Mastersession: Kevin Johnstone (Rorshach)
11/14/02 @902 | Martin | comments (15)
Kevin Johnstone, or 'Rorshach' as he is best known, has been standing kneedeep in the gameskin scene for years. His late night hobby has now turned into a shiny career. While Kevin was dressing up the character and weapon models of Unreal 2 at Legend, he spared a moment to talk about the skin community, life as a game artist, and his personal projects.

GFXartist: Rorshach has been a part of the skinning community since Quake 1 and you've probably worked on a dozen projects over the years. Can you briefly mention the projects that still make you all warm and fuzzy inside when you think about them?

Rorshach: The UKCL Expansion Pak for Quake1. It replaced the hud,weapon/armour/artefact and player skins for the United Kingdoom Clan League. I was heavily into the Clan scene when Qtest and then Quakeworld were around so it felt great to give something back to that and to try doing more than skins for the first time. I got a lot of positive feedback and thanks from the community and it seemed like a much more open and friendly community then as it was all about fun back then as less people took things so seriously.

A couple of years later I saw a couple of people at a Quakemeet still using it , ahhh , warm and fuzzy.

Strider is an UT2003 project. Model by Hyper, skins by Rorshach.

GFXartist: You're current working on Unreal 2 and I must say, the screenshots alone are overwhelming. How did you end up at Legend Entertainment (Infogrames) and what are your tasks?

Rorshach: I'd been talking to Paul Mock at Legend for about a year after being contacted by him when I was living in Belgium in '99-2000 about a job.

By 2001 I was in Germany and miserable so I asked if the job I'd turned down before might still be on offer. When I got back in contact with him, Legend had just hired new people so my timing caused problems that Paul and then others in the team worked together to smooth over to make sure to get me into the team.

I was very lucky.

I do about 90% of the Character and Weapon mesh unwraps/skins with the occasional ambient skin if I get time which isn't often as the increased spec of the technology requires a lot longer working times for each model.

GFXartist: Tell me, which dimensions do the skins have these days? Did you have to change your way of working to cope with the increase in detail?

Rorshach: The average is 2 512's with a couple of key characters having 4 512's. I tend to work double size as a rule so making the jump in resolution wasn't so hard for me. Higher polygon counts & facial animation support was a harder jump. In some ways its more restrictive, you can fake less 3d in 2d naturally and you can no longer afford to ignore the mesh.

Another result of this is that its best to focus on material relief much more than purist 3d definition shading such as Q3's skins led the way in. My first couple of characters were a stumbling block as I was still thinking in terms of strong contrast shading which just doesn't work anymore so I've radically changed my style a couple of times since then.

I'd say it's a 2-3 month learning curve for the people with traditional art skills. It's a lot of fun once you get to grips with it and is very rewarding when seen ingame.

The Strider skins. Click for the full 512x512 version. These beasts are far from the cute, tiny Q1 skins from the old days.

GFXartist: What are your experiences so far? Is the Unreal 2 project unlike anything else you've done? You've probably had your ups and downs, c'mon we want to know!

From concept to real-time 3D. 90% of the character and weapon skins were made by Rorshach Copyright 2002 Epic Games inc.

Rorshach: Well Unreal 2 is what I've been working toward since I bought my first PC in '95. Its the first FPS I've worked on fulltime and so its different from everything else I'd done previously as a day job because its pretty much exactly what I want to do. In the past I've worked on Driving games and 3rd POV action/adventures in styles I was less interested in so it's a big difference. Its the first job I've had that has left me fulfilled enough that I don't need so often to work on my own stuff at night, I tend to just use my spare time to work on U2 also.

Ups and Downs? Everyone has them. I've spent a total of 2 years of my life working on vapourware in soul destroying atmospheres and survived bankruptcy due to gross mismanagement that left me stranded in a different country.

There are always going to be problems like this in the games industry because its a very young and immature industry still. Generally the first half of most projects are spent trying to put together a good team so that the 2nd half of the project is a mad scramble to redo part of the old work and then crunch time comes and everyone goes crazy with stress and it tends to pull teams apart a bit.

So by the time a project is finished, a bunch of people are upset with the problems faced and feel there will be less problems at another place. So some leave, and then the company needs more people and you get the same viscious cycle.

Bottom line is that you can't work 60+ hours a week for 6 months or so without getting stressed out and run down.... stress causes social & professional friction.

Long winded answer, but I always dislike that most industry interviews deal in vague broad strokes answers that only other industry professionals will be able to read between the lines of. That's no help to people in the community trying to get a sense of the industry they aspire to be a part of.

GFXartist: I noticed you also have quite a few plans for the near future. The Serious Sam TC and the HH3-like project? Can you give us an idea of where and when we can see more of your game art?

Rorshach: Aye, Sister Snatch just sounded like fun. I love the whole fetish culture deal and had a game design in mind myself for a similar setting. It's a project that I think is beyond me still at the moment so its good to be part of something similar in the meantime.

The project I will be starting up myself on the new Unreal Engine is called Cythraul. It's the celtic word for Hell. I don't really want to give away details on this though other than to say it will be 'different', SP and have its style rooted in British History.

Midden Face Macnulty. Ror's upcoming UT2003 player model

GFXartist: The good old Quake skin and texture art community seems to have faded away almost completely. Has this gap been filled by the Unreal (Tournament) skin and texture art community or have people really lost interest in these forms of art?

Rorshach: It's just the calm before the storm. The skin community always goes deathly silent near the release of major new FPS games. When a new game comes out it erupts in direct proportion to the quality of the game I think. The better the game, the longer the skin community is inspired enough by it to continue working in that style.

If people get bored of the game, they often lose interest in editing it. That leaves only those that want an industry job still editing the engine.

I'd say there are more people in UT editing for fun and more in Q3 editing because they want a job. As a result I would say the originality is higher in the UT community and the technical quality higher in the Q3 community.

I'm sure the advent of the new Unreal engine and then the Doom engine will liven things up considerably again though :)

GFXartist: You also do quite a few illustrations and 2D art. Do you hang out at any forums like Dhabih's, where we can find you?

Rorshach: Well I pop in at Dhabih's now and then to see what the 'real' artists are doing. Usually not for long though or I'm crippled by the notion of my being a mere skin machine! I pop in now and then at Identity Crisis also as its a younger community and i like younger communities, they are cosy and friendly without the need for elitism.

Speedpainting: Green monster

GFXartist: Which (game/art related) websites do you visit regularly. Where do you go when you lack inspiration?

Rorshach: Dhabih's site is the only site I visit regularly to look at others art. There is nowhere on the net I go for inspiration though. For inspiration I go and live in the real world for a while.

Inspiration is always there, it's simply a matter of stopping work long enough to allow myself the time to act upon it.

GFXartist: Is there any advice you can give to young aspiring game artists? Which skills/talents are a must to survive or even get into the game design business?

Rorshach: Work hard, enjoy it and create your own style. Work on your communication skills because too many people in the industry don't have that because to get good with computers they had to spend more time with the PC than people.

You can learn anything you want to if you work at it, no one is going to be willing to do your thinking for you so the sooner you start your websearches, experimenting with Max/Photoshop etc and practising ... the sooner you will get to where you want to be right now.

Read up on what all the tech talk means and teach yourself to be patient as you are going to be spending most of your career on the learning curve with a new inhouse tool and by the time you get to the next project, all that work with be useless.

It will be useless because the tech changes a lot and it requires you to change your work method, style and process. So if you don't like playing with new programs, you probably are not suited to the games industry.

Patience, Drive, Communication skills, technical ability, individual style, common sense and a sense of humour will carry you through anything in this industry.

(Ed: Rorshach kicked off a 'How to get into and survive the gaming industry' FAQ where he and many other people from the industry have the answers to your questions.Definately worth a visit for the aspiring game developer)

 

GFXartist thanks Kevin for his time and effort. Drop by Rorshach's Journal at Polycount for more of his skins and artwork. The artwork that accompanies this interview is created by and copyright 2002 Kevin Johnstone, unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved.