Here are the guest writers, in their own words.
Anthony O’Donnell—All the New Content
I’m an Irish artist currently living in England. Like most artists in the games industry, the job of creating games was one I wanted since a young age. Initially, I wanted to work in comics or in feature animation, so in the pursuit of this goal, I attended Ballyfermot College of Further Education (BCFE) for three years in Dublin, Ireland. I graduated in June 2004 with a HND in Computer Animation.
For almost three years after college, I worked hard improving my skills and trying to attain a position within a commercial art industry while working other full-time jobs. I had finally caught a break and started at Evolution Studios in May 2007 working as a junior artist on the DLC for the first MotorStorm title creating objects.
Since then, I have had the pleasure of working on MotorStorm: Pacific Rift and MotorStorm: Apocalypse as an environment artist/level designer. Currently, I’m still working at Evolution Studios by day and by night attempts to one day turn paper into published comic art continue. I also helped to produce the Max in Minutes and the Maya in Minutes series of training videos for Focal Press.
David Griffiths—Low-Poly Vehicle Tutorial
I have been in the games industry now for over 10 years. I graduated from Blackpool and The Fylde College (part of Lancaster University) in the United Kingdom with a degree in technical illustration. I started my career in the automotive industry, working freelance on-site for a company called I.V.M. in Germany. I moved naturally into games, starting out with flight simulators. Some of my notable roles in the games industry have been working as a lead artist for Pandemic Studios in Santa Monica, California, when I worked on Star Wars: The Clone Wars. On Clone Wars, I was able to add to the Star Wars Universe, where I designed the TX-130 Fighter Tank and the G.A.T. vehicles (among many others), which were used in other games, comics, story books, and have even been made into model kits. The Fighter Tank has a very strong fan base, which is cool. Mercenaries was another great game to work on for Pandemic and Lucas Arts; it hit every major console. I have also had the privilege to work on the smash PS3 franchise MotorStorm, including the latest release MotorStorm: Apocalypse.
Tom Painter—Character Tutorial
As a child, I would waste many a sunny day on my ZX spectrum and Amiga; by the time I was a teenager, I had developed an addiction to Street Fighter 2 that was roughly equivalent to that of a bad drug habit. Encouraged by my father, I decided I would pursue a career in games.
After my studies, I got my first break in the games industry as a pixel artist working at Tiertex on Nintendo Game Boy Advance titles. When Tiertex dissolved, I joined Evolution Studios as an environment artist for the WRC series of games on the PlayStation 2.
In 2005, I moved to Pandemic Studios in Australia to work on Destroy All Humans! 2. I changed roles to become a character artist working on Saboteur and two top-secret titles in progress (project B and project Q).
Now, it’s 2011 and I’m the owner of Big Man Production, a specialist 3D outsource production company working for clients in the video game and advertising industries.
I love working in 3D because the job never gets boring—there’s always something new to learn or new ideas to implement.