Inspiration

The Future of Video Games in Sergey Kolesov’s Illustrations

Darina Solodova April, 6 2016

Artist and game designer, known under the alias Peleng, works in a conceptual art style. Such illustrations without the elaboration of details are used at the early stages when creating computer games, movies and comic books.

Sergey Kolesov

Born in Ivanovo, Russia. Studied at the art college and textile academy. Now lives in Lyon, France, and draws illustrations for video games at Arkane Studios.

Sergey drew ninjas at school and Schwarzenegger on school desks and in textbooks. He was good enough to enter Ivanovo Art College. After college, he went to Moscow to try to enter the Institute of Typography.

“I went back immediately, because my portfolio did not meet the requirements for preliminary evaluation. I chickened out and didn’t submit anything at all,” — this is Kolesov’s account of that episode.

To avoid being conscripted, Kolesov entered Ivanovo State Textile Academy, where he got interested in 3D graphics. He spent 5 years working as an artist at the local factory. He started drawing using a computer mouse back then. And when he acquired a tablet, things sped up. Sergey got interested in speed drawing and spent a lot of time in the corresponding threads of CGTalk.ru, a Russian resource popular at the time, and the international CGSociety.org.

Fast-forward two years, he got a chance to work on illustrations for Half-Life 2.

Sergey accumulated enough drawings to start looking for a job in Europe. Fast-forward two years, he got a chance to work on illustrations for Half-Life 2 together with Viktor Antonov, art director for the game.

After that he worked for a French game developer, Arkane Studios, and after a year was invited to Brno to work for Vatra Games (Rush’n Attack: Ex-Patriot, Silent Hill: Downpour).

Kolesov currently works for Arkane Studios (Dishonored и Dishonored 2) in Lyon, where he returned as a senior art director.