Wesley Fenlon | Not with a bang but a whimper.

Last friday I dragged myself out of bed extra early at the frightful hour of 10 am with visions of Dead Space dancing in my head.  Alas, before I could spend the evening divorcing aliens of their limbs, I had to make it through a dreary, rainy day.  As it turned out, though, it was a pretty good day for gaming, but not just because I had the distinct privilege of watching a college professor try to play Dancing with the Stars.

Before that disco fever took hold, I spent two hours in a dark room listening to a guy named Russell talk about art in video games.  He wasn’t just any guy named Russell, though; he was Russell Chamier, a senior art lead at Mythic Entertainment, who recently put the finishing touches on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.  His hefty presentation was formally titled “Video Game Industry Insight and Workflow for the Graphic Artist.”  I think the other 30-odd people who managed to find the classroom in the bowels of the fine arts building were actually graphic artists.  I was just there because he was talking about games.

Russell spent most of that two hours explaining what went into creating 3D art assets for games he’s worked on, and most of the specifics went well over my head — unfortunately, my 3DStudio Max skills are slightly limited.  Still, there was a lot of interest to be gleaned from his presentation.  Above all, I developed a new sense of respect for the graphic designers who regularly pour 80 hour weeks into designing, drawing, modeling, texturing, and animating every piece of the game that I’ll eventually lay eyes upon.  Even if the game industry doesn’t have celebrities on the Hollywood level, the Will Wrights, Ken Levines, and Cliff Blezinskis, all designers, garner far more praise than the artists who labor to make their visions a reality.

I’ll admit I’m a whore for just about anything related to the inner workings of the videogame industry — I imagine that if I ever land a job at a gaming company or publication, my initial reaction will be like a kid left alone in Hershey Pennsylvania.  So when Russell’s talk finally turned from graphic design to what it was like to work for Mythic, I was especially piqued.  I learned some surprising things: a lot of art work is outsouced, and while male:female ratio at Mythic isn’t entirely lopsided, only 3% of the women employed at the studio are artists.  And I learned some things that aren’t so surprising: working at an art lead puts you in a bit of a Captain Kirk position — the higher up you get, the less real art you actually get to do.  Like any corporate job, people skills are a necessity, and so is knowing how to deal with the corporate big wigs; all too often they like to mosey on down to the peons and say “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if…” thanks to some particularly insightful discussion they happened to have with their 10 year old son the night before.

Russell also talked about the shape of the gaming industry as a whole, and while nothing he said was especially out of the ordinary, it was interesting to hear it from an inside perspective.  The cold, hard facts are that people in the industry work long, hard hours, that the enormous development costs of games is directly responsible for the sequel syndrome, and that gaming is mimicking the movie industry in formation and practice; it’s still young, after all.

The two hour presentation came to a close with resume and interview advice (hint: don’t be a bonehead) and a Q&A session.  The few game developers I know much about are notoriously casual, so when a guy asked Russell if he should ever wear a suit to an interview, I was interested in the response.  Russell piped back “It never hurts to wear a suit.  But after you get hired, we’ll make fun of you for wearing it.”  Who says immaturity is a bad thing?