WI’m like a duck: calm and serene on the surface but paddling like mad underwater. As the Deputy Art Director of Environments, I’m ultimately responsible for all the environment art that gets in the game. This means I handle everything from scheduling out the staff’s lives for the next year to fixing bugs. Honestly, my job is doing whatever it takes to get the job done. When is the job done? It’s when the game ships and we have the best environment art ever seen in an MMO to date.
What is your background? College? Has it helped with the job? 1st game industry job? How long have you been with Mythic?
My background is in English. I was an English major at Rutgers University (go Scarlet Knights!) in New Jersey. (I challenge you to find a single grammar mistake in this profile.) [Editor – Yeah, we found some. We win!] While English has not directly translated to making game art, I do find it useful because I can use big words that no one else understands in meetings. I’ve always been into art and began to make modifications for FPS games when I was still in high school. Go check out www.planetquake.com/dday to see my first mod. I got my official start in the industry while I was still in college. During my sophomore summer break I got a gig as a game tester and quickly transitioned into a full-time developer with my background in mod work. About a year after school ended, I made the move to Mythic, and I have been here ever since. I’ve been here about four years now.
What other titles have you worked on in the past? In what capacity?
For my first company, I mostly worked on porting games to the console. But the list of titles on my resume reads roughly like this: Soldier of Fortune (port on PS2), Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force (port to PS2), Bloodrayne (PC), Dark Age of Camelot: Trials of Atlantis, Dark Age of Camelot: New Frontiers, Dark Age of Camelot: Catacombs, Imperator (not released). I started out in this industry as a level designer before learning how to use 3dsMax and then made the transition into full-time 3d artist. I then became an art lead and am now a deputy art director.
What was your “welcome to the game industry” moment when it hit you that you were really making games
for a living?
I’ve been in this industry a while now and there have been several moments along the way that really hit home how lucky I am to have this job. Back at my first company, another coworker and I (Kareem Leggett who ended up finding Mythic and getting me to interview here) were working a late night. We were getting a little punchy and annoyed at people for interrupting us. We decided to stack all the office furniture we could find into a barricade-like structure in front of the entry to our office area. How often do you get to build a fort at your job?!? There have been other smaller moments too. I remember when I first started at Mythic I was painting a texture and suddenly realized I was getting paid to what amounted to a relaxing activity for me. It’s nice to have moments like that.
What excites you about the Warhammer property? What makes it perfect for an MMO? What cool things
in the Warhammer universe do you hope to bring to life?
Warhammer is such a rich IP that, as an artist, I do not think you could not help but fall in love with it. Just flip through any book on the subject and your eyes will light up with all the possibilities it offers to make one of the greatest MMO games ever. It is my goal to ensure that a player will be able to experience the world in all its unique detail on launch day. We want to immerse you in war. We want to provide a sweeping, epoch experience that captures the grit, humor, and depth of the IP. In short, the world art team here wants to knock your socks off and let you escape into an environment you can really feel part of.
Do you collect Warhammer figures?
I do not collect Warhammer figures, but I seem to have amassed a small army of them in my office over time.
What are your hopes/goals for the game?
My hope is that we make a game that causes you to forget about life for a while and simply have fun. I’ve always thought of games as an escape: a way to experience things above the ordinary. I want a player to enter our game world and be awestruck with the scale, scope, and detail to the world. I want the game to be a success because the world needs to know just how cool Warhammer and its history really are. It is a story worth telling and a story worth experiencing.
What are your key influences while making the game?
Most of my influences for the project come from the great concept work our in-house artists produce. I also have a small library of books on architecture which never fail to inspire when there are blanks that need filling.
What is the biggest problem with current MMO’s you hope to fix with WAR?
In most MMO’s, I’ve always felt the artwork was disconnected from the storyline and quests. The environments and other artwork did not seem to reinforce the experience I was having. In WAR, it is my intent for the environments to backup the storyline no matter what stage, level, or sequence a player is progressing through. We want total immersion.
What are your favorite video/computer games of all time? What games are you playing right now?
I’ve always been an FPS player so my top games would have to be Doom, Quake 1-3, Halflife 1& 2, FEAR. Other top games include Beyond Good & Evil, American McGee’s Alice, KotOR, and Day of the Tentacle. I’ve recently been on a bit of a dry spell; I haven’t played a game in about three months. I’m just biding my time for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.
What music are you listening to right now?
I’m into a lot of Indie rock music right now. I’m currently listening to “Clap Your Hands Say Yeah”. Other music on my list includes Radiohead, The Decemberists, Spoon, Ambulance LTD, The Hold Steady, Massive Attack, The Postal Service, The Shins, The Strokes, The White Stripes, Wilco, and other assorted tunes.
Is there a recent movie you’ve seen or book/comic you read that you’d recommend to others?
I’ll recommend a whole bunch of books that no one will want to read unless you are stickler like me. If you want some good literature, read “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay”, “Middlesex”, “The Plot Against America”, “The Life of Pi”, and “The Corrections”. The last book I read solely based on the fact that Oprah wanted to put it in her book of the month club and the author told her, “No”.
Anything else you want to add?
Artists really, really love programmers. And corny jokes are actually funny; I don’t care what you say.
