Merry Christmas from the Pixl Glass

Hi Folks!  This has been quite a busy holiday season for me the past few weeks.  I've just returned from visiting my grandmother for her 90th birthday.  It was great getting to spend time with her and the rest of my family who gathered together to celebrate.  I can only hope to live so long and so well!

I have some great new interviews lined up which will start fresh in the new year.  So enjoy your Christmas, Hanukkah, or whatever you may be celebrating.  I hope it's filled with friends, family, and good cheer!

A Modeler with Character

As early as 6,000 B.C., humans have been sculpting their interpretation of the human form. Today that practice is still very much alive in our physical and digital mediums.

Character artists are responsible for producing the people and creatures we embody and interact with in our video games. Whether you're playing as, talking with, or fighting against these characters, they all have one thing in common: the player must believe in them. If they don't appear to belong in the world they inhabit, or have an appealing look, players will reject them and won't buy into the world.

Jonathan Nascone is a Senior Character Artist for Cryptic Studios currently working on Star Trek Online. Jon is responsible for creating new and interesting takes on established character designs in order to provide players with unique appearances for the myriad of cultures that make up the Star Trek universe. A self-style digital sculptor, Jon is happy to just sit at home with Z-brush molding a virtual clay ball into whatever he can imagine.


Why is the character artist role important for the success of a game?

For Star Trek Online we recently announced the game is adopting a free to play model. In F2P a part of that is costuming your character with items like weapons or clothing. We are making an abundance of quality pieces which people can either earn through in-game means or purchase with real money. Characters are just one piece of the puzzle for our game.

As a character artist, especially one on the Star Trek MMO, we have guidelines to go by and cannon to follow. It's a challenge to try to take those established ideas and make them into fresh and new quality pieces. As a character artist on our team we really try to make items that players really want to have. It's fun knowing we can make these cool pieces for the player to go out and acquire.

Working here at Cryptic has been a really interesting adventure so far. You have to learn a bit of programming and a lot of things artists don't typically do. The engine is pretty robust but it takes a good year to master all the ins and outs. I'm 5 months in and I'm still learning how parts of it work.

As a character artist at other companies I was never responsible for rigging and skinning. Things like that were the responsibility of the technical artist. I have an understanding about how to model a character so it deforms properly but I would never actually go through and put in bones, skin the character, then bring them into the engine. It's a lot of extra work and I kind of miss just doing character art but I'm becoming a better and more well-rounded artist for it.

It sounds like you take a character through from beginning to end at Cryptic: model, texture, rig, import into the engine, then make sure it works for all the needs of the game.

Ya, then past the engine to the actual tailor. I set up screenshots for marketing and I'll set up the character with the tools which the player will use to purchase it on the web by doing some coding and stuff. You do it twice too. You make one costume, but it has to have both male and female variants. We get 3 weeks to a month to make one costume set. The art itself is only the first 1/3 or less. The rest of the time is clean up and getting it set up with all the game systems.


Are you given some artistic license to come up with new character pieces like clothing or weapons in order to create something fresh and new that still fits within the cannon of the established Star Trek cultures?

That's been one of the hardest things. We're a small team, roughly 30 people. They're all diehard Star Trek fans. They know the fiction inside and out. I came onto the team not having played MMOs. I like Star Trek but just don't know much about it. I'm learning more about the cannon and the MMO genre every day. So automatically my take on the material is kind of different because I don't come from that background. My first few months were spent learning about the different races and their color palettes, the kind of outfits they wore, and what materials they're made from.

Once you get that kind of base knowledge down then you can start taking those themes and making a spin on that. They do encourage that here at work. We have some concept artists who will create rough sketches and then we go to town and do iterations on our assigned pieces which are later approved by the art director.

Now that I better understand the races, the Klingons for example, I can take the basis for them and really play with it the best I can so you will recognize the design as Klingon but in a fresh new way. So long as we have iconic callback pieces like the emblem of the empire usually the community will like it.

Occasionally we'll have fans call us out for things being not correct. We had an issue where we added a starship from one of the movies. This is a ship that is onscreen in the film for less than a second. It was modeled in the game with something like 86 windows instead of 87 and one of the fans caught it. They went through and counted each one in-game. So we went back and fixed it. We have some very passionate, diehard fans and as an artist you get a little bit wary sometimes because you want to make sure it's "right" in their eyes but also novel. It's an interesting challenge. I'm always learning new stuff.


Speaking of challenges, what is the greatest challenge you have had to overcome, either with a personal project or professionally?

There were a lot of challenges when I worked at Ubisoft. The studio was at first created to work on DS and PSP games. They got the go ahead from France to work on something new for a different system. So in order to make this bigger product they took the staff they already had, who were great at what they did, and hired up a lot more quality people. I had great co-workers who were talented artists but the direction for how to go about making this new big thing, which was ten times the size and complexity of a handheld game, created a lot of conflict and problems.

That was a real challenge to try and stay on track and try to make this thing become reality. At this point it still hasn't but I think as a team we learned to communicate, brainstorm, and have effective meetings. Being part of the core team to actually have creative input on the game was really cool. I try to take that knowledge for having effective communication and presenting my ideas cohesively with a team everywhere I go.


What work are you most proud of? Why?

It's hard to ask an artist that question! To us nothing's ever quite finished, it can always be improved. I think everything I do, either personally or at work, I try to get better with every project or assignment. I can't honestly say there's something that's the best I've ever done before because I know it's not.

I'm definitely proud of all the games I've worked on. I'm proud of the things that I've done on my blog. I know they aren't perfect or finished so they're definitely things to work on. There's no one particular piece that stands out above the rest.


What is it about your current employer or the game industry in general that makes you want to come into work every day?

I don't consider what I do to be just a job but my career. I know it's weird but I know certain people have jobs where they go to work in the morning and want to be out of there right at quitting time, if not sooner. With doing art and video games I don't feel that way. I've worked many jobs in the past where I tried to get in and out as fast as I can, just earn your money and go. We're in a creative field even though some of our creativity is focused in certain ways. I don't take what I get to do for granted at all. I've worked really hard to get here so I can't come to work and not care and just do my 9-5 and be done.

To be able to make an experience that people get to play, it's really cool. When I made my first asset for Brothers in Arms and actually saw it in the game, that was the coolest thing ever. This weapon I made: you can play with it in the game. People around the world can use it. They don't know I made it but the satisfaction that it's in there is so gratifying.

Working at America's Army and seeing our blood, sweat, and tears go into making the product was a really good feeling. I never cared about having my name out there knowing an object or character was from me, but the fact that I know I was a part of something like that is the best feeling ever. I'm proud to be able to say, "Ya, I worked on that"!

So when I come to work every day, even though I'm learning about Star Trek and other new stuff, it's fun things to learn! I'm getting to create something new and unique every day that people can see and play with. I wouldn't trade it for anything.


Are there any techniques or best practices you have learned or developed that have served you well?

It's really simple. I think being an artist nowadays with tools changing every 6 months to a year you really have to never turn off that desire to learn, to try to better yourself and your skill set. I've known artists in the past who have felt they've learned all they need to and they can just do their work with the same tools forever. But things change so rapidly you NEED to have that hunger to always keep learning and try to better yourself in order to be able to survive in a creative field like games or movies.

It doesn't matter what tool you learn, there are so many. Pick a few you want to go with and keep learning from other artists who use those tools and try to better yourself whether you're at school or at your job or wherever you're at. That's really important to keep having that hunger to learn and better yourself. Don't be afraid to share that knowledge with your classmates or coworkers.

At Ubisoft we could volunteer to teach courses on site. We'd tell HR we wanted to lead a seminar on a particular subject and they would help us set it up. It was a great environment for sharing knowledge between artists.

Pixl Thanks

This Thanksgiving holiday I'd like to give thanks to the individuals who have taken the time to help me get this site up and running.

Thank you to Morgan for designing the great pixel illustration.

Thank you to Ashley for his web layout and design expertise.

Thank you to Tory and Jon for their insights and suggestions on how to conduct a good interview.

Thanks to Catherine for all her inspiration.

A big thanks to everyone who has been interviewed.  Being able to share your unique window into game production is the very mission of the site and has been a joy to read and write.

And thank you to everyone who has been reading.  Please feel free to offer up your thoughts or questions you'd like to see answered here!


Happy Thanksgiving!

Pixl Pause

Hello dear readers.  I'm sorry to say your regularly scheduled interview is being postponed.  I know there will be cries of, "Now what will I read with my morning coffee"!?  Fear not, for interviews shall return after the Thanksgiving holiday.  Until then please enjoy the past month of articles!

Animation and Aesthetic Appeal

Have you ever seen a raccoon pull off a daring jewel heist? How about a warrior riding a dinosaur into battle? Maybe a Colin's Bear-inspired Borg?

If you answered yes to any of the above then you may have seen some of the work of Travis Howe, Animator at Sanzaru Games. An animator by trade, Travis feels he's more aptly described as just a creative person. He loves a good story be it in a visual medium like games or film, or simply words in a book or song.

Animators breath life into nearly everything that moves in a game world. From the always on screen character animation to minor ambient touches like the subtle turn of a windmill or a small animal scurrying by. Animation keeps the world from being a static lifeless place.


Why are animators integral to the production of a successful game?

In film everybody knows if you have a great story the animation can be OK and still be a good movie. But if you have great animation and a terrible story then it's going to flop and no one would ever bother watching it. The same can be true for games. If you have a good story, great gameplay and level design but OK animation the game will probably still be fun to play.

For example years ago I worked on a game, Golden Axe: Beast Rider. The animations in the game I felt were beautiful. I was very proud of the work my team and I did but the game itself just isn't fun to play.

I'm not trying to say animators are unimportant! What an animator gives to a game is an aesthetic appeal. It's not going to make or break a project but it's going to stick in a person's mind that the movement was appealing and fun to watch.

At Sanzaru different animators focus on the NPCs, enemy characters, or bosses. I'm working on Sly and the other playable characters. It becomes a balance of making the animation appealing and also making it responsive but not abrupt. When you press the button the action needs to happen immediately.

For example you could make an animation of a character swinging a weapon look beautiful over 120 frames (roughly 4 seconds), but that could be sluggish in the context of a game.

Right, it's something that's interesting when doing animation for the player characters versus the enemies or bosses. With them you want to include anticipation or some sort of tell so the player can recognize what they're about to do and respond accordingly. With player character animations everything has to be immediate.

Boss characters will have patterns that the player has to learn to beat the encounter. As an animator we have to find the right amount of time to project these attacks or actions they're about to do all the while keeping pace with the action on the screen. You don't want a boss that takes too long to wind up that swing otherwise the player could get bored and not be challenged. How do you make those actions look believable while still taking a bit longer to help the player out? It's a fun challenge.


Are there strict guidelines when you're given animation assignments? For example Animation A needs to be exactly 15 frames long, B needs to be 20. Or do you get a bit of creative freedom to make the animation you feel looks best first then the timing is adjusted to support gameplay?

It definitely depends on what studio or even what project you're working on. I've worked on games where I was given exact specifications for frames and poses from the designers. At Sanzaru I have a good relationship with the design team. I get to go with my gut. They trust my instinct on certain things. I'll try something and they'll give me feedback and we'll iterate on it. On this project I've been able to come up with timing for animations. There's not much hand-holding, which I like. It's very rewarding.

I had a recent assignment to create the move set for a character that is unique and complex. I wanted to try something that was different from the original concept art. They gave me the go ahead to give it a try. They ended up liking it so we went in that direction instead. It's been really rewarding as an animator to have influence on the feel of the game.


Of the work you're doing now or in the past, be it personal or professional, what is the greatest challenge you have had to overcome?

I'm not a particularly technically minded person. Whenever I have a technical challenge, even with something like constraints, it's tough for me. I feel like I've grown over time by having to do those sort of things.

The biggest animation challenge I've had was a personal piece of a character climbing a rope while navigating this laser field. Animating the rope was a nightmare. I literally had to go frame by frame to get it right. It was like doing stop motion. I wanted it to look like a naturally reacting rope without using dynamic simulations. This was going on my reel so I wanted to be sure anything moving on the screen was keyframed.

Was it an IK spline sort of setup or were you just using FK, animating the rope bit by bit?

I was using an IK rope I'd found online. It wasn't long enough for what I needed so I ended up constraining 3 of them end to end with a 4th on the other side of the character. There were certain points where both hands would be touching the rope and at those points there weren't enough controls inside to get the exact shape I wanted. I used the 4th rope, which was at times invisible, when his hands weren't both attached to get the look I wanted. It was difficult but it paid off.

Even with your professed technical limitations it sounds like you came up with a creative solution to get the desired result.

When it comes to technical things I try to keep it as simple as possible. My solution definitely wasn't the most elegant. I'm sure a rigger could have come up with a much more refined solution.

So ropes were your most challenging project, but what work are you most proud of?

There's particular things I've been working on for Sly that I'm exceptionally proud of but unfortunately can't talk about yet! I had a pantomime exercise for school that wasn't necessarily my most solid animation piece I've ever done. I look back at it now and see plenty of things I'd like to fix. The main reason I like it so much is I made it during school and my mentor didn't get the joke I was going for. He didn't think it was very funny.

The idea was a character is leaning against a satellite dish amidst a field of other satellite dishes. He's wearing headphones listening to something. Suddenly a spaceship appears in the background and the character starts getting very excited. He jumps up and starts fiddling with knobs on a device his headphones are plugged into. In the background the satellite dishes start moving tracking the UFO. After a moment the sound the character is hearing turns into a song as the UFO floats away. It turns out he wasn't listening for UFOs at all, but a song he liked came on the radio and he got excited and turned up the volume.

I pitched this idea to my mentor and he felt the gag wouldn't work. I felt very strongly that it would. I felt I could achieve a good result. I finished the assignment, and to this day I still get people who will email me when they see it with comments about how they like it. They got the joke and loved the animation. It's always rewarding to hear responses like that. You know you did your job right. I stuck to my guns and did what I felt was the way to go and I'm glad I did!

Other than the paycheck what makes you want to come into work every day?

I actually have about an hour commute without traffic or bad weather. I don't mind it because I love where I work so much. I love what I'm doing. At least once a week I'll see something brand new for the game I haven't seen before. The work done here is so inspiring. Our conference room is filled with great concept work that would look natural on the walls of Dreamworks or Pixar.

The thing that makes it rewarding is remembering back to when I was a kid playing games. I remember having so much fun and being dazzled by how they looked and moved. It's amazing to me that I get to contribute to similar kids' experiences that they will have with the games I'm helping to make now.

That's kind of crazy to think that 20 years down the line you could meet someone who would tell you, "I wanted to make games because of this one game", and that game was one you helped create. Suddenly we're in a position to be entertaining and inspiring.

That almost makes it a little intimidating to me. We have amazing animators here who are much senior to me in terms of experience and I don't get intimidated by them critiquing my work. I get intimidated by the opinions the 10 year old kids playing the game might have!

Professionals are usually polite when giving feedback on your work but kids don't have that filter yet and aren't afraid to say it just flat out sucks! They respond honestly and because of that honesty you know when they like something they really like it. My 2 year old daughter responds to my different animations. She really likes the ones where I have this turtle character. Whenever she sees him she just wants to watch whatever he's doing over and over again.


Are there any techniques or best practices you have developed over the years that have served you well?

One thing that is particular to animation in game development is that you need to get things done very quickly. Because of that an animation can quickly become sloppy. It's very easy to get into the habit of doing something quick and dirty with the intent to go back and clean it up later. In my experience cleaning up later tends to be really difficult and more time consuming than setting a solid foundation and keeping it clean from the beginning.

I make selection sets of the core controls for characters I animate, which are the primary attributes I need to manipulate the most. It helps me to keep things simple and streamlined. I make sure to key each of those controls when I block things out, which helps ensure I have a clean, solid foundation. It's definitely helped me be more productive.


What is the title on which you are currently working?

I am currently animating on Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. This game is absolutely awesome! Fans of the originals and those who have never even heard of Sly will be equally pleased by the game! I am immensely proud to be working on it and that's not something I would say for every project I've been on.


Is there anything about your current or most recent title you are particularly excited about in which you are (were) directly involved?

There are so many things about Sly that I'm excited about; pretty much all of them I can't yet talk about. I worked on a character that is really unique and I was allowed to really stretch my animation wings and try new stuff with him. I'm excited to see how people react to him!

I think, perhaps, the thing I am most excited about with Sly is that I can play it with my daughter. It's a very family friendly game yet it's still fun for adults. The other day I saw a segment I hadn't seen before and the humor in it was SO good. I was laughing about it later that night. The previous game I worked on had an "M" rating so it's nice to do something that I can share with my daughter!


Tell me about your background.

When I was a kid seeing Disney movies it made me want to be an animator. Sometime in 8th grade it occurred to me that I wasn't a great artist and I gave up on the idea. However I was still really interested in animation. I watched the movies and read lots of books on the subject. I thought maybe one day I could be an animation historian or something.

The summer after graduating from high school I saw Monsters Inc. in the theaters. My entire life was changed. There's an amazing quote from Walt Disney and this movie was the epitome of it. The quote is "Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive". It basically means you can come up with whatever you can imagine.

Certain things weren't necessarily possible with just film and human actors. We can do anything now. You can have a doorknob that talks or an entire planet of alien beings you can make people believe exist. You can tell an entire story from the perspective of a toaster, a vacuum and a blanket. It's just incredible to me what we can do with animation.

Monsters Inc. specifically was that to me. When I saw it I thought it couldn't get any more creative than that. What's nice is that since I've seen things that have convinced me otherwise. It DOES get more creative than that. The envelope can still be pushed and more amazing things have been created. At that point I decided I had to get into animation.

I toured Cal Arts and realized I wouldn't be able to afford to go to school there. So I started taking Flash animation courses at my community college. I really wanted to work in film at a place like Pixar. That was my goal. Every day I'd talk with my instructor after class, all the way to their car sometimes! I'd be asking questions about animation, everything she knew on the subject. She realized I was very passionate about it and one day after class she gave me a DVD. It was from the recruiters at Ex'pression College she had recently met.

I checked it out and loved a specific short film on there by a guy named Mike Leonard. It was insanely well done, even for student work. It was very inspiring to me. At the end of the segment it listed his email address so I sent him a message. I asked him about the school and what advice he would have for an aspiring animator. He responded and became an unofficial mentor to me.

I ended up attending Ex'pression. It was a pretty amazing transition in my life from getting discouraged after touring Cal Arts, feeling my aspirations were financially out of my reach, to starting school at Ex'pression. A year later I had a mentor at Pixar. It was amazing to sit with him and talk about animation and to see the studio I had been dreaming of for years. It was incredible. It was really a turning point in my life going to school there.

After graduation my reel still wasn't where I wanted it to be but I ended up getting a job at Perpetual Entertainment doing weight painting for characters. It wasn't exactly what I wanted to do but it was great to get experience. I had recently gotten engaged so I was happy to be working. Eventually I was let go shortly before Perpetual closed its doors.

From there I took a job as a cell phone content creator. We were making animations that ran at 3 frames per second, which was not terribly rewarding. I had come out of Ex'pression with this idea I was going to graduate and immediately land a job at Pixar. Getting experience at these jobs made me realized I needed to be more humble and realize I wasn't this god of animation I thought I was.

I worked there for about 6 months when I got a call from Secret Level. I was confused at first because I had submitted an application probably 6 or 8 months prior and they were just then getting back to me. They had to remind me what I had applied for! When I had the on-site interview the animation lead seemed set to see how much he could make me squirm.

It was him and me at a long table sitting very far apart from one another and he was asking me questions like, "Why did you bother applying to this job? I don't even know why they gave me your reel because frankly you seem underqualified. We're looking for animators who are going to pull their weight and don't need a lot of hand holding".

I got it in my head during the interview that he was trying to see how I would respond to these somewhat rude questions and comments. I tried to be polite as possible while earnestly expressing my qualities and interest in the job. He must have liked what I said because I got the job!

I worked there for about 18 months on Golden Axe: Beast Rider and Iron Man (the movie tie-in game). Both of those games actually made the Top 10 Worst Games of 2008 list somewhere. It was funny to write home to let my parents know something I'd worked on was on a top ten list. This didn't seem like where I wanted to be long term, so I started my search again.

My next job was at Cryptic. I was there for about 2 years. I worked on Star Trek Online, Champions Online, and a couple other internal projects. It was a great opportunity for me. The pipeline was great because it allowed me to stretch my wings as an animator. It was a great production environment with clear milestones and deadlines which I liked having to work toward. At previous companies things like that were a bit more open ended and not as well organized.

During this time I was also attending Animation Mentor. This was a turning point for me in terms of my feelings about my animation. I really killed myself during those years. I was working full time, attending Animation Mentor, and my daughter was born. It was a crazy time in my life.

Just before graduating from Animation Mentor I got an email from someone at ILM involved with the school. They had seen my work and wanted to interview me for Transformers 3. I went out for the interview and was really excited about the prospect. Around the same time a major effects studio let go of a lot of animators, so I didn't end up getting the job there. It hit me sort of hard.

I felt like I'd been working hard for so many years and I was ready for this sort of opportunity. I became a bit privately bitter about it all. Eventually I realized I didn't start down this path to get famous, or the status associated with big name projects. I got into it because I love being creative and contributing to whatever project I'm working on to make it better. I love having people respond to my work.

Sometime later I got an email from a friend who was working at Sanzaru saying they were looking for an animator. I didn't know a whole lot about them initially or what project they were currently working on. But as soon as I stepped inside the studio and saw the work being done for Sly Cooper I was floored. I knew I HAD to work there! I tried my best to convey that to everyone who interviewed me. And now here I am, animating for Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time!


You touched on some of your inspirations in your background, what are your inspirations now?

I feel like for some animators, animation is their big inspiration. It'll be all they talk about. I have friends whose homes are covered with animation paraphernalia. For me I'm hugely into story. I love storytelling. The biggest inspiration for me that gets my animation creative juices flowing is putting my creative energy into other areas.

I'm writing a series of books that I've been working on for the past ten years. They're finally taking off and I'm just about done outlining the first of the three. I'm really excited about where they're going. Having that outlet for my creativity sort of pushes my animation and really inspires me to try new things.

I'm married with a child and spending time with my family is inspiration in itself. I love the work of other people in animation and other creative disciplines. My co-workers are incredible. I really like hearing people's stories they've written, or my musician friends' new compositions. I'm really inspired by people pushing themselves in creative ways all over the place.

My sister-in-law recently made this thing for our daughter. It was this simple craft, a metal star with pictures of our daughter all over it. It was really creatively done and pretty. It made me start thinking of other interesting things I could create to put in her room. Just seeing the work of others really inspires me to push my own.

There's a fellow animator I work with named Chris Magovern. He's a rock star game animator. He does such fast, good work. Seeing what he's doing makes me want to push my own stuff to try harder, work faster and keep my scenes cleaner. It's great being surrounded by people like that here at work.


Knowing what you know now, what advice would you have given yourself when you were just starting out?

During my time at Ex'pression I got this reputation for being the guy who was at the school all the time. I never left. I would sleep there very often. That became a sort of pride thing to me as opposed to getting the most work done. I wasn't doing the best or the most work, I was just the guy who was at his computer the most.

If I could go back I would have kicked myself out of there and said to go get some sleep. Work hard, yes, but rest and find the time to do other things. Go for a walk, hang out with friends, see a movie, play a game. Do something other than working at your computer 24/7. I'm really regretful of not doing that.

I mentioned I had a mentor at Pixar. I would go over there every couple of weeks. I was always so burnt out from school that when I would go over there, apparently I was giving off a very bad impression. I didn't realize how much of one until later on. I always noticed my mentor always seemed a little tense around me.

After I had graduated and started working for Sega I met up with my mentor for lunch and to catch up. He said something I'll never forget which was, "Well, it seems like you're over your crisis". Crisis? I didn't realize I'd been giving off this vibe that I was losing my mind. I thought I was giving off a good impression at the time. It wasn't until I thought back to how I felt then and he was exactly right. I was this kid who wanted to work at Pixar so much. I was learning to swim and was desperately clinging to people who already knew how.

I would go back and tell myself that when you're swimming and you start to freak out, you tense up. You don't swim anymore, you sink. When swimming you have to relax. You have to pace yourself and allow yourself to accept that things will be ok. Push yourself along at whatever pace you can make otherwise you will kill yourself. Not literally of course. I feel like I could have improved professionally as an animator much faster if I had gotten more sleep, relaxed, and taken things one at a time.

We had a dialog animation assignment at Ex'pression for our final in Animation 1. It had to be 10 seconds long. Most students in the class kept to one or two characters. I decided to do a dialog piece from Three Amigos that had four. It was so stupidly ambitious looking back. Why in the world did I take that on? If I had known then to keep it simple I probably would have done much better work. I wouldn't have overexerted myself staying up late nights banging my head against the wall trying to do things I wasn't well equipped and ready for.


What motivated you to work in the game industry?

Actually my original intention was to get into film. Even when I originally interviewed at my current job I thought it would be a stepping stone to that end. But then I saw what the project was and thought it looked really cool. Once I started working here I'm actually not all that interested in going anywhere for a long time, even if a great film job came along.

It's an interesting time in the game industry. I feel like games over the next 10 years are going to advance as much as, if not more than, films have over the past 20. We had this sort of revolution of effects in films. All these technologies have come along that have changed the way in which they can tell stories. Games are starting to get to that point. We can be more cinematic with our gameplay and not just with cut scenes. An incredible example is Bioshock. It was such a great cinematic gaming experience.

I think over the next 10 years we're going to see this amazing change and I feel like I'm in the middle of a video game revolution. There's a renaissance coming. Pretty soon we're going to be playing games that have the same visual fidelity as film. You can get an amazing feel from playing a game that you can't necessarily get from film. That's something I've come to realize over the past year or so, how much things are changing in the game industry, and I'm really excited to be a part of that.

So while games wasn't initially what I was pursuing I feel blessed to have fallen into it.

I think a lot of people have the same experience. After maybe initially writing off games as an inferior platform for expression they explore the game industry for a bit and come to discover that games as a medium have the potential to tell great stories. Depending on how the story is being told games actually have that unique interactive advantage over film.

Absolutely. I was talking to a friend about this difference recently. We were talking about watching horror films. You always have some woman walking toward that one door in the creepy house and you're saying, "Oh no, don't go in that door"! And she of course goes in there and the scary moment happens. Games take that decision and put it in your hands. You suspect there may be a scary moment if you open that door and you have to consciously make that decision to go forward. Otherwise the game may not progress. The game is building up all this tension and suddenly the outcome of what happens on screen hinges on your actions and decisions.

I think that's true for every genre in games. Take mystery for example. Sure you can watch a 2 hour mystery drama movie and see the characters figure out what is going on but it can be much more engaging when YOU have to solve that mystery in order to move the story forward.


What are your favorite games, and why?

- Mario 64. This game inspired me so much. The explorable worlds, simple designs, the unique and constantly-changing gameplay. Everything about this game was wonderful. The most amazing part to me is I still have a Nintendo 64 and of all the games I owned, Mario 64 is perhaps the only one I still consider to be "playable."

- Little Big Planet. For many of the same reasons as Mario 64, Little Big Planet is pure clean fun that leaves me feeling inspired. It's the perfect game to play with a group of friends because the interaction between characters is so simple and yet so enjoyable.

- BioShock. This is the greatest game I've ever played. It has a deep story with twists and turns. It has suspense, heart, and a cinematic quality I've never seen before in a game. I felt like I was watching a fantastic movie; a movie I was in control of.


What are you playing right now?


Nada. I have a wife, a 2 year old daughter, and an hour long commute each way to work. When I get home from my game-making job, video games are the last thing on my mind.

I will say, however, that I am greatly looking forward to Bioshock: Infinite. I'm also very interested to play Batman: Arkham City and Arkham Asylum. Both look fantastic.


Thank you for your time and insights Travis!

If you'd like to see more of Travis' work check out the links below.

animatortrav.blogspot.com
www.sanzaru.com

Creating a Game's Canvas

Just below the surface of any game you play lies a web of logic, data structures, and complex algorithms. Without code and the programmers who create it games would be like an empty car body. It may be pretty but without the engine and other internal workings it's just going to sit in your driveway.

Programmers create the solid foundation upon which all games are made. Without their work your character couldn't move, fire a weapon, or converse with an NPC. In addition to making the systems that make a game playable, they also create all the tools used by every other profession in the game development process.

Nick Whiting is a Gameplay Programmer at Epic Games. Though that is his official title, he thinks of himself more as a "Daywalker Engineer", able to walk in both the gameplay and engine worlds. He enjoys the immediate gratification and creativity gameplay programming provides. Things will go "boom!" when he does his job right. He also finds the difficult, low level problems that need to be solved at the engine level equally compelling. Thanks to Epic's work environment, Nick is able to move between the two departments which constantly challenge him and improves his skills.


Why is the gameplay programmer important for the success of the game?

The artists define the visual look of the world but the gameplay programmer defines how the world works and behaves. It's not just a static visual place but an interactive element which is the advantage that games have over cinema and books. It allows the player to immerse themselves and be a part of the story. It gives them a compelling reason to keep playing through that story via good gameplay and entertaining mechanics.

Artist rendition of a programmer at work

If a game has a brilliant story and a visually striking world but it isn't fun to play around in, there's kind of no point in it. It just...exists. The game has to have good combat or other types of engaging elements to keep you entertained between the bits of story. Otherwise, you're missing the other half of the equation that makes a good game.

The role of the engine programmers is to help artists, designers, level designers, and animators by giving them the tools to bring their vision to life on the hardware. We strive to make it as easy as possible for them to create these beautiful and compelling worlds that exist in their minds. In simple terms, we give the artists the paintbrushes and canvasses to do their work.

Overall the programmer is the yin to the artists yang. They create the visual side, and we create the rules that govern the world.

That's a good way of putting it. It's easy for an artist to point at something on screen to show their work. There's a substantial object or character that's easy to see. It's harder to quantify the final product, visually on screen in the game, for a discipline like programming.

Exactly. I always try to think about it as, "How do you describe the work you do to your mother"? Because my mom doesn't play video games, she'll look at a game I worked on and ask "So what part did you do"? She understands answers like, "I made the canvas for the artists to work on", or "I made the laws of nature that exist in the world". Those sort of answers clicked with her, so that's what I use!

So even though you're officially a gameplay programmer, Epic gives you the freedom to express interest in any area requiring programming talent?

Ya, it's pretty open. Epic is very flexible and lets you bounce around to wherever your interests lie. Of course with any project there are certain things that just need to get done. You can only have so many people working on AI, gameplay, controls, etc. They're very good about moving us around and letting us explore our interests.

Right now I'm working on more engine-centric tasks than gameplay because I expressed a desire. After we finished Gears 3 I moved over to try something else. It helps the company as a whole if your programmers are more versatile and learn more systems. There's more people to help put out any given fire or just help when it's needed. It keeps us interested and passionate. Being encouraged to do that at work is great and one of the compelling things about working at Epic.


What work are you most proud of and why?

In terms of a product as a whole, I'm exceptionally proud of Gears 3. The team was great, the game turned out amazingly. It's kind of surreal playing it now that it's out. As you're developing it you're so heads down and only seeing the things impeding progress like the bugs. You don't get that holistic picture of what the entire product is for some time. Now actually playing it there's a moment of "Wow, this turned out really good"! Product-wise, Gears 3 by far is the best achievement I've had to date.

On a personal level I sometimes think back towards the end of America's Army 3 development. We had so much going against us. Almost everybody by the end had never shipped a game, some had only shipped previous iterations of America's Army. It was a new engine, it was a small team. We only had 3 on-site programmers doing a lot of the engine and gameplay code.

That was a trial by fire. It was a brand new product on a brand new engine with a relatively green team, but we learned and accomplished so much. Just looking at some of the systems we implemented like the sound features and the animation state graph, we accomplished some amazing things for being complete newbs. There was a great sense of accomplishment and camaraderie, just overcoming the odds. I'm still very proud of the work that we did.

I think if I hadn't been in that situation of being the senior guy on site and having to manage people a little bit, pick up loose ends, and put out a lot of fires every day, I wouldn't have been prepared to work where I am now. I learned so much by being thrown in the deep end.

How do you get things done when a feature doesn't get completed or somebody drops the ball? How do you compensate for that? When do you make the decision to compensate for it? I think those are all very valuable lessons that I wouldn't have got if we weren't in that situation.

Considering all the hurdles we had to overcome on AA3 we still managed to get a game out that did pretty darn well for what we had to work with. I'm most proud of that from a personal standpoint.


So from those previous experiences, what would you say is the greatest challenge you have had to overcome either personally or professionally?

Cliff and Tim

I got my start making mods for Unreal Tournament. When I was young I stalked Cliff Bleszinski at an E3 to get a photo of him. Tim Sweeney was always one of those programmers that inspired me. I came to Epic and all the sudden I'm being interviewed by these guys. I'm sitting in meetings with them. We're sitting around conference tables looking at my work and dissecting it.

It was very intimidating at first. The gameplay programmers at Epic have very active design roles. It's a very flat structure so when we're iterating on features we have a level designer, a gameplay programmer, and designer all looking at the implemented proof of concept. As it develops we have constant feedback and critique. We rip the feature apart to see what's good and what doesn't work. When you're doing that with somebody that you've idolized while growing up it's very intimidating and hard to think that your words hold any kind of weight.

When I first got here I never really spoke my opinion because what's my opinion versus these veterans? It was something I struggled with for a good year or so until my lead finally said "Hey, you obviously have a good design sense, you do good work. You should contribute more because we'd love to hear your opinion. This is one of the reasons we hired you, to break these things down and provide feedback".

I started doing that more but it's still hard to this day because I have so much respect for the people I work with. But actually voicing my opinion makes a difference. That's another nice thing about the process that we have at Epic. Anybody that has good feedback or contributions has a high likelihood those ideas will make it into the game.

Now that I'm feeling more confident to speak up, I have to answer questions like: Which ideas do I submit and which do I hold back? When is appropriate to make suggestions? That's one of the trickier things I've been learning to do lately.

Even at America's Army straight out of college the programming test freaked me out. I spent so much time getting over the initial barrier that the people who make games are super-human. But they're people just like us, and that's something you have to remember especially if you've built up games to be this impossible goal.

Just realize that when you get hired your employer usually wants to hear what you have to say. Actually voice it in a creative and constructive way. Your input matters!


Other than the paycheck, what makes you want to come into work every day?

I still think it's darn awesome I get to make games that run on the "magic box" that's sitting by my television. It's something I always wanted to do and now I'm actually doing it. It still thrills me. They say, "Your career should be whatever you would do even if you weren't getting paid to do it". I come home and I make games after work, it's really my life and my obsession. It's awesome being able to do that, especially with the talented team at Epic.

Day to day, as an engineer, I'm hard wired to like meaty problems. I like breaking them down and working through them every day. In game development we are constantly trying to push the boundaries. There's always something new that hasn't been done before. For the nerd and engineer in me there's nothing more compelling than that. If things blow up and look cool as a result of my work, even better! I get to acquiesce my creative side by making cool gameplay and my engineering side by implementing systems or helping others to do their jobs better.


Over the years, have there been any techniques, methodologies, or best practices you have learned or developed that have served you well you would be willing to share?

From a programmer standpoint, just laying down code is important. A lot of the times when you think of certain features it can be overwhelming. Here is this gigantic system I have to create and this is all the stuff it has to link to, where do I even begin? You get "analysis paralysis" where you over think the problem so much that you don't actually start anywhere.

Just start throwing down code, even if you think it's awful. You have a starting point at least. You can make it better as you go. It gives you momentum and a vitally important foothold.

Kismet example

That's not important just for programming but for game design in general. Epic will do proof of concept stuff for new features where we have a designer make a feature in Kismet (the Unreal Engine's visual scripting system) before we invest a lot of programming time. We'll build off that prototype and form it into a more robust feature. It's vital because nobody reads a design document and sees the exact same thing. But when you have a tangible product to start from, everybody immediately understands the designers intent. It gives everyone a common frame of reference to talk about and iterate from.

I think my biggest words of wisdom are to just to get something going even if that start is the biggest, ugliest kitbashed hack in the world. At least you have a starting point and you can make that into something.

Another important thing I've learned, especially for gameplay programmers, is it's very important to have experience working hand in hand with the different disciplines. You don't have to be an expert at what they do and how they do it, but if you have an understanding and an appreciation it makes it a lot easier to: A) Work with them because you have a common language you can now speak, and B) When you're coming up with gameplay features it's very important to understand what other departments limitations and concerns are.

For the programmer the customer isn't just the person buying the game, it's the people that have to use the systems that we've made to also make that game. We need to make the designers, artists, and everyone who has to use the engine happy. You don't want to limit them in any way. You want to give them the tools that empower them as opposed to constrain their vision.


Is there anything about Gears 3 you are particularly excited about in which you were directly involved?

Menus made possible by Nick and the UI team

While we were making Gears 3 we licensed Scaleform for the UI. I was involved in all steps from the evaluation, integration, changing the workflow, to actually implementing it.

We've got this crazy amount of depth with the stats system, awards pages, and end of rounds screens with the in-game scoreboards. Other game studios often have a large team dedicated to stats programming and UI. We pulled it off with just a few guys. We were basically building the plane as we were flying it. Just the fact that we got it all done in the time frame we did, at the quality level we did it, I'm really proud of that.

Painting with Light

What would you see if you turned out all the lights in your favorite game? Or ripped out the sky? I'll tell you, not much!

Light gives us the ability to see our real and digital worlds. It can tell us the time of day, or turn a cheerful place into a moody and hair raising environment. Lighting is directly influenced by the sky, that enormous and ubiquitous ceiling overhead. I sat down with Jason Connell, Lighting and Sky Artist for Sucker Punch Productions to learn about the nuances of his profession.

Soon to be officially titled "Solar and Atmospherics", thanks to the fun loving environment at Sucker Punch, Jason practices both the arts and sciences. His love of art, both traditional and game-based, helped inspire him to create masterful skies for the recently released Infamous 2. Those skies influenced the overall lighting schemes found throughout the games environments.

Though he is currently focusing on lighting and skies professionally, he prefers the title of Artist which more accurately reflects his love and interest in all aspects of artistic expression.


Why is the Lighting and Sky artist integral to the success of a game?

The best way I've ever heard somebody explain lighting is this: Somebody can model and texture a crate, the most basic prop you find in every game. The best modeler and texture artist can make amazing materials and shaders for it. But if you don't light that crate well, then it could look like crap. Bad lighting has made the most masterfully produced crate in the world look ugly.

On the flip side, if you take a mediocre crate with just OK textures and shaders and light it really well, it still has the potential to look good. Without lighting, games look flat and lack definition. Lighting touches everything in the game. In Infamous you're probably looking somewhere at the horizon while you jump from rooftop to rooftop. Your vision is dominated by the sky, which also dictates how the overall lighting appears on the level.

Something I remember my first Art Director, Phillip Bossant telling us, "A painter has to use big, medium, and small brushes in order for something to look right." Meaning get the big stuff right first and move to finer and finer detail. When you do lighting, most of the time you're using the big brushes. From time to time we get to put in little accents here and there.

I'm not modeling the trash on the ground, the car on the street, or the character shooting at you with the gun. While those things are awesome, we get the opportunity to make them look even more awesome with the efforts of myself and my co-workers on the lighting team. We really like that challenge.

We have to make every team happy. The environment and character teams, they want their work to look awesome. We need to make sure the gameplay and level designers are happy because if certain areas are too dark, then the characters (friendly and hostile!) can't be seen.


With the advancement of technology over the years allowing for more realistic lighting in game, the complexity of utilizing those tools has also gone up. Are you happy because these advancements allow you to better achieve a target look, or are you frustrated with just how much more complicated the tools and technologies have had to become in order to produce those end results?

I would say that it's definitely both. I'm not going to lie, it's hard to keep up with the technology as it changes and make the right decisions like "what is going to make the game look beautiful"? With all the technologies on the market it can be hard sometimes to not only learn them so you can make an informed decision but then going through and actually implementing those features. It can be stressful to make that decision and commit. You don't want to be changing your mind halfway through a project.

To answer the question directly, I think it is hard, but that's also what makes it fun. The challenge is awesome. I spent all day working on a shader! My brain hurts right now but I love it. If the challenge wasn't there I'd be bored.


It sounds like new challenges at work every day are the norm. Are there any you've encountered you would call your greatest challenge? Or maybe from a personal project? How did you overcome that challenge?

Oh man, that's easy. It's something I always wanted to do ever since I started working in games. A little over a year ago before I came to Sucker Punch I decided I was going to learn how to digitally paint. I had never done any concepts before. I had a fear of it. I was so wrapped up in the tech art stuff that I never took the time to learn. I got a portable Cintiq. At first I started out painting every day then it settled down to a solid 2 or 3 days a week.

Then I started painting skies at Sucker Punch. Instead of just using photo reference I wanted to try my hand at painting some skies from scratch. I started with simple value, just throwing it down. I'd sometimes use photos for reference. I tried to do a little bit of matte painting work using different elements. The first one took me a long time and everybody really liked it at work. My lead told me to keep doing that!

I did the next one, then another mission came up that needed a stormy sky, then another required a sunset, then the sky at the end of the game. They’re almost all hand painted.  There are a few details where I used some photos because sometimes they give you exactly what you want.

That led me to taking this awesome matte painting course through CG Society with a guy named David Luong at Blizzard. He's fantastic. I'm only in week two but I'm learning a lot.

I'm so happy I took the time to learn this skill. I'm finally starting to feel like a competent painter. I'm not going to get a job as a concept artist anytime soon and it isn't what I want to do. But it feels great to be able to make a painting of a sky, or bring some different elements to create a concept to convey something in my brain. A year ago there was no way that was going to happen.


I think you may have just answered the next question I had for you which is what work are you most proud of and why?

It would be a tie between all the skies in Infamous 2. There's such a personal history behind them stemming from my desire to learn to paint. I made eight skies for the game out of fourteen total. Out of those eight, five of them are hand painted. I think they could be a lot better looking back at them. I had to be really cautious with how many pixels I put up there and how blobby I made things. Overall, I’m pretty proud of how they came out.

One of the other things I got to do was a lot of marketing art. I looked at this game every day and felt that it was extremely beautiful. It's an open world game and it's very, very pretty. I got to make portraits for two of the new characters for a Game Informer exclusive. Then I was given the opportunity to create the box cover for Japan. Knowing that a piece of art that I worked on is sitting on store shelves in another country is pretty outrageous. It's still kind of hard for me to take in.


So other than the paycheck, what makes you want to come into work every day?

I think it's the challenge. I really like this stuff. I love the people I work with. It reminds me a lot of the culture we had at America's Army in Emeryville. A really close knit group. It's a good company run by good people. If I wasn't here, I'd wish I were.

Recently Sucker Punch presented at PAX a "Making of" for the 2D cut scenes from Infamous 2. A lot of co-workers went to the panel and came away wowed. They had no idea how we made those things. It's cool when another team working on the same game as you is doing something so foreign. When they show how its done you just feel enlightened. We regularly have cross-department presentations to share stuff like that.

Overall it's a good mix of mastery and challenge. When I wake up in the morning I have a good bit of stuff to do and when I go to bed at night I feel like I really accomplished something. It's a lot of fun to go to work every day.


From your last production, or just your experience in general, are there any methodologies or best practices you have learned or developed that have served you well you would be willing to share?

I think the most important thing is that you have to want to keep learning. If you're just looking for an easy answer that you can repeat for five years, it's not going to work. The best artists I've ever met and worked with are constantly trying to improve themselves. There's never a point where they feel like they're better than everyone else. There may be a moment of pride where they are proud of their work, but then they always want to make something better and new.

When Infamous 2 came out I was very proud of the skies. But the day it was released I instantly started looking at Halo, Gears and other games to see how they did their skies. You have to be super inspired to keep improving, no matter what it is you're passionate about. Don't ever think you know everything because you don't. There's always someone out there who may be better than you.

I also think it's nice to give back. Our industry is relatively young so there are a lot of people trying to get into it. I feel like young artists coming out of school right now don't have a lot of avenues to get good advice from people who've recently made it in and worked for a few years. They need more access to peers who are one or more steps ahead of them. Once you find work and you're starting to make games, find a local school that has a game development program and offer some free advice or a lecture. If things fall into place I may be teaching a class at a local college soon.

Building Blocks of a Believable World

Who are the prop makers of our digital worlds?  Who produces a multitude of objects so each environment looks like a believable and functional space?

From the largest skyscraper, to the smallest scraps of garbage strewn about an alleyway, game worlds are populated by an enormous number of assets which are used to create a living, breathing world.  I sat down with Nicolas Dunbeck, Environment Prop Artist for Trion Worlds to see what it takes to accomplish this task.

Nic describes himself as a digital Lego craftsman.  Not so much that he creates virtual plastic bricks, but the objects he creates are building blocks that can be turned into complex environments.  They can be snapped together and reconfigured in a multitude of ways allowing for a large variety of sets to be created without the need to make lots of very specific props.


Each person on a game development team serves an important role. If one aspect is noticeably weaker than the rest, it can negatively affect the players overall experience. Why are prop artists integral to the success of a game?

My job, along with other artists, is building all the props and pieces that get put together to build the game.  Everything the player interacts with, it could be something that you shoot at and it blows up, or it could be something you walk inside of like a building.  It could be objects used for cover if it's a shooting game.

It's really important that these pieces get created properly because they will be used all over.  Ours is a large game, so you will be running around this world and objects will be re-used.  If you don't do a good job it will be seen in many places.  It's much easier for the designers when they are laying out the different areas to create what they want if they have the right building blocks.  They fit together just right if they're modular.  The possibilities are endless with what they can create.  We'll make props and the designers will end up using them in some totally different way.  It's satisfying to see that the props we make are versatile.


So is that true for all objects, from a piece of trash all the way up to explorable buildings?

Definitely.  A few months back I made piles of junk (the actual objects, not quality of work), but now I'm working on big buildings. The small stuff is probably what you see more often than the big stuff.  If you take something like a light pole for example, those sort of things are all over a game. There might be a hero set piece, or a big boss, but the things you see more often are the environments and trash mobs.  Simpler characters or props get arguably more screen time than some of the hero pieces.

When it comes to being a prop artist, you have to be ready for anything they throw at you.  It's always a surprise what I'll be working on next.


You mentioned some trash piles and buildings you've worked on recently.  What work, past or present, are you most proud of?

I'm really excited about what I'm working on now, even though I can't go into too much detail.  I'm working on a set of buildings which will go in a specific area.  They may be reused, but right now I'm just focusing on one area.  It's really exciting because typically as a prop artist you are just working on small pieces that can be put in random places around the world.  I get the chance to work on a single area's props all by myself.  I'm building all the props, and designers will lay them out.

I'm really proud to get to that point where my boss trusts me to do that.  Its like a sink or swim sort of thing.  It's all me in this area.  Its great to have a fire lit under you to see how you respond.  I'm learning a lot.  Because I'm working on this area it's been evolving, going back and forth with the concept artist, designer, and terrain artist.  It's exciting to nail the concept artists look and make the designer happy because the props enable him to make the gameplay flow the way he wants.  Finding that balance has worked out very well.


So when you are given an assignment like this how much input and direction are you given to produce the props?  How much of your own artistic interpretation are you allowed to inject into the process?

It depends what stage of the project we're in.  We're in a "full steam ahead" mode right now.  I wouldn't call it crunch mode, but we're moving at a good pace.  We don't want to be taking steps backwards or sideways on asset production, we want to keep moving forward.  When you're in that sort of situation you often find you aren't going to get a fully rendered design.  You're trying to produce as much as you can as fast as you can without rushing so you don't have to go back to fix everything later.  At the same time you can't take as much as you'd probably like to.  The same can be said of the concept artist.

Sometimes I'll receive a sketch, sometimes it will be in color.  Most of the time it's taking a line drawing and interpreting the silhouette and shapes.  I'll talk with the concept artist if I have any questions and get any reference images they may have used to produce the art.  Sometimes you will get a fully rendered concept and that can be really simple to implement.  Right now I'm better at working with that than at the design end of it and using my own creative license, but I'm learning!  I keep the lines of communication open with the concept artist and my leads to ensure I'm meeting their expectations for the prop. Its fun to see designs evolve.

It's always a challenge.  I'm not as seasoned as some of the leads so I'm always trying to figure out how to build something, keep it under the budget, make it look cool and maintain silhouette.  What if a character walks around the backside?  The concept only has one angle!  It can be stressful at times, but it's also fun.  If it's too easy it isn't pushing you to get better.


It sounds like you have to stay pretty flexible to thrive in that environment!  It's nice that each prop comes with its own unique challenges, which helps keep things fresh and continues to challenge you.

So in addition to those things (and obviously the paycheck) what makes you want to come into work every day?

It's really easy to work here because it's an awesome project. It doesn't feel like work because I'm getting to contribute to something I'm very excited about.  The co-workers are awesome too.  If you weren't surrounded by such cool people, you wouldn't want to go to work.  I spend more time here than I do at home during the week.  There are a lot of knowledgeable, talented and fun people to be around.

I sometimes feel dwarfed by all the talented artists I've met at the studio, but for me I feel lucky that I'm working with them.  I'm in shock when I get a paycheck, I'm actually getting paid to do this!

I've found that learning from your coworkers is key.  Don't feel like you have to learn everything in school because you learn so much on the job.  Don't be afraid to ask your peers to learn new techniques.  Everyone has a strength or skill that can help another's workflow process.  Don't be afraid to ask, and don't be afraid to share!


So while working at your current job, or anywhere along your professional career were there any techniques or best practices you have learned or developed that have served you well?

Always get feedback from your peers.  Never work in a vacuum.  During the development of an asset you don't want to get too far along only to learn major changes need to be made.  You can really shoot yourself in the foot and lose a lot of valuable time.

I completely agree.  You'd think in such a collaborative that would be something you naturally do, but I can remember times when I would get so focused on a task I'd just forget to look up and see what else is going on around me.  You have to be disciplined to not get too wrapped up in what you're doing and remember to confer with your friends and co-workers from time to time.

We're Doin' It Live!

I'm happy to say the site is now live! The first interview will be up shortly. Then check back each Wednesday for new articles.

If you have a burning question you'd like to ask a developer of a particular discipline, please let me know and I'll see if I can incorporate it into a future interview.

Until then welcome and enjoy!