Just a few more Developer Fridays to go now! This week's interviewee is Lukas Arvidsson, one of our artists.
- Who are you and what do you do on "The Ball"? My name is Lukas Arvidsson and I have done various things on The Ball, mostly 3D & 2D Art that you can find in the later levels. Other things I have helped out with is Character art, testing and coming up with new game design ideas. I have also immensely enjoyed the business and marketing side of releasing an indie game. I think it has been great fun to work on The Ball!
- When and how did you join the team? I joined the team in May 2009. My brother (Markus Arvidsson) was already involved with the project for a couple of months at that point and I was introduced to the team through him.
- How did you start out with game art? I started out with 3D graphics through a course at school. It spurred my joy for drawing and everything graphical, so after the course I started drawing and painting. One thing led to the next and suddenly I was doing computer graphics and 3D. I have always had a strong focus on the traditional when learning the different skills you need as a 3D artist. I think that it is good to be able to relate your work to other fields and also to be versatile and move between different positions / industries. But the real reason that I started with 2D/3D graphics is of course because it gets you chicks!
- What has been the most challenging thing you have done on the game? The most challenging things I have done for the game were probably the first few things, like the big bird from Hueca. The reason those were the most challenging was because I still had to get used to the game and the technology. There are always a lot of things you have to learn to get everything going. Another hard part was to work on The Ball as well as doing all the other stuff you are expected to do :)
- What do you like the most about the game? For me that is quite easy. It is the way you explore a world. A large majority of games rely on an instant verification of collision detection and feedback from the game world (by using bullets and guns). With The Ball you use the Ball to explore a world. This makes you more conscious of the environment and how it relates to you. In many games you feel the environment to be more of a decor or a sceneography and you are the camera. But with The Ball there are other relations that are being explored. For me Portal was a step in this direction, but I think that The Ball has its very own unique flavor that all fans of the FPS-genre should try out.