I represent roughly half of the Demigod character modeling crew. I say “roughly” because, while Matt Dudley and I are currently the only ones tasked with modeling and texturing characters at this stage, Nate has also had his hands in some of the earlier modeling work. (Furthermore, I believe that Matt is an inch or two taller than me, making me just slightly less than half of the character crew, if you go by height.) To the point, the Demigod art team is an extremely small one considering the project scope, and easily the leanest lineup I’ve ever been a part of.
Beyond the obvious financial benefits of a small dev team, our ability to know what’s going on in the areas of design and engineering and our ease and freedom in communicating ideas amongst each other is amazing. As Nate has already stated, the entire team participates in routine play testing of the game and everyone can have a direct and meaningful impact on its evolution.
I am fortunate to be a part of a project that has been so well planned and executed, and to work amidst such skilled and experienced people. As a bonus, the concentration of wit and humor per capita at GPG is extremely high, which makes for lots of good times. Yes, I do love my job and the fine folks I get to work with, and I take note daily that I am a part of something great.
The Demigod project and a surprising amount of the art were already well under way when I joined the Demigod team in early January of 2008. The standard of quality was set pretty high, as the “waterfall” map and many of the characters you see in the trailer and in the earlier screenshots were nearly complete. The art pipeline was well thought out and established, which made it easy for me to get acclimated and start creating.
The character concepts (all done by Nate or Steve) are expertly done and very concisely detailed, leaving very little guesswork when charging forward with the modeling. I have worked with Nate in the past, so a solid rapport and a kindred sense of silliness were already in place. I really liked where he was going with the art style. It felt mythical, unrestrained, innovative and fresh, and there was a nice balance between uniqueness and familiarity, and I was pretty jazzed to start creating a Demigod! Creating a Demigod…I should probably write home about that!
My biggest obstacle initially was some unfamiliarity with ZBrush, which I hadn’t touched in a couple of years. When getting acquainted with ZBrush, the “first date” is often not so great, but with some dedicated courtship, a meaningful relationship will eventually blossom! Thankfully, Matt is very technically knowledgeable, easy-going, and was really helpful in getting me up to speed with the features of version 3, our primary tool for generating the highly detailed normal maps we’re making for our characters. I’ve learned a lot and I am especially glad to be working with him. Matt shares his milk tea with us. It is good.
I’d like to talk more about ZBrush or critical decisions we’ve made regarding our character art pipeline, but for now I’ll wrap this up and invite questions or comments anyone may have about our character art creation process for Demigod.
-Tim Cox
