WeAnimate 2025-09-29 | wam#0064

Since 2013, MOOD Visuals has been creating captivating designs for games, movies, and more. The visual development studio has designed art and assets for legendary titles like God of War, Elder Scrolls Online, The Last of Us II, and more. From its humble beginnings, MOOD has developed into an industry powerhouse, with increasing staff, expanding portfolio, and an impressive client base.

As the studio has grown, MOOD has stayed true to its roots, with a dedicated team and remarkably low turnover. We spoke with some of MOOD’s veteran artists to find out the secrets of keeping artists and designers inspired and dedicated, year after year.

Simon Fetscher is a Lead Concept Artist who has been at MOOD since 2015, working on projects like God of War, The Last of Us II, Hitman, The Division 2, Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier, and more.  His work has been featured in Kotaku and 2dartist, and he’s happy to talk about his career, his process, and his inspiration. 

Simon: I don’t really have any professional training. I have been drawing since I was small, starting out with Disney characters, and then getting into the usual suspects like Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. After high school, when I asked myself what I really wanted to do, the answer was always concept art. So I took a part-time job and spent the rest of the time every day for a couple of years working on my portfolio, creating concept art, and hanging out on online forums, giving and getting feedback.

There are a lot of great schools today, and we have hired a lot of new graduates from different schools. They have already had the experience of working on assignments that are like real-world projects, so they come into the studio well-equipped for the job. In that way, they are more prepared and have better qualifications than I did; I had only worked on my own art. Of course, they get all of their assignments from a teacher, while my cousin and I made up our own assignments.

In a way, that was good, because we had to learn to be very disciplined on our own, without anyone checking on us. I learned to be disciplined and not need to be supervised by someone else.

 

– Simon Fetscher

So I was living in Malmö and working on my portfolio every day, making cool concept art and trying to match the professional work I could see online. And my cousin Oliver, who was living in Gothenburg, was doing the same thing. Ten years ago EA Ghosts, in Gothenburg, was making Need for Speed, and they were a big deal. So I got in contact with an art director there, and he wanted to have a meeting. At the same time, my cousin got contacted by MOOD, in Copenhagen, and they wanted to have a meeting with him. I didn’t even know MOOD existed, which is so weird; they were just a short train ride away. So my cousin and I thought how convenient it would be if we could do a switcheroo, if instead he went to Ghost and I went to MOOD. So I recommended him and he recommended me, and I went to meet with MOOD and he went to meet with Ghost. And we both got jobs within the same week! It was amazing. It was such a lucky coincidence that I got a job here.

MOOD was only about a year old at that time, and we were mostly working on Hitman and LEGO. It was very intimate; there were only maybe 7 of us in total. The partners did the business stuff but also worked on the art, and they and Jesper really took me in and helped me along. It was a great start-up period to learn and be mentored by those guys. We didn’t even have job titles back in the beginning: everyone was just a concept artist. Now we have leads and seniors and different levels and structures that help make the projects work.

But the soul of the company is still the same: taking care of the artists, avoiding “crunch culture”, and everyone still trying to know each other personally and build relationships.

 

– Simon Fetscher

Video games are a really young industry. I mean, the first video games were only developed at the end of the 20th century, just within my lifetime. So it’s all very fresh and new. The technical aspect of the job has changed completely since I started. The tools are so much more sophisticated. When I started, photobashing was still a new thing. Now you can use 3D and make big scenes for several concepts at once, and use the Unreal engine even within the concept art process. Keeping up with all these changes while you are also actively working can be hard; being in production while also staying current with technology and implementing all these new programs and workflows is a challenge. Of course you have to do it in order to stay relevant, but it’s been a big change.

I worked in the MOOD studio for the first 4 years or so, but since then I’ve been working remotely while living in Sweden. Working in-house with the team gave me an opportunity to get to know my coworkers very well, so that even though I am working remotely I still feel like part of the team. I visit the studio about once a month, and every time I’m there it’s an opportunity to talk to everyone, see what everyone is working on, and reconnect with people who I don’t necessarily work with on a day-to-day basis. It’s very important to me to have a good strong connection with my team, and we are constantly keeping communication channels open and chatting, so that working remotely isn’t too isolating and you’re not just hunkered down by yourself. Then when I’m in the studio we sit down together and keep that going. Since I’m now a lead artist and mentoring others, it’s especially important that I build relationships and keep communication happening. I try to get to know my team members as well as I can, because everyone needs different things in order to be creative and productive.

A good lead needs to be able to listen to all the artists, being open to feedback and suggestions. I want them to be able to critique and give feedback on my work as much as I do theirs. A lead also needs to be able to be decisive and make final decisions, but my artists need to trust that I have considered their ideas and opinions, and that there are good reasons behind my decisions. I want them to understand why I’m thinking a certain way, so they can hopefully reach the same conclusion. We also want the clients to feel like team members, and be included. We don’t want to just get feedback from them and then deliver something. We want them to feel like they are part of the process.

Working in a company that has so many artists under one roof, seeing new faces come in, working on different teams with different people on different projects, gives me an opportunity to meet new people and be inspired by them. I like learning how other people work and think, and it’s probably my biggest source of inspiration. And when it comes to who we’re working with, it’s just been more and more interesting and cool clients, big games, fun projects. That’s also made it really interesting for me to stay and develop within the company.

The industry in general has been growing so much, even though we’ve also seen a lot of layoffs in recent years. The indie scene has also grown and changed a lot, and some indie games now have really big budgets. I love that they are getting more of a spotlight than they got 7 or 8 years ago, and we’re seeing a lot of really cool creativity in those games. A lot of the big AAA games can suffer from the demand to make more and more money and please shareholders instead of gamers; perhaps that will show in their sales numbers in the end and force them to rethink what they are doing, but I don’t know. I’m so happy that I work at an established company that lets me feel so safe. But of course you also have to think about everyone else in the industry, and work on ways of supporting them.

At MOOD we obviously want to do the highest quality all the time, but we are also always thinking about the team. Everything we do is a team effort: nobody just starts doing something and works on it by themselves with no communication.

We want to make sure that we care for each other, while pushing each other forward all the time. We are always trying to improve each others’ work, and all our best stuff, even if it was technically the work of one person, has been done with input from other people with cool ideas who are trying to push it forward.

 

– Simon Fetscher

Simon’s work can be seen here: https://www.artstation.com/simonfetscher

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