Magic: The Gathering Artist on Career, Worldbuilding & Concept Art

Introduction

My name is Jose Vega, and I have been a professional Concept Artist for over a decade. My first inspiration to be part of this industry was video games and anime. I always wanted to be part of the things I love and play. Because I was never an artsy kid, my main source of education at the beginning was YouTube. Later on, I took on a lot of concentrated courses that taught what I wanted to learn in specific.

I was always fascinated by places and environments. I believe the environment shapes the character, and so I wanted to design and build these worlds. Nowadays, I mainly use a combination of 3D and 2D. Depending on the task at hand I choose which tool to use. Sometimes the task is better suited to be handled by using VR and 3D rather than sketching in Photoshop or vice versa. But in most cases, I use Blender as my choice of 3D software, Photoshop for 2D, and Gravity Sketch in VR.

The Artistic Journey

When I first started I worked mainly as an illustrator working for different TCG companies like Fantasy Flight Games and Paizo. I worked on IPs like Lord of the Rings, Warhammer, Starwars, Arkham Horror, and many others. Later on, I started working on bigger projects and companies like Riot Games, Sony, Warner Brothers, Marvel, Wizards of the Coast, and Netflix.

I believe each project has always been a highlight at that time. Because it helped step up into the industry a little bit further up. Some of my most memorable ones are working as a BG Designer for one of Riot's League of Legends champion animations, Amumu The Cursed of the Sad Mummy. Another one was working for Marvel in the Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and Holiday Special. And lastly, of course, working for Magic: The Gathering as a Principal Concept Artist in the Worldbuilding Team.

Magic: The Gathering

Mainly I work for the worldbuilding team and my tasks are to design anything that has to do with environments for all the core sets that will be coming out. This means that every time a new set comes out, years prior we sit down as a team and I design how the environments will look. We go through a lot of explorations and those final designs and images get handed to the illustrator later for them to use in their illustrations. So my audience as an artist on this job is other artists, not the public.

Worldbuilders Workshop

Worldbuilders was founded due to my passion for teaching. I have been teaching and sharing knowledge for a very long time but in the past couple of years I have been wanting to expand that knowledge to other sections of the industry. I founded Worldbuilders in the summer of 2024, and at the beginning, it was just me, but now I'm working with a group of artists to create other courses and content related to other aspects that I can't cover with my skills. Topics like character creation, fundamentals of storytelling, etc.

So my mission is to be able to have everything from the very basics beginning of digital art in either characters, environments, 3D, etc., and have courses that could take you from being a beginner to developing the skills to get you hired in the industry.

The Courses

Right now we have some world-building courses that cover all the world-building techniques I use in my daily job regarding environments and building 3D kits. There is a basics Blender course, and all of those I teach myself.

Later this year there will be other courses from other artists that will be coming out with different styles and topics that I'm super excited about.

Approach to Teaching

I mostly like to concentrate on the Why. The Why we do the things and the choices we make while creating art. The How is the easy part normally but the Why is often the most important and more complex to understand and practice. Especially in my mentorship, I like to concentrate on the work the mentees are doing rather than doing demos. So you get lifetime access to the courses when you join my mentorship, and those will go over the Hows mostly so when we meet for the mentorship, we can concentrate on the Why and the work you are doing.

Target Audience

Mostly intermediate artists. However, I plan to attract beginners because that's where you can start. Especially with this new course for environment design foundations. Depending on the course but most world-building courses as long as you have a good basic knowledge of 3D and Photoshop, you should do just fine.

Jose Vega, Concept Artist

Interview conducted by Theodore McKenzie