MatthewDoyleArt.com Blog

Well, it’s here - the work we recently did putting together a cinematic sequence will be aired tonight on national television during the Spike TV VGA Awards. I don’t know exactly when, but the work is basically a commercial to announce the game we’re working on out here in L.A. Now, obviously, no one man deserves the credit for the commercial, as dozens of people have had a hand in making it happen, from artists and engineers to post production editors and audio engineers - and they all deserve a pat on the back for their hard work. We’ve got a highly skilled triple-A team here with many veterans.

The parts I had a direct hand in specifically were writing the script, storyboarding, laying out and finalizing camera angles, rendering animatics from 3D Studio Max, exporting the whole thing from Max into Motion Builder for the animators to tweak, putting the scene together in Unreal Editor using the cinematics creation tool, lighting the scene, and creating special FX (fireworks, etc.). In fact, while my title is Senior Gameplay Designer, the work I’ve been doing is really more of a Cinematics Artist’s duties lately. Go figure. But honestly I’ve enjoyed the work thoroughly, and have always considered myself somewhat of a hybrid developer anyway.

So, if you’re a video game fan, be sure to tune into the VGA awards tonight on Spike, and if you’re at all interested in finding out what I’ve been working on here in L.A., keep your eyes peeled for a Midway game commercial.

I once overhead someone out of the corner of my vision say “new stuff doesn’t sell games.” That is a very American attitude. It is largely true in the U.S. that innovation doesn’t sell games. We, as a society, have a steeply slanted leaning toward realistic graphics when it comes to what makes us salivate over the latest titles. We want our games to be like movies or real life. Gameplay thus takes a back seat to visual quality. This is evidenced by the consoles MS and Sony continue to release, as well as the typical reviews we see in game magazines and websites. Graphics. Graphics. Graphics.

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