Interview with Marshall Womack (Fossil Software) by Antonio Neto

Q. Sometimes I see works of concept art for environments with a lot of detail, but normally some concepts have some objects and materials that are not completely defined and open to interpretation. How do you fill up and figure out these things? Or do you go ask the concept team about it?

Every concept artist has their own style. Some artists draw orthographic diagrams with every bit of info you'll ever need. Others create "mood" pieces which are much more impressionistic. Both serve valuable purposes in game development, but you don't always get what you need. To me, half of the FUN is to be creative, and make my own interpretations of the concept... ...To fill in the gaps with my own imagination. Other times, there just isn't enough to go on. In some cases a 2d concept doesn't translate well into 3d and adjustments need to be made. Or it could be difficult to tell what is intended in the concept, so you may have to go back to the artist and ask for clarification. In almost every case, a concept artist (if they have time) is more than happy to talk about their artwork. They like to explain it and tell you about how great it is. :) And usually they can offer some notes on the concept or even do another pass to "tighten" the piece up if needed. In other cases, the concept artist may be in a different building, or state, or country, or may no longer work for your company. So you can either ask other artists on your team for input, or just dive in and interpret it as best you can. Sometimes your interpretation is spot on, other times its not quite what they had in mind... and sometimes it's even better than imagined. With experience, you'll learn what works and what doesn't, and when to seek help and when to take care of it yourself.

Q. We know that you participated on projects like Stranglehold. What good stories have you experienced, working in the game industry? Is there any time where you tried hard to achieve a specific result, and when you made it, you felt like you'd achieved a victory?

Stranglehold was a lot of fun to work on, and it was also very rough schedule. I learned a lot at Midway Games, and gained a huge amount of experience in just a few years. At the time, I was just trying to keep up with the crazy schedule and work that needed to be done. I believe we were in some sort of "crunch time" for up to 6 months. (Crunch time is mandatory overtime that you don't' get paid for!) There have been many times where I had goals to achieve a certain artistic result and succeeded. On Stranglehold, I was tasked with creating these 2 large golden dragons that were part of an asian casino level. The players could run along those dragons, take cover behind them, slide down them etc. They were very much a center piece of that level and sort of carried the visual interest of that environment. The designers had built the blockout dragon out of a bunch of barrels. I had an amazing concept to go from, but a lot of adjustments had to be made for the 2d image to translate into a complex and interesting 3d shape. I knew that our designers were constantly tweaking gameplay so whatever I built would have to be flexible to be changed without dramatic re-work involved. I ended up going with a variation of a renderable spline/ path constrained geometry to allow me to build the dragon then conform it to any 3d path the designers made. In the end the piece worked very well and I was quite happy with it at the time. Now it isn't so impressive. We're our own worse critics!

Q. What's the feeling when you saw your work surrounding in a environment of big brand games that people love?

It was always very exciting to complete a game and see my artwork in it. It was a lot of fun to play games like "Axis and Allies" (an RTS game made while at Timegate Studios) with friends, and hear their comments about the game. Also, I never got tired of walking into any game retailer and seeing a game I'd worked on there. I think at one time, I walked into a Walmart electronics department, and saw 4 games I'd worked on still on the shelves at one time. It was a cool feeling!

Q. Have you ever interact with people that are fan of the game that you contributed? And how is the interaction with the fans of these games when they know what you do?

Actually, there haven't been a whole lot of interactions with "fans" per say. Mostly because: who recognizes an environment artist? I'm a faceless name in the credits that people hardly ever look at. The only time it ever happened, is if I was in the company of friends and one of them decided to brag on me to their other friends. Or if I interviewed for a job at a new company. In that situation I'd receive a lot of positive comments about my work and hear about how much they liked that game I worked on. The only other scenario I've experienced "fans" of any sort, was when working at Twisted Pixel Games, and we hosted a "Gaming with the Developers" night where we played our game "Splosion Man" online with fans of the game. That was a lot of fun seeing how people would react to your work and to hear all the crazy questions they had. Usually the conversations ended in them asking "Can I have a job?".

Q. What kind of art and artists inspire you?

I'm inspired by all kinds of art. From classic master painters, to artists seen on websites. Also, I've had the privilege to work with some extremely talented artists over the years who have been mentors and inspirations in many ways.

Q. Where do your ideas and references come from?

My ideas and references come from all over the place. Past experiences, past projects, movies, tv shows, books, other games, and occasionally my imagination. ;) But really, my ideas are usually influenced in some way by TV and film the most. You remember little tidbits of things that grabbed your attention when you first saw them and they had an impact on you. You remember that feeling and you want to create a similar reaction to those who play your game.