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February 5, 2003 - One of the most enjoyable aspects of working
on a computer game is watching the actual process of creation. I mean, think about
it; a game starts off as a collection of ideas in somebody's head, and then, at
the end of its development, it's a fully realised (and often completely different)
game. This whole cycle of turning 'bugger all' into 'something' is quite fun to
watch. For example, let's take the case of one of our creatures, say, the Balverine.
In the design department we have a list of creature ideas that's so long it resembles
a vicar's bumper book of 'Choir Boy's Who'll Do It and Keep It Repressed Until Their
Late 50's'. Each one is summarized with a little description and some small drawings,
all to capture the basic spirit of the idea. The Balverine was originally Dene's
baby, and was originally down as: 'Name from the Gaelic for 'Night Creeper'. Big
human-dog thing. Really vicious, with big nasty teeth. Grr.'
That, a really rather nasty sketch on the back of old Gary Larson tear-off calendar
entry and a meeting with Dene was all an artist had to go on. Interestingly, during
the meeting where, to be fair, Dene showed that the description and the sketch didn't
really do his ideas justice, it also came out that the whole 'Gaelic' thing was
bollocks, and the name in fact originated from a misremembered street-sign he drove
past every day. The sources of creative energy are diverse, to say the least.
So, anyway, it's an artist's job to take the essence of an idea, and turn it into
something that looks cool. Needless to say, this requires a huge amount of work
and talent, and different artists have different approaches. For example, one chap
we've worked with in the past would start a new project by sitting, unmoving, staring
at his screen for 2 solid weeks, smoking a vast amount of quality herbage. Just
when we would be on the verge of trying to use his bong as a novelty enema, he would
sit up work manically for 48 hours straight, and hand us something that was absolutely
outstanding. In spite of the results, from our point of view it was a highly nerve-wracking
process, turning the creative cycle into something resembling 'extreme sports computer
gaming'.
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In the case of the Balverine, our John was reassuringly less extreme in his approach,
, and spent a great deal of time researching, drawing concept sketches which he
used to get feedback from the design department and other artists. He then spent
a few weeks modelling the creature and texturing it. One of the big benefits of
having a single artist work on a creature from start to finish is that they get
hugely passionate about the thing; John came up with loads of ideas about the creature's
behaviour, all from having been in its head for weeks. We remember with fondness
the way he'd leap out at people, hunched over and snarling, to try and get a feel
for the way a Balverine moved.
In any case, if you've ever seen the look in an artist's eye when you try and hand
over his work to someone else to finish, it's like you've just told him that the
office has run out of Copydex, so you've kidnapped his children and sent them to
the glue factory.
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From John, the Balverine was passed on to the animation and programming teams. This
is the exciting bit, where we take all the design and art ideas, and work out exactly
how the creature is going to move and behave. We decided early on that we wanted
Balverines to hunt in packs and generally at night, and that you'll be able to hear
them howling at the moon from quite a distance away. They also have a tendency to
hide in patches of shadow and long grass, where they wait for you to walk past before
pouncing out, eyes blazing, attempting to surround you before rending you limb from
limb.
The first time we had a tester stumble across the Balverines, well, we're proud
to say that we can still see the faint staining on his chair. We always believe
you can tell the quality of a game by the quality of the skid marks it leaves behind... |