straightforward now, but at the time, the tools for doing this were very
poor. I think that our results were quite stunning for the time--or perhaps
even now--and it's the game I'm the proudest to have worked on.
The toughest project ever I did was a level for Rebel Assault II. As the art and
animation lead on the project, my days were filled with just about every-
thing except doing 3D work. I promised myself that I would create at least
one level of the game, but the only time I had to work on it was after
7:00 p.m., when all my lead-artist tasks were done, the day's fires were put
out, and I was exhausted. In the end, I was disappointed with my work on
that level. I'll leave it up to you to guess which level it was!
Q: Was there anything special for you about working on a Star
Wars game?
A: Back in college, I never thought there would even be a Star Wars video
game for the PC, much less that I would work on any of them. It's not
something I had consciously aimed for; it just sort of happened as a logi-
cal extension of everything else I'd done. Ironically, I'm basically doing the
same things I did back when I was 15--making little movies with space-
ships in them. Of course, it's not exactly the same as then, and there was a
huge amount of other stuff in between that made everything else possible.
Like many game artists my age, Star Wars had a huge influence on me
when I was young. After seeing it, I wanted nothing more than to work on
movie special effects, which is partly why I studied industrial design; many
of the movie effects guys were industrial designers. Rather than turning me
into a full-blown Star Wars geek--I was only partially "infected"--the
movies opened up a new world of possibilities that I could creatively pur-
sue. Instead of dwelling on Star Wars stuff, I drew and modeled and made
movies with my own vehicles, characters, and places.
The most enjoyable part of working on the Star Wars games came when I
got to design new vehicles and environments that had to fit into that uni-
verse. I was pleased that I was able to expand the limits of something that
had such a strong influence on my career, instead of simply building exist-
ing designs.
Q: When doing models of Star Wars ships, were you able to get
access to the original physical models?
A: Not at first. There was a lot of publicly available reference material for
just about anything we needed, and we simply used that. For the blue-
screen shoot on Rebel Assault II, we used the original costumes and helmets
3 D G
R A P H I C S
& A
N I M A T I O N
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