CGNetworks Artist Spotlight
Artist Spotlight: Scott Robertson
Leonard Teo, 8 April 2004

A trip to Scott Robertson’s studio in Culver City is a surreal experience. Gargantuan printed artworks line the walls, each with excruciating amounts of detail, and all digitally painted in Photoshop. Most of the printed artworks are either Scott’s own personal work, or produced by his artist friends for the upcoming book Concept Design 2, which his publishing company Design Studio Press is currently working on. This first meeting with Scott was a result of CGNetworks’ ongoing partnership with The Gnomon Workshop, which now publishes Scott’s set of analog training DVD’s from such artists as Feng Zhu, Ryan Church, Carlos Huante, Harald Belker and more.

Scott Robertson was born in Oregon and grew up in the country. Under the guidance of his father, who was also an artist and had attended Art Center College of Design, Scott was drawn to the world of design through his love of vehicles. This passion led him to Art Center in 1987, where he studied industrial design and graduated with a degree in Transportation Design in 1990. “I loved going to Art Center and everything about Industrial Design,“ explains Robertson. “But during my final year of school, I had grown bored with cars and the pace of their development, so after graduating, I opened a design firm with Neville Page.“

For the next five years, Scott was commissioned for a variety of design jobs with Kestrel, Giro Sport Design, Nissan, Volvo, Yamaha, Scott USA, Schwinn, and Medical Composite Technology. The collaboration with Neville Page continues to this day, where the two now share a studio in Culver City, California. Recent clients have included BMW subsidiary Design-works/USA, Bell Sports, Raleigh Bicycles, Mattel Toys, Patagonia, Scifi Lab, 3DO, Minority Report feature film, Nike, Universal Studios, OVO, Black Diamond, Rockstar Games, and Sony Entertainment, to name a few.

Recently, Scott founded Design Studio Press, a publishing company dedicated to art and design. He also teaches at Art Center College of Design, where some of the best talents have recently emerged under his guidance, several such talents being Feng Zhu, Mike Yamada, Felix Yoon and Khang Le.

Launch Crane
(Above) This is a new piece I've been working on for Concept Design 2 and I think it is finished enough to give you a sneak peek. I will probably spend another half-day on it before we go to print. It is a bit overly complex, but it was fun and I hope it looks good large, as I became most interested in the small compositions that you see through the holes of the foreground elements. Printing it large will let the viewer explore these areas of the piece.