Inside Infinity Ward's Art: Michael Boon Speaks
Call of Duty 4 has received many awards and praises, and that comes in large part to Infinity Ward's hard work. Behind the name IW is the actual workhorses themselves. One of those workhorses in the technical art director Michael Boon, and Gamasutra has an interesting interview with him that you can read a snippet of it below.
Be sure to read the rest of the article here.
I always find it interesting to get to hear some of the 'behind the scenes' info about making a game. I was on a mod team before as a graphic designer and you definitely get to know how a game works much better once you actually work on one.
Infinity Ward's technical art director Michael Boon, who has worked on the Call Of Duty series back to its original 2003 incarnation, and is currently working on Modern Warfare 2, exposes some of the process behind the game's visuals, and discusses the developer's creative philosophies.
He also discusses the need for technical artists in an increasingly complicated world of triple-A game development -- standing up for those who can bridge the gap between the programming and art staff.
I guess I'm trying to get at the method you use for polishing, because Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare definitely felt very polished to me.
MB: We look at polish pretty regularly. We have a bunch of milestones where we look at one level or a couple of levels in this kind of holistic way, and I think that's pretty important. We start it about a year from when we intend to ship.
When somebody plays through the game and writes down everything they think -- you know, "Oh, I like that," or "I didn't like that," or "I fell off this and got really frustrated," whatever it was -- they write down whatever they think about the level, and then they send it out to the designer of the levels; to the whole company.
When a few people do that, you can really improve a level dramatically in the space of about a week. The way we get it polished is just by doing that early enough that we actually have time to fix the stuff.
He also discusses the need for technical artists in an increasingly complicated world of triple-A game development -- standing up for those who can bridge the gap between the programming and art staff.
I guess I'm trying to get at the method you use for polishing, because Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare definitely felt very polished to me.
MB: We look at polish pretty regularly. We have a bunch of milestones where we look at one level or a couple of levels in this kind of holistic way, and I think that's pretty important. We start it about a year from when we intend to ship.
When somebody plays through the game and writes down everything they think -- you know, "Oh, I like that," or "I didn't like that," or "I fell off this and got really frustrated," whatever it was -- they write down whatever they think about the level, and then they send it out to the designer of the levels; to the whole company.
When a few people do that, you can really improve a level dramatically in the space of about a week. The way we get it polished is just by doing that early enough that we actually have time to fix the stuff.
Be sure to read the rest of the article here.
I always find it interesting to get to hear some of the 'behind the scenes' info about making a game. I was on a mod team before as a graphic designer and you definitely get to know how a game works much better once you actually work on one.