook and we still didn’t have a cover.
One day I came to the studio and told Jung that I would like the cover of our artbook to pay homage to those mythical covers that Capcom used to do with all their Street Fighter characters.
Jung liked the idea so much that he gave me the task of creating a cover with all the Seasons characters that had come out so far.”
.“During my three years at Respawn, I was mostly working on Apex Legends creating main characters, keyart and skins. Rampart was the first legend I designed. When I came into the project, this character was already in development, so I didn’t have much time to explore, yet I had a very clear picture of how I wanted Rampart to look and behave. In the process of designing new legends, the Concept team works very closely with the Game Design and Narrative departments. We usually had a skill kit that had been in testing for some time and a brief history of the character. From there, Concept gets to work and come up with different solutions to make the Game Design Kit work aesthetically and functionally. The Apex team is super collaborative, each department has a lot of leeway to come up with the ideas that are going to work best for the character.”
.“During my three years at Respawn, I was mostly working on Apex Legends creating main characters, keyart and skins.
Rampart was the first legend I designed.
When I came into the project, this character was already in development, so I didn’t have much time to explore, yet I had a very clear picture of how I wanted Rampart to look and behave.
In the process of designing new legends, the Concept team works closely with the Game Design and Narrative departments.
We usually had a skill kit that had been in testing for some time and a brief history of the character.
From there, Concept gets to work and come up with different solutions to make the Game Design Kit work aesthetically and functionally.
The Apex team is super collaborative, each department has a lot of leeway to come up with the ideas that are going to work best for the character.”
Expression sheets:
“I’ve always been a fan of manga, anime and animation in general. One of my favorite things to watch are the expression sheets that are done in animation. At that time in the project no one had done expression sheets, but to me they are fundamental to understanding the character to the fullest. The animators liked being able to have these sheets as a guide so much that from Rampart onwards the expression sheets became part of the production tasks.”
Rampart:
“Rampart was the first character to be created with a clear connection to Titanfall (which is where the franchise comes from). This is the first illustration showing an Apex character “tuning” a Titan (the Northstar) into, what would be seen in subsequent seasons, the special Valkyrie suit.”
Valkyrie:
“Valkyrie had been in development for quite some time. When I was given the task of designing her, I instantly fell in love with the character. I asked Jung that I wanted to develop as much of her as I could, to this day she is still one of my favorite characters. Valkyrie brought me back to all the nostalgia I have for the anime I grew up with, like Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell and many other anime from the 80’s-90’s.”
Conduit:
“Conduit’s character design was developed by the great artist. Rachel Gagner and the supervision of Brett Marting.
Los dos son geniales artistas.
En este caso se me adjudicó a mí hacer la ilustración para este personaje.
Conduit es un personaje muy interesante y divertido y quería hacer énfasis en la relación que tiene con su familia, tan cercana, a pesar de la oposición de su hermana a participar en los juegos de APEX.
Conduit ha sido fan de las leyendas y ahora es una de ellas, así que tenía que compartir su primer kill con su familia.»
Expression sheets:
“I’ve always been a fan of manga, anime and animation in general. One of my favorite things to watch are the expression sheets that are done in animation. At that time in the project no one had done expression sheets, but to me they are fundamental to understanding the character to the fullest. The animators liked being able to have these sheets as a guide so much that from Rampart onwards the expression sheets became part of the production tasks.”
Rampart:
“Rampart was the first character to be created with a clear connection to Titanfall (which is where the franchise comes from). This is the first illustration showing an Apex character “tuning” a Titan (the Northstar) into, what would be seen in subsequent seasons, the special Valkyrie suit.”
Valkyrie:
“Valkyrie had been in development for quite some time. When I was given the task of designing her, I instantly fell in love with the character. I asked Jung that I wanted to develop as much of her as I could, to this day she is still one of my favorite characters. Valkyrie brought me back to all the nostalgia I have for the anime I grew up with, like Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell and many other anime from the 80’s-90’s.”
Conduit:
“Conduit’s character design was developed by the great artist. Rachel Gagner and the supervision of Brett Marting.
Los dos son geniales artistas.
En este caso se me adjudicó a mí hacer la ilustración para este personaje.
Conduit es un personaje muy interesante y divertido y quería hacer énfasis en la relación que tiene con su familia, tan cercana, a pesar de la oposición de su hermana a participar en los juegos de APEX.
Conduit ha sido fan de las leyendas y ahora es una de ellas, así que tenía que compartir su primer kill con su familia.»
Cristina’s art brings something more to the game experience.
It is an addition that attracts attention, that makes us enjoy much more the stories in which we are immersed.
That is the work of artists who dedicate their artistic talent to video and board games.
Would you like to be a concept artist like Cristina?
At Joso we teach you!
Take the first step and find out about the professional Concept Art course.
