Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

Building Game Worlds
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U L T I M A T E G A M E D E S I G N
FIGURE 3-14
Moonlight forest
I NTERVIEW WITH RICK SANCHEZ
Rick is an extraordinary artist with a long and diverse background in games and other forms of
entertainment. His previous clients and employers include: Activision, 3DO, Sony Pictures, and Disney.
He has worked on Battlezone, Vegas Games 2000, Might & Magic VII, and Heroes of Might &
Magic III for the PC, and Jasmine’s Bazaar, The Toontown Avatar Project, and various other
games for Disney Online. Rick has also worked as a character designer, art director, and storyboard
artist on various film and television projects, like Jumanji, The Magic Mill, Cybercop, and Health
Nuts, with many freelance credits on various commercials.
TM: Hello Rick! How important is lighting in a 3-D scene? What role does lighting play in games?
RS: Lighting is probably the single most critical and important aspect of 3-D. Good lighting sets the
mood or feel of the game or scene that you’re working on—it’s what every art director is usually trying to
capture in his vision. With today’s incredible games like Halo, one of the main things everyone notices is
the lighting and how it interacts with the environments and textures to create a certain ambiance.
TM: You’ve built many textures! How do you build great textures?
RS: Well, that’s kind of a complicated process. I build them mainly through techniques I developed
by experimentation with the greatest 2-D graphics program ever … Photoshop! That’s my opinion,
anyway (no, I’m not being paid or sponsored by Adobe, just in case you’re wondering). I just “calls
them as I sees them.” Back to the textures. In a nutshell, I usually look at real-life textures. I pay
special attention to details like how light reacts to a surface; also, colors, and the contrast in the
pattern of the object, etc.