Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we at last complete our series on Republic Commando, with an interview with technical artist Jeremie Talbot, now at Pixar as a Characters Supervisor. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.
Podcast breakdown:
0:53 Interview
1:12:01 Break
1:12:35 Feedback
Issues covered: growing up in Canada, going to college in the states, interning for Alias, bartering skills with a weather station, starting at a company that dissolved, joining up with LucasArts, maintaining family relationships through video games, "When you're working on a game, nothing is done until it ships," breaking the game every day, team alchemy, people who didn't fit into silos, the various aspects of character art, "The Puppet Department," specialization, the lubrication that makes it go, the technology in the way, becoming technical to get it out of the way, just wanting to make the thing, "nobody knew what they were doing," losing connection points through specialization, creating tiger teams, agile-style methodology, military manuals for terminology, wanting to dig in and make stuff as well, having technical chops, the pink baby arms, adding raindrops to the head, safe experimentation, animation compression and "we need to," being the communication chain, wanting to also make the stuff, the internal video that was good enough to release, taking things from the game and turning it into the video, doing a whole scripted video to cut together, prototyping through video, the genesis of the prologue, baby hands baby hands baby hands, having some direction for the story, being able to lean into them being clones, reuse to make things feel big, a good team functioning well, building excitement making a thing happen, being inspired instead of checking the box, staying apart from the LucasArts madness, "there's no way they're not gonna release this," scratching a Star Wars itch, thinking back about process and alchemy, the feeling of something accidental that was actually designed, wondering if it's even going to work, the payoff of thinking about team composition, the tension of company needs and project needs, giving people an opportunity gives a burst of enthusiasm, the problems with always filling the container, "the team makes the game," getting along well with people and how that makes the whole thing go, the healthy mix of seniority and new folks, leveled up Jeremie, talking about what Leia and Marcus were, Brett confesses his eye strain, our next game, taking recommendations.
Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: LucasArts, Tippett Studio, Charlotte's Web, Spiderwick Chronicles, Enchanted, Pixar, Brave, Monsters University, Finding Dory, Onward, Dave Bogan, Sheridan College, Maryland Institute College of Art, Alias/Wavefront, Autodesk, PowerAnimator, Maya, Jonathan French, Metrolight Studios, Total Recall, Conn Peterson, Jason Armstrong, Pokemon, Full Throttle 2, Bounty Hunter, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Ian Milham, The Mandalorian, EA, Harley Baldwin, Nathan Martz, Adam Piper, Unreal, Tim Ramsay, Skyrim, Greg Knight, Paul Pierce, Paul Murphy, Brett Schulz, Loren Cox, Rebecca Perez, Daron Stinnett, the one and only person, Luke Thériault, Mortimer and the Riddles of the Medallion, Leia/Marcus, Dark Forces, Jedi Knight, Ray Gresko, Rob Huebner, Justin Chin, SITH Engine, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, Maniac Mansion, Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer, Rebel Assault, INSANE, Ben "from Iowa" Zaugg, Kingdom Hearts, Animal Crossing, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, 999, Hotel Dusk, Ghost Trick, Nintendo Switch, Kotaku Splitscreen/Triple Click, Jason Schreier, Hollow Knight, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers.
Next time:
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, first case
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