For the last four plus years I've worked for Stormfront Studios a games developer in San Rafael, CA. Stormfront as an independent developer works with publishers like EA, Microsoft, Ubisoft and others to create titles for the PS2, Xbox, N64 and PC. Here within the last few months we've just finished up The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers for EA for the PS2 and Xbox and I have to say it looks fairly sharp!

While my title here at the "Front" is senior artist, my real job involves concept design, creation of environmental assets and technical liaison between the art and tech staff. What I end up doing day to day really depends on what stage of development the project is at. Early on in the preproduction phase I may be either creating conceptual art, especially for the environments or working with the programmers to develop the tool chain for getting assets from the art side into the game engine. During the main part of development I am often building the environments from mesh through texturing and lighting. I also am a general tech guy on the art side solving problems and working out the process of getting everything art wise in place. The really nice thing about games is the technology is always changing and for every project there are new challenges and opportunities. The graphics are becoming increasingly complex as new technologies are introduced and the possibilities are growing right along with them. Its an exciting time to be working in games.

My first job in the games industry was with a small N64 Development Company named Gametek who's biggest claim to fame was the ill fated Robotech Crystal Dreams title. Unfortunate as it was that the game was never finished, some amazing work was done and it was a great experience up until the bitter end.

In a former life, prior to moving to northern California, I was involved in 3d product design. You might think that what I do now is a radical departure from Industrial design but its really very similar in many ways. In fact sever of my friends that I was in school with have ended up in the games industry as well. Most of what we do is visual problem solving and that process is applicable to many fields.

Mon 11/11/02

Gametek

Robotech Crystal Dreams

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XENO-1 Texture CollectionTexture Universe CD