We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dave Sarabia. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dave below.

Dave, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Art is always evolving and so do I. Understanding that idea was something I learned as I went through my art journey. Learning about myself allowed me to learn more art. Finding ways to relate everything back to art was a breakthrough for me to understanding the craft.

Dave, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

As a kid, I’ve always loved drawing. School wasn’t exciting for me until it was time to do art. I would find myself drawing Dragonball Z characters in textbooks and on my homework assignments to get through class. It was a tool for me to escape in my thoughts and be creative.

Then video games started to peak my interest. From Ratchet and Clank to Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater, I was in love with it. In highschool, my friend gifted me Half Life 2 which changed my view on video games. I started to notice the subtleties in game design and how atmosphere and lighting can influence a player without spelling it out for us.

Oblivion came out and I was so immersed in the game that I had to know how this game was made. I got my hands on the Game of the Year edition of Oblivion and popped “the making of ” bonus disc, and found out that art has a place in the development of a video game. From then on, I wanted to become a concept artist.

What I like about being a concept artist is that I can help solve problems and bring the vision to life. What’s also exciting is that sometimes, the initial vision evolves into something more than what was intended, creating more avenues to explore. I like making art to inspire and push the ideas to immerse the viewer into worlds I help create.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding part of being an artist is understanding yourself a bit more through each struggle. Most of the tasks I get are different and unique. It’s never the same. Even when relying on my process, I still make tweaks for different problems to solve. I would have to look within myself and question if this is the best way to execute the task. There’s times I would need to put my biases away and make decisions that are out of my comfort zone to solve the problem. That’s what I find exciting about being an artist.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Coming from immigrant parents, it was a hard sell to let my parents know that I wanted a career in art. It doesn’t help that other family members didn’t like the idea as well and questioned my decision in pursuing art. Eventually, people around me saw how serious I was about it. My need to prove that art was something important to me showed through.

In my experience, art was always this love-hate relationship. It is a never ending journey of struggle and accomplishment. It’s beautiful. There’s times where I feel very confident in my work– working on titles like Call of Duty, Apex Legends, Love Death Robots, and more– then feeling incapable in my craft. I realize that no matter how far I am in my career, that feeling of doubt from others and from myself will never go away. I just got better at dealing with it. The more I push through the negative thoughts and stay focused with the help of my family and close friends, the outcome always turns positive.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.artstation.com/kiloape
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dave_sarabia/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davesarabia/