38 Studios Senior Artist Interview

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Written by BuckGB on July 10th, 2010

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Please tell us a little more about yourself and your history up to this point.

I've been in games now for about five years, and have shipped four titles; Titan Quest, Titan Quest: Immortal Throne, Depths of Peril, and Kivi's Underworld. I'm currently a Senior Environment artist for 38 Studios where I get to do a little of everything. I'm an active moderator on GameArtisans.org, and frequently help out with the organization of Dominance War, Unearthly Challenge, and other such community contests. In the past I've contributed work to indie games, mass market novels, and Smithsonian documentaries, I've given lectures at colleges, spoken on industry panels, and written online tutorials. I also am a recovering Team Fortress 2 addict. Though, I was never that good.

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What is the best part of your job?

Well, making games in general is just a fun thing to do, but to be specific about 38, there's quite a few things that makes the studio stand out. The team is pretty incredible. There's an interesting blurring-of-the-lines between disciplines at 38 that has allowed me to work a lot with programmers, artists and designers, and I've learned a lot from them. As such, the culture has really grown into something cool at 38. I look forward to going to work each morning.

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention 38's 'Free-your-mind' day. Basically, artists are allotted 8 hours a month to work on anything they want, so long as it's related to the game. Have a cool idea for a crazy zone? Use your free-your-mind day for it and show it to designers! Thought up some cool new armor design? Spend your free-your-mind time on it and show it to the character guys. Not every idea gets used of course, but it gets us excited and thinking outside the box. It's ended up working out so well that we extended the practice to the design and programming teams, which has already turned out some awesome results.

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