Nickname: Strez

Irrational Title: Lead Artist

Qualifications/experience: Industrial design degree at Newcastle University (NSW AU). Worked at Brilliant Digital Entertainment for 4 years (Sydney) making multi path movies. Most of which didn't get published, the movies were using game art to make online movies. The whole concept tanked but that's where I got all my experience. I worked in LA for 2 years with BII before coming back to Sydney.

Previous games worked on: This is my first game.

Hardest moment in development of any game you have worked on: The first day [of T:V] looking at the art schedule and seeing everything the we had to do and get completed was pretty daunting.

Cavern anyone?

First Gaming system: Amiga 128.

Earliest gaming memories: Playing Wolfenstein.

Favourite game of all time and why: Commander Keen - most time spent on a game.

Games currently playing: Knights of the Old Republic, 26 hours in and counting

Do you finish the games that you start: Not that often.

Home PC rig: Yes it is about 3 years old.

Console or PC: PC games - I am getting into console stuff now, I have an Xbox, I never had a console before.

Singleplayer or multiplayer or co-op?: Co-op, I haven't been a big multiplayer, not online at least. We used to play a lot after work.

What does lead artist entail?
Pretty much I am in charge of scheduling the art team and making sure the work gets done. Helping the producer, Tony, schedule what gets done each milestone. I am in charge of implementing the art director's aesthetic on all the art that gets made. Ben [Lee] designs the concepts, he says that this should look this way or that way and it is my job to make sure that the end product looks like he wants and has designed. Helping check and troubleshooting.

Do you have any artistic influences that you would like to tell us about, in terms of design?
I probably should have but I can't think of any or name. I look at heaps of stuff and take the little bits that I like, I don't follow any particular artist or use anyone as a mentor.

When you where doing your industrial deign degree did you have any idea if what you wanted to do when you graduated?
I wanted to do product design that is why I got into it. I wanted to do consumer goods, I just couldn't find any work. One person in my year got industrial design work doing fridges out of 30. They told us that there was a 95% employment rate [for industrial design graduates].

That was clearly a lie
Bold face lie.

Not in Newcastle maybe Japan or something.
I am not into realism but I like to make things look believable. I guess that is my general philosophy on making art in games, believability over realism. If you have got a scene make what ever is in that scene look like it is meant to be there.

You are obviously following that into Tribes
Yes as much as we can. We are making the environments believable even though they are not realistic.

I am not sure if you want to leave this question for Ben [Lee], the world of Tribes and the individual look of the Tribes that we have seen screenshots of was sought of missing in Tribes2. Is it something that you are trying to bring back out in Vengeance? So every tribe has an individual look.
That is pretty much Ben's [Lee] baby. I have put in my own little bits and pieces.

Does Ben [Lee] keep a tight reign on things?
Yeah he has been, everybody gets the luxury of freedom to make anything but it has to be with in the aesthetic of the game. If you are making something for Imperials it has to be within their aesthetic and has to match their guidelines.

Everything has to match the design document?
Yes like the Imperials have got an aesthetic based on squares and 45 degree angles. The Blood Eagles are based on a triangle. Ben [Lee] will probably tell you more about that, it is the stuff he came up with before I started.

Can you explain how something goes from a concept drawing to being in game play? What is the process?
Ben [Lee] will draw it up usually in conjunction with Ed [Orman] and myself. There will be a bit of a discussion about the functionality of the object or what it needs to do. He'll [Ben Lee] take that on board, go away and design it, he will come back to me and I will assign it to an artist, they go ahead and model it. It goes through a revision with Ben and myself. He will look at the aesthetic of it and decides if it is right. I will look at it functionally and technically like the number of polygons and the number of textures that have to be put on it. It will get textured and then it goes back to Ben.
It is not a formal thing we don't have a piece of paper that gets ticked off. Ben or I will be wandering around and have a look at it [the piece of art] and say "yeah cool" or "change that". Then goes back to the artist who will put it in the engine in the editor. It will get setup if it has animations and then the level designers will put it in a level.

How many revisions do art/models etc go through before they are put into the game? Obviously polygon count is going to effect performance.
Most stuff would only go through one revision in the loop but 15 to 25 percent of stuff will get in there [the game] and we will have to change it. Level designers will say hey this doesn't work, sometimes we actually make stuff untextured unmapped and stick it in the level, they play around with it and say we have to make changes before we texture it.

You guys and the level designers are working closely.
Yes, pretty close.

Do you have a speciality? Textures, modelling or characters?
Not really, I am a jack-of-all-trades, which is why I got this job. I actually don't do that much hands on work myself, I do other things such as scheduling and fixing bugs, that sort of stuff. It is a cool job. I do a bit of everything really. We had a guy who has just left that did all the characters. He did that for 14 months, modelling and texturing characters day in and day out.

What is your bible? For the aesthetic do you have a document?
Originally as part of the design doc[ument] there was an art aesthetic document that laid out the aesthetics for the tribes, how things should look, and the colours we were going to use. We pretty much don't need that anymore. Tony can probably tell you but we have made about 80 percent of the art for the game, maybe even more in terms of the raw assets.

What sort of man hours are you looking at for production? How many assets have you made?
We started on the actual game, not the prototype, about 13 months ago. We have had 6 artists on the team. The amount of assets that we've made is enormous, you can't really compare because you never really see. Look through UT2003 and see and there is heaps of stuff there. I can't really compare if it's more or less, it's a lot. If we make a table then there are 3 of them because there is one for each tribe.

So each asset has a different version for each tribe?
Not strictly, we didn't go through and make a list because some tribes have things that the other ones don't. The main things do, if there is a small doorframe and a large doorframe there are 6 of each one.

That is really cool to know that there will be such a division between Tribes.
Yes. The idea is that you can make the same layout but make it look totally aesthetically different.

Thanks for your time Andrew.