Woody Stables, Senior Concept Artist reaches ten years at d3t!
28th Jan 2026
Our Senior Concept Artist, Woody Stables recently reached the incredible achievement of being at d3t for ten years! With this landmark milestone in mind, we recently spoke with Woody to talk about how he began his career in the industry, and also how d3t has changed over time.
How did your career begin and how did you get your job at d3t?
I was a kid with an art degree working on building sites and doing some freelance illustration, realising I wasn’t tough enough to do either forever! I looked at what I was spending my money on (a gaming PC) and thought, a pay check for doing art? Making the things I love? What do I have to do to make this happen?
I therefore took a two-month hiatus, spending all my savings and learning Maya, ZBrush, modelling and UV/texturing, with the end goal of being able to put together a portfolio. After doing this, I signed on with an agent and got an interview with d3t after a few weeks. I jumped into my ancient rust bucket Peugeot 106 and drove the three hours to Cheshire, shouting loudly when I got lost in the maze of motorway junction roundabouts there. I made it just on time and was interviewed by the small team there. I thankfully got the job (at that time as a 3D Generalist), and now all of a sudden 10 years has passed!
How has d3t changed during your time at the studio?
I joined a small team of around 20 employees, in a strange and dated office that looked like a film set from the 70’s. On Thursday’s a siren would screech from a nearby chemical plant at the time to test their systems. I knew about the chemical plant but not about the planned test alarm, so you can imagine my shock to hear an onymous siren blaring and upon looking up, seeing a member of the team comically wearing a gas mask! We were a scrappy bunch who got along and shared knowledge and laughs in large quantities. Over the years we grew in number, outgrew two offices, recruited more specialists and suddenly, we were well over 150 employees!
I’m proud of how hard we’ve worked to keep the excellent culture of d3t in focus whilst growing and adapting to industry changes and acquisitions.
What is it like working at d3t?
I’ve made life-long friends here, and it has been the making of me. My experience will differ from anyone joining now but I feel very confident in recommending joining us to anyone. You will find kindness, acceptance, tolerance and excellence here.
Our projects are really exciting these days, having made a name for ourselves, you can expect to work on major household names, and we regularly have people say, “I got into the industry to work on this project!”
What has been your most memorable moment working at the studio?
Having the Art Director of the original Dragon Age games say my art was awesome, it felt like Beyonce telling you that you can sing.
David Attenborough also said hello to me when we did a museum installation in York, my friends are sick of me lording that over them now.
What was the first game that you worked on?
SEGA Mega Drive Classics
What’s your favourite game to date that you’ve played/worked on?
The people I work with tend to make the projects; FBC: Firebreak, Exodus and a few still under NDA have had wonderful teams with great people.
How has the wider games industry changed during your time at d3t?
The industry is facing some really tough times at the time of writing this – Covid bubble burst, some high-profile losses resulting in investment timidness, growing complexity and the cost of making games without a change in expectation – multiple factors are leading to monumental growing pains. I call them growing pains because I sincerely hope that we will endure them as an industry; it is very small, and you tend to meet people repeatedly, so we are in this together, in a way, as cheesy as that sounds.
But, people aren’t going to stop wanting games, so we all need to work out how to keep making them.
Do you have any tips for people looking to get into the games industry?
It might be tough for a little while yet, as stated above. My advice would be to pace yourself, maybe maintain a part-time job and educate yourself online with tutorials and courses, reach out to people in the industry and make friendships. Learn from those people; what is important to learn and find out what the industry needs and is looking for.
In terms of concept art, I see it frequently. People get so obsessed with style and execution, making something that will get likes on ArtStation. Art like this typically falls into concept illustration. This is a valid but small part of the concept art pipeline, and you are doing a disservice to yourself trying to learn to do that directly. Your job as a concept artist is to design things. From my experience we’d rather see pages of your sketches where you solve problems, answer questions, mix ideas or genres or time periods etc. We want to see the legwork of you making options and then picking the best to take forward, show us those options not just the final product, that would be my critical advice!