Hello everyone! We continue introducing you to people responsible for developing INSOMNIA: the Ark (you can find the first installment of “Meet the team” series by following this link). Part two will focus entirely on our 3D artists who brought all those amazing sketches and concept art to the actual game. Let’s meet them!
Anton Altunian, Lead 3D Artist
Before INSOMNIA I was mostly volunteering in smaller game projects and also performed occasional freelance work as 3D artist and CG-generalist. Basically, thanks to INSOMNIA I got the chance to grow my expertise in all directions. I became a part of the development team back in 2013 and my main responsibilities included adding textures to surfaces, creating 3D modules (walls, doors, etc.), guns, characters, animals, vehicles. Also as a lead artist, I was responsible for teaching/managing less experienced team members and distributing tasks between them. I did other related things as well but they are kinda cryptic to be of any interest to the general public (you can read a brand new interview regarding this matter at 80lvlthough). Typically, the best way for me to get inspired and to nail each given task is to browse as many visual references as possible. Currently, I’m a vivid Destiny fan and was also able to complete Subnautica along with RUINER (was really pleased with the visual aspect of this game). Sometimes I feel like playing some oldies like Quake III and Postal 2.
You can find more INSOMNIA related 3D-art from Anton over here
Ilya Dyadyura, 3D Artist
I started out with getting acquainted with Anatoliy (Mono Studio’s CEO) which happened back in the college days. He dreamed to build a game for quite some time and after a while, we actually started doing our first steps in this direction. There was no studio or any kind of team back then. However, after some time Anatoliy was able to find two programmers and some funding — this is when things got more serious. At that point of time, I had no solid experience as a 3D artist which made me learn everything as we moved forward. So I was quite lucky to get involved in a very big and ambitious project and my duties included constructing 3D modules for locations (just like Anton), environment objects, some of the statues/robots, and high tier armor sets. Basically, whenever you are looking at the screen while playing INSOMNIA, there should be always something I’ve created or was involved in.
To get a proper art-deco/retro-futuristic inspiration for the project I was watching related movies and animated series — Anatoliy had a huge collection of those at the time, and needless to say, he forced me to watch all of them haha. These days I comfort myself with playing Destiny 2 and DMC 5. I’m really enjoying my time with Sekiro as well since it’s an outstanding game visually etc. When it comes to old games — I feel nostalgic about Space Rangers 2, Morrowind, DMC 3, Neverwinter Nights 2, Dragon Age and many many others.
You can find more INSOMNIA related 3D-art from Ilya over here
Gleb Filatov, 3D Artist
I was introduced to the gamedev industry just like many other members of Mono Studio — by working on INSOMNIA. However, I started my first 3D-art experiments more than 10 years ago and became a part of the team in 2014 in a very unusual way. At that point in time, the studio’s lead 3D artist was looking forward to building an effective pipeline for all 3D related work. We had a certain amount of existing objects that had to be imported into the Unreal Engine 4 editor and I was asked to build a tool that would automate this process. After this task was completed I continued to develop similar tools to improve our workflow. Eventually, I ended up doing the more usual 3D artist stuff — modeling objects.
I did quite a few things inside the game including the vulture’s statue in Vulture’s Nest and all kinds of trash which usually serve as an important decorating element of almost any location of Object 6. When it comes to inspiration — our office itself serves as a great source of ideas: it’s filled with an unbelievable mix of sketches, huge paintings, antiques, swords, and shields. And, of course, I enjoy reading books, watching movies, listening to some quality music and playing games. I prefer RPGs mostly and my latest gaming sessions were dedicated to Horizon: Zero Dawn and Kingdom Come: Deliverance. My top list of games also includes Warcraft 2, Fable: Lost chapters and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.
P.S. a few words regarding v1.5: as we have already mentioned in the comments to previous updates and in the Community Hub — this patch is undergoing testing at the moment and we expect QA to give us some news in the middle of next week. See you soon!