Feature By

Brad Gallaway

Making platform adventure games seems to be no great challenge, but making good platform adventure games is another matter entirely. With three outstanding titles under its belt (Rocket: Robot on Wheels, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, and Sly 2: Band of Thieves), Sucker Punch Studios definitely falls into the latter category. I was fortunate enough to run into the subject of this interview, talented Sucker Punch art director Dev Madan, and took the opportunity to dig around into the creative process for an artist-centric view of making videogames.

Tell us a little bit about your position at Sucker Punch.

My name's Dev Madan. I'm the art director at Sucker Punch. My job requires overseeing the artistic aspects of our games. This includes setting the direction of the environments, character designs, cut scenes and story for our games.

How did you get into the business? What kind of education/training did you get?

I was fortunate enough to get a job right out of art school at a company that was making 8-bit Nintendo games locally. The job lasted about a year and a half before they shut the company down. I got a chance to work on three titles at that point. As far as training, it was all on-the-fly, using in-house tools. As each platform shift happened, there was always the issue of learning a new program and a new way of doing things. Nature of the business, I suppose.

How important are traditional art skills vs. the importance of using 3D software to model/animate? Are there any other skills that you had to learn outside of visual skills, or other skills that you didn't expect to need, but did?

While I feel that both are important, traditional art skills are something that we look for in all applicants here. The principals of good drawing on paper hold true on a computer; a person can be taught to use a computer. Most artwork here always starts on pencil and paper. As mentioned above, with each platform shift, there was always the issue of learning a new program; however the one thing that stayed constant was a good drawing ability to communicate ideas quickly and effectively. While Photoshop and Maya are great tools, having 99 levels of undo can sometimes block progress. Drawing an image on paper gets you halfway there. It forces you to make decisions before committing to it in 3D.

How would you describe the life of a game artist?

I suppose that answer would vary depending on the person you ask, but here, there is an effort to keep an open atmosphere and constant collaboration. While there are limitations that you have to deal with, sometimes they can be great places to start pushing creatively. Ultimately, all involved just want the game to be the best it can be. It's pretty amazing seeing a level at different hand-offs, as each member of the team puts their mark on it. While we do get paid to watch cartoons, play videogames and talk about comic books, there is the occasional "crunch" mode. Those times are definitely offset by days when a cool movie opens and the company pretty much shuts down so we can all go see it.

To what extent does the Sucker Punch art staff influence the final design of games? Are members of the art team involved with the planning and brainstorming portion before actual work begins? Or does the art team swing into action once most of the game's concept has already been worked out?

There is a rough outline of where we want the story of the game to go and what we want to achieve in the level before a world gets started. Our designers are artists who came up as environmental modelers so they build their levels with incredible sensitivity to camera issues, layout and the aesthetic of each world. There are waves of brainstorming meetings, before a level gets started all the way through to mission ideas once the level is ready to hand off to texturing.