Hawaii born Kekai Kotaki is an illustrator and concept artist for the gaming industry now living and working in Seattle.
He is currently working as Lead Concept Artist on Guild Wars 2 for Arena.net. He has previously done work for Wizards of the Coast, Tor Books, Blur DC Comics, Fantasy Flight Games and Ballistic Publishing, among others.
His work has been included in the last two editions of the Spectrum collections of contemporary fantastic art, several of the Expose collections of digital art and was featured in issue #41 of ImagineFX.
Kataki works largely in digital media, creating his fantastic characters and environments with stylus and graphics software like Photoshop.
He often employs limited, almost monochromatic palettes, combined with an excellent command of atmospheric perspective, to give his compositions drama and layers of depth.
His website has galleries of work from his most recent projects (accessed from a drop-down menu under the “Gallery” navigation element at the top of the page).
As is frequently the case with concept artists, I find the work in his “Personal” section, done without the constraints of a professional job, to be some of the most interesting.
Kotaki also maintains a blog, where you can find other art and news of current projects, as well as a few step-through demos of his working process.
I love the depth he manages to create in Photoshop. Personally I can’t wean myself off of digital painting. Thanks for the great post.
Being now, in my later years, I always have a slight feeling of envy for those working in the concept field, as it was non – existent when I was young ! ( sigh ! )
However, this does not stop me from spending, and enjoying many hours looking at the wonderful work, as here, that is being produced.
No doubt it is a competitive area to be involved in, with enormous skill, imagination and creativity available worldwide, but what fun and pleasure just to be able to look :)