CG Networks Artist Profile:: Stephan Martiniere
Profile of Stephan Martiniere
22nd February 2005, Paul Hellard
Stephan Martiniere is an internationally renowned science fiction and fantasy artist. He is the recipient of numerous awards including silver and a gold “Spectrum“ Award, two Master awards and an Excellence “Expose“ Award. In his varied career, Martiniere has worked in animation, video games, theme parks and book covers. He is also an accomplished concept artist who has worked on movies such as ‘I Robot', ‘Star Wars' (episodes Two & Three), ‘Virus', ‘Red Planet', ‘Sphere', and ‘The Time Machine'.
Stephan Martiniere is currently the visual design director for Midway games in Chicago. Midway is the company primarily responsible for games like Mortal Kombat. Stephan describes this as an unexpected situation that turned out to be the right one at the time. “I spoke with my wife about the possibility of working for another company', explains Stephan. “We made a decision that it had to be the right job in the right location. Midway came totally out of nowhere, I wasn't considering Chicago and it turns out to be a fabulous city."
“As the visual design director, I'm responsible for the artistic look and feel of Midway's upcoming games. It's very much like being a production designer in a movie and also being a director when dealing with the storyboards and cinematics“, says Stephan. “I also work very closely with a team of talented artists. In fact, having a visual design director at Midway was a new idea for the company. After producing ‘Psy-Ops', Midway was gearing up for the next generation platform, which consequently meant higher graphics and quality. Midway decided to follow suit on what some companies were already doing, hiring high-end people from the movie industry. Midway was determined to have a strong art team and somebody with a solid lead and artistic experience driving the visual. They decided, to Stephan's credit, that they needed to hire people with experience not just in games but other fields like movies and animation. “Midway was more interested in my background as a conceptual designer and a director in animation and the fact that I had experience and many different fields in the entertainment industry“, explains Stephan. “It was a very interesting proposition because I was looking for exactly that – a company that would be looking at something beyond the fact that you can hold a pencil. I was really pleased to hear Midway talking the same language.“
