Morbus
Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
His name is Rashad Redic, and, as he presents himsef, he's «an environment artist [responsible for ]the architecture, props and other various physical structures of the world, but also any non character animations, lighting, landscaping and sometimes level layout where art is concerned.» CGSociety managed to interview him. Here's a snippet. Link further along the post.<blockquote>What was the most challenging part of your work during the Fallout3 development period?
I think the most challenging part of our work is living up to the expectations people have of a Bethesda game. Our worlds are huge and detailed, our dev team could be considered small for the size of game we do, and there's a lot of work involved in providing the variety of unique handcrafted experiences. Nothing about Fallout is procedurally generated; every rock, tree and item in the wasteland was placed by hand, so if there's anything challenging about the process it's getting all that stuff in there and polished to an expected degree.(...)
How much input did you have on the design and style of your work on Fallout3?
Lots! This freedom is one of my favorite parts of the job. We are usually given high level aesthetic goals, but how we interpret those is usually up to us. Throughout the wasteland of Fallout, you'll come across a lot of these corrugated metal and wooden shacks (Republic of Dave and Evergreen Mills are two examples where these are used). When I got the task, it was to more or less come up with a few multipurpose shacks that fit into the current style and looked different enough from the shacks that make up the Megaton settlement. How they turned out was pretty much my design decisions, with some technical considerations for how NPC's may use them. With few exceptions, most all the architecture and props I built are my design choices, and of course any revisions and the final OK are given by the art lead. (...)
What's your favourite game of all time and why?
Most of those games I mentioned are single player games, and there's a strong narrative element to most of those. I loved games like 'Grim Fandango' (and other early LucasArts games), that create some sort of union between the player and the story where an NPC is more than just a vessel of information and the player has a chance to affect and be affected by the story arcs of other characters.
It's something so hard to get right in games, because we as an industry still haven't figured out how to consistently distill a story down to properly paced elements with the near mathematical formulas that movies are created by in terms of when and how often things should happen, so when a game comes along and gets close it's something thats exciting. 'Call of Duty 4' was the last single player game I played where I thought the narrative and pacing were pretty rewarding.</blockquote>Link: Fallout 3 Artist @ CGSociety
Thanks Literacy_Hooligan for the tip.
I think the most challenging part of our work is living up to the expectations people have of a Bethesda game. Our worlds are huge and detailed, our dev team could be considered small for the size of game we do, and there's a lot of work involved in providing the variety of unique handcrafted experiences. Nothing about Fallout is procedurally generated; every rock, tree and item in the wasteland was placed by hand, so if there's anything challenging about the process it's getting all that stuff in there and polished to an expected degree.(...)
How much input did you have on the design and style of your work on Fallout3?
Lots! This freedom is one of my favorite parts of the job. We are usually given high level aesthetic goals, but how we interpret those is usually up to us. Throughout the wasteland of Fallout, you'll come across a lot of these corrugated metal and wooden shacks (Republic of Dave and Evergreen Mills are two examples where these are used). When I got the task, it was to more or less come up with a few multipurpose shacks that fit into the current style and looked different enough from the shacks that make up the Megaton settlement. How they turned out was pretty much my design decisions, with some technical considerations for how NPC's may use them. With few exceptions, most all the architecture and props I built are my design choices, and of course any revisions and the final OK are given by the art lead. (...)
What's your favourite game of all time and why?
Most of those games I mentioned are single player games, and there's a strong narrative element to most of those. I loved games like 'Grim Fandango' (and other early LucasArts games), that create some sort of union between the player and the story where an NPC is more than just a vessel of information and the player has a chance to affect and be affected by the story arcs of other characters.
It's something so hard to get right in games, because we as an industry still haven't figured out how to consistently distill a story down to properly paced elements with the near mathematical formulas that movies are created by in terms of when and how often things should happen, so when a game comes along and gets close it's something thats exciting. 'Call of Duty 4' was the last single player game I played where I thought the narrative and pacing were pretty rewarding.</blockquote>Link: Fallout 3 Artist @ CGSociety
Thanks Literacy_Hooligan for the tip.
