Interview: BioWare's Clint Young
The Star Wars: The Old Republic development team was out in full force at Celebration V, and Darth Hater was there to hear what they had to say. Over the weekend we learned a great deal from writers Drew Karpyshyn and Hall Hood, and now our interview blitz continues with BioWare concept artist Clint Young. Hit the jump to learn just what it takes to craft art for The Old Republic.What is your role at BioWare?
Clint: I'm a concept artist at BioWare. My time with BioWare and the Star Wars license actually started way back in 1994 when I was hired on by LucasArts. I did work for them as a conceptual artist, a rendered cinematic artist, and head of the visual effects department. I worked on a slew of titles from Jedi Knight Dark Forces 2 all the way up to Republic Commando. Then I moved down to Texas to be a part of the fantastic BioWare team that is bringing Star Wars: The Old Republic to life.
Do you use outside sources to create concept art? Can you share some details about that process?
Clint: We are a MMO, and that requires an enormous amount of art. When someone asks me how much art we do for a typical MMO, I say it is three films worth of concept art. We're talking costumes, spacecraft, environments... all the way down to what does blue milk come in. The drinking cups. What does a Sith sit in when he is at a conference. It is a massive amount of work. There are actually five concept artists at BioWare, myself included, and each of us have our own specialty. Arnie works on characters, Ryan Denning is a fantastic spaceship designer, Paul Adam does great stuff with costumes, and Diego does the most phenomenal placeables. He knows the look of Star Wars down to a tee. I'm the one who gets the blank canvas to do the larger concepts of what the worlds look like right before they kick off the start of the planet.
We do have some guys out of house that we work with and we direct them to the look and the satisfaction of the management team at BioWare. I think we had 12 to 15 concept guys going at once, and now that we are entering the last phase of the project, we're down to five major players currently.
So everyone is in their own specialty areas?
Clint: We cross-pollinate as much as we can. You can imagine someone thinking "how many Mandalorian outfits have I done? How many Jedi robes have I done?" Come over here and I'll give you a mountain to draw. So there is a little cross-pollination that goes on among the concept guys. Obviously, we get burned out drawing the same thing over again, but it is Star Wars so there is something fresh and exciting to draw on a daily basis. What guy or kid would object to being told they are drawing a Sith starship when he asks what he is going to do today? There that is that general excitement that happens to us daily when we come in and we don't know what we will work on. It could be something as cool as that, or figuring out what a Sith warlord has as his lightsaber. How do you make lightsabers cooler? It is a big task.
What goes into designing a planet?
Clint: The writing staff has an understanding of the planets, and we usually like to kick off a planet after they started writing it. By that time, they are giving me a broad overview of what is going on that planet: what kind of strife is it in, what kind of characters live there, the alien species that inhabit the planet, etc. Then after it comes to me, I do what we call quick studies about a day after reading the documentation. These are about 25 different sketches to give them the general look and feel of the planet. Then they come through and pick out their favorites. I pick my favorites, and then we kind of meet in the middle and build from there. By the time the planet actually gets kicked off and given to the world builders and designers for fleshing out, we came down to about five different large scale paintings that I gave them for each one of the regions on the planet. Be it the Imperial underground on Korriban or the Jedi Academy on Tython, each one of these areas gets broken down into its own painting that I feed to the world designers and world builders.
How much time occurs between the start and finish of the entire process to where the planet is final?
Clint: That is a good question. It is a trick question, and I'll tell you why. As an artist, you are always in love with the art and you have to divorce yourself from it. From start to finish, I gave the world designers a painting and three weeks later, I walked by their desks and thought to myself, "interesting. He has my painting up as his wallpaper." And it was the actual world itself. They nailed it so perfectly that I mistook it for my own art.
They keep polishing it past that. We're still in polish for worlds that the general public would consider done a year ago. So we're really taking the time to give players the best looking Star Wars environment ever. We're really taking the time to do it especially because this is an MMO, and it keeps getting better and better. These world builders are top notch, and every time I look at their screens, I am blown away. If I had it my way, I would say six months start to finish on a world. But that rarely happens in the gaming industry.
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Posted 8/17/2010 1:38:26 PMI mean, wow... How many Mandalorian outfits does one have to do? Can't be _so_ many, unless it's a playable race. Is it?
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Posted 8/17/2010 7:02:18 AMIt makes me feel ever confident that this game is getting the attention it deserves.
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Posted 8/16/2010 10:17:06 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 8/16/2010 8:48:52 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 8/16/2010 6:40:03 PMThis... this right here is just freakin awesome...
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Posted 8/17/2010 1:51:31 AMWound in the Force::GoHann (lvl 35 Maurader)
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Posted 8/16/2010 6:09:28 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 8/16/2010 5:16:23 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 8/16/2010 4:24:37 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 8/16/2010 3:28:17 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 8/16/2010 3:18:35 PM"By the time the planet actually gets kicked off and given to the world builders and designers for fleshing out, we came down to about five different large scale paintings that I gave them for each one of the regions on the planet."
Possible confirmation about 5 distinct regions on each planetoid? Could be looking into this a little too much, but the statement seems too precise to be a random example.
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Posted 8/17/2010 1:50:06 AMWound in the Force::GoHann (lvl 35 Maurader)
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Posted 8/16/2010 2:58:20 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 8/16/2010 2:10:56 PMBy the way, don't know if i read into it a bit too much, but the way he described lvl 40 made me think it could be really close to the level cap..
"Everyone has their own ingredient that they bring to the pot. The soup is very colorful and tastes very good, I might add."
I want some of that soup
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Posted 8/16/2010 2:04:11 PM