Sumea Interviews Artist Chris Wells from Epic Games

Presented here is a transcript of the interview I did with Chris Wells at GCAP 2007. A big thanks to the guys at Autodesk for setting this up with us.

You can download the recording of the interview here

Chris Wells, Character Artist from Epic Games has accumulated almost ten years experience as an animator in game development.

Chris grew up in New Jersey and Atlanta , GA. He studied at the University of Georgia, where he received a Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts.

During Chris' time in College, he interned at Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL. where he was mentored by a feature Animation Artist in Human and Animal Anatomy and Gesture drawing. In 1998 he was an Illustration Intern at the Cartoon Network in Atlanta, GA. In 1998 Chris was a student instructor at the University of Georgia teaching gesture drawing and figure and animal anatomy. Following college he worked as a Character Artist Redstorm Entertainment, a Ubisoft Company on various titles including Rainbow Six 3, Ghost Recon, Ghost Recon: Island Thunder, Sum of All Fears, and Rainbow Six: Lockdown. In part of 2002 Chris worked for Ubisoft Montrieul in Paris, France as a Character artist on Charlie's Angels. He joined Epic in 2005 as a Character Artist and has worked on Gears of War but mostly Unreal Tournament 3. His professional and personal work has been in Georgia magazine, Ballistic Media's D'artiste: character Modeling 2, and the covers of OXM and PC Zone magazine.

Can you tell me a little bit about your educational background and how you got into games development?

Chris Wells: I have a degree in studio art and classical drawing from the University of Georgia, and so my focus, at least while being at school was human anatomy, gesture drawing, animal anatomy, so on a so forth. Originally I wanted to be a 2D feature animator, and the industry sort of took a turn for the worst around 98-99 in the United States, so I had to find something, you know, to get a job, so I went to the game industry and started at Red Storm Entertainment then on to Epic.

How Important do you think it is to have that traditional art background going in as a game artist?

CW: Extremely important actually. I actually say I got that education sort of by accident; because when I went to school initially I wanted to be in digital media; when I was a freshman and sophomore. And I was pretty much spending most of the time on Photoshop, or what was once called Alias sketch, which was I guess a real early 3D program. Then I got an internship at Walt Disney World, then I got mentored by feature animation artists. And basically for the next couple of years [they] urged me to push aside, for the moment, any of the computer stuff and focus on drawing and sketching and all that stuff. So, that changed my direction, and once that didn't work out for that industry, you're left with this skill, so that makes it easy now, or easier, to handle detailed models and things like that and help you make better decisions about when to make something realistic and when to make something a caricature, and what things to exaggerate to bring out certain nuances of the characters personality, and so on an so forth.

Okay, what people in the industry do you say that you would admire and have influenced you, both in and outside of games?

CW: Honestly, I mean, there are some really talented artists at Epic. Some of my favorite artists are there, like Kevin Lanning – Modeller. James Hawkins, Chris Perna. You know, there's a lot of talented guys at Epic, just about everybody over there is really awesome. I also… Sebastian Haure, who is from 3d Artizanal in France, Paris France, he's really a talented modeller, really good with subtleties and human models. And uh, the guy that did Android blues… what's his name… very well known for making female models.

Uh, I could probably look it up. (Steven Stahlberg)

CW: [laughs], yeah, but the name escapes me at the moment, but he's actually pretty incredible. And uh, Olivier Personnet, who I think goes by the online name of Reeve, is really really an excellent artist and I love his work.

With Gears of War, what would you say you leant most, and what are you most proud of achieving?

CW: The thing I think we all learned was kind of working out the technology pipeline and also, we constantly raise the bar among ourselves, you know, encourage each other to consistently add more detail and make the next model the best one, you know, that you've made, that you've ever made.

So you really sort of played off each other.

CW: Oh yeah, that's one thing about Epic. I mean, at Epic we have a really good environment for encouraging you to continue creating better work; art assets. We have these art meetings that take place every other week. And it's a chance for artists to share what they've been working on and you know, you can work on this really cool model and have an animation of how it works. It's a really good environment where we can give each other… it's like a pep rally, what we would call in the United States, where it's like, you just you know, cheer the guys on and encourage them to work, go even beyond what we've done previously.

So, leading on from that, what sort of specific challenges do you think you face, developing for next gen?

CW: Well. Time. I mean, at Epic, what we try to do, is you know, every model that we make; art asset, doubles up as a cinematic model too. So it's got a little bit of pressure, because it's has to be really detailed, but it has to be also efficient to run in real time. That said, we were creating the high poly meshes, that can be upwards of 30 million polygons, or more. And once you get up to that amount of detail it takes a lot of memory and resources on your machine and so, a lot of times once you get to that point, your kind of fighting against the limits of the machine. And so you have to find some work arounds to, you know, actually get this thing to generate a normal map, or sometimes if we're experimenting with a change on the character, revisions are very costly in terms of time, because it takes a lot of time to model a change or tweak it once you get at that point

Getting back to the industry in general. For artists that are trying to break into the games industry, what sort of advice to you think you would [give]?

CW: I would really suggest having a foundation in traditional art first. And I'll give you an example of where this would benefit. When I first joined the industry, it was 1999 at Red Storm. And you know, if we're making a character, and if we have 2 artists here and the budget for the game calls for characters to be 400 polygons or 800 polygons each, you have a guy that has really good traditional skills but doesn't really know the program very much, and another guy who's very technical, and maybe not so much into traditional drawing or anatomy. They might arrive at the same kind of character when they're both do the same model, because a nose might be defined as a triangle, or you know, the arm is basically just this extruded box or rectangle, so they pretty much look the same. But with this next generation of games, there's such a higher bar, and much more room for resources to make these characters, so what that means is if you have, you know, millions of polygons to make for the high poly character that means that there's that much detail that you have to put in. So if you're not familiar with, you know, what makes a female feminine, or even more subtle, if you want to get a mix of a female character, who's attractive yet tough, or go for more subtle things like, you know, a warrior that has some battle scars, or maybe someone that's old. Or combinations or moods or types of characters or classes. The person with the traditional skills will be able to bring that out much better that the guy that's technical. And also these programs like Mudbox and ZBrush, they're getting easier all the time, to use, and more artist friendly.

So more so than [before] it's moving almost away from a technical minded artist to more a traditional artist, because the technology is so good.

CW: Yeah. You look at Mudbox. I mean, Mudbox was really very intuitive in tool sets, and ZBrush now they have tools that really resemble clay sculpture, like you know the rake tool, the mallet tool, and the latest ZBrush it's really… I mean it's getting to the point now, where you could just sit an artist in front of it, and if, you know, if you just point him to the right tools and he'll figure out the rest. It really just shows what his traditional background, or the level of his traditional background and workmanship.

Where do you draw your motivation from, to keep pushing yourself, to raise the bar?

CW: Honestly, my co-workers. [laughs] it's hard to explain, it really is… it's like no place I've ever worked before. I mean I spent some time living in Paris, working at Ubisoft, and also in the United States at Red Storm, and I interned at the Cartoon Network too, and they're all nice places, but you know, at Epic, we really really try to make sure that we continue to raise the bar with our work and everybody's really open to, you know, sharing our tips and our tricks. Teaches us to really kind of get the best of…

Individually they're great but as a team they're even more…

CW: Yeah, and that's what it's really all about, I mean, no one person can make the game, and everybody's really down to earth and you know, we definitely try to make the last thing we've done, the best thing we've done. And if I may… we're actually hiring too [laughs], so if anybody wants to come out, please apply.

Oh, I'm sure you'll get a few applications from down here.

What would you say is the best game that you've played in the last 12 months?

CW: Hmmm, the last 12 months… My taste in gaming is kind of… different, nowadays than what it used to be before I got into the industry. So, I kind of like more of the 2D fighting games now, my favorite is Guilty Gear XX Accent Core. That's my favorite, so I play that whenever I can, because I can jump in and jump out real quick.

Do you have a favorite game, that you would say, this is the best game….

CW: Yeah, I would have to say, Resident Evil 4.

Resident Evil 4, yep, that's on a few people's lists I think.

CW: I mean because it was like, if you could, there were so many parts in the game. Well, first of all, there are only a couple of games, that in my opinion, like, when I'm playing it, they have so much extra stuff in there, so many unexpected parts of the game where I feel like I owe the developer more, I should have paid more. [laughs]

[laughs] That's fantastic.

CW: That's what Resident Evil 4 was to me. I mean, it's like everything I thought that the guy should be able to do, you know, because he's trained and everything, most of the stuff yeah, you could do. I mean it was, it was just awesome. I mean, if you want to jump out the window, fine, if you want to barricade the door, cool, if you want to shoot the dynamite out of the guys hand and the thing will explode, it's fine too. I mean, it was just awesome that way.

Yeah, just that massive open endedness.

CW: Yeah, it was open ended and, you know, that whole, I guess when they were advertising it initially, they were just showing parts of the village. And that's where I thought the whole game took place, and for it to take place in the castle, that whole section, and the whole merc thing, it was much more than I thought I should have been getting.

Awesome. Well leading on from that, are there any games are you looking forward to, any games on the radar, in your opinion.

CW: Well, obviously, [laughs] I'm looking forward to, yeah I play a lot of UT3 [laughs]. But yeah, outside of our games, I'm looking forward to Crysis. I got a chance to meet some of those guys when I was giving this presentation in Frankfurt, and they're really good guys and I'm really looking forward to actually being able to sit down and play that game.

Their technology looks fun, I'd like to get my hands on it.

CW: Oh yeah, I look forward to taking a look and you know having a go at it myself. What's another one? Anything in the final fantasy series, like XIII and I think the other one, final fantasy XIII Verses, I'm really looking forward to those two but I don't know when those are coming out.

Why particularly do you like the final fantasy series?

CW: Well, I like that every time, for the most part, every game that comes out, every one that's like a number. It's you know, a reinvented story, and I like that the summons, that are, in each game, are kind of reinvented sometimes. You know they're a creature, or it's a redesigned creature, or sometimes it's a space ship. You know. So I think that's pretty cool, and the production values are really good too, as well as the musical score. I used to play it; I was kinda late, to join, to play. I think it was like 94, 95…

Final Fantasy VII?

CW: No no, I wasn't that late, I was playing Final Fantasy for the SNES and then 6 was like my favorite. And after X came out for the PS2 that was… I think I played that literally for like 300 hours [laughs] so I got a bit addicted to that one, but yeah it's a great series.

Alright well that's all the questions I had for you. Thanks very much for talking to Sumea and good luck with your future at Epic and in art in general.

CW: Thanks very much it's been great talking.