We celebrated International Portfolio Day this year by inviting a group of super talented art students into Tonic Towers for the day. The 3rd year Illustration students trekked all the way up to London from Falmouth University, ever dedicated to sussing out some top tips from games artists.

After a short intro to life at Mediatonic, we broke off for one-to-one ‘speed dating’ style portfolio reviews; giving each student a chance to hear the thoughts of a range of professional artists, including the Studio Art Director and Project Leads, through to the Concept Art team who create brilliant art every day in the studio. It was really inspiring to see the students' passion for art, and we were taken aback with the exceptionally high standard of their portfolios!

Being part of an Illustration degree, the students' exposure to the technical side of games development was limited, so we ended the day by taking the opportunity to show some real examples of how concept art plays a role within the development of games. With the opportunity to see the 'under wraps' Gears POP! project in action, we were able to answer a lot of questions and show the product development of a triple-A title right from concept through to the finished game content. We hope they enjoyed our spiel and learned a lot from the adventure, because we certainly had a blast chatting about all things creative!