World Artist speaks about his cool 'Fallout 3' experience. Rashad Redic from Bethesda talks to Game-Artist.net's Glynn Smith.
CGSociety :: Artist Profile
19 March 2009, by Glynn Smith
Please can you tell us a little about yourself and your role and responsibilities as world artist at Bethesda Softworks?
My name is Rashad Redic and I've been at Bethesda for about two years now. I'm an environment artist, and that responsibility includes not only the architecture, props and other various physical structures of the world, but also any non character animations, lighting, landscaping and sometimes level layout where art is concerned.
For the size of games we do, we're a fairly small company so multitasking is a big part of our responsibility. Day-to-day work can vary widely, depending on priorities. Some days see me building architecture and props, some days I could be lighting, other days could see me just playing our game to give feedback to our designers as they iterate on gameplay.
« Rashad Redic. Environment artist at Bethesda Softworks.
What was the most challenging part of your work during the Fallout3 development period?
I think the most challenging part of our work is living up to the expectations people have of a Bethesda game. Our worlds are huge and detailed, our dev team could be considered small for the size of game we do, and there's a lot of work involved in providing the variety of unique handcrafted experiences. Nothing about Fallout is procedurally generated; every rock, tree and item in the wasteland was placed by hand, so if there's anything challenging about the process it's getting all that stuff in there and polished to an expected degree.
In what ways did you take Fallout3's day/night cycle into consideration, so that your work looked consistently good in all the various light models and times of day?
We use these full screen image processes similar to how film is tinted to color grade our environments, and we actually spent a lot of time tweaking the day and night cycles along with these image processes to give us the look we wanted. In our editor you can scrub through the different times of day and see how the color shifts affect the art, and we were very mindful of our color palette and art style throughout that process.
What projects have you worked on, prior to Fallout3?
I have worked on Godfather, Tony Hawk, and Gretzky NHL.
All Images (C) Copyright 2009 Bethesda Softworks.
What's the most disappointing thing you've come to find about the games industry?
I wish the industry in general were more stable than it is. You always hear these numbers about year-over-year-end growth and being "bigger than Hollywood", yet if you've worked in the industry for a few years, I can almost guarantee you know someone who was laid off in the last six months. I hate how projects balloon past the point of employee retention to meet deadlines and the prospects of a stable, rewarding environment go out the door. Job stability and how often and how long a company goes into crunch time are two things worth exploring when discussing employment with anybody in our industry.
How much input did you have on the design and style of your work on Fallout3?
Lots! This freedom is one of my favorite parts of the job. We are usually given high level aesthetic goals, but how we interpret those is usually up to us. Throughout the wasteland of Fallout, you'll come across a lot of these corrugated metal and wooden shacks (Republic of Dave and Evergreen Mills are two examples where these are used). When I got the task, it was to more or less come up with a few multipurpose shacks that fit into the current style and looked different enough from the shacks that make up the Megaton settlement. How they turned out was pretty much my design decisions, with some technical considerations for how NPC's may use them. With few exceptions, most all the architecture and props I built are my design choices, and of course any revisions and the final OK are given by the art lead.
Lighting is another example where I'm pretty much left to make the decisions. There are some design principles of course like making sure the main paths are appropriately lit, and maybe using light to call attention to things, but I'm pretty much deciding the mood of most dungeons, while honoring the intent of the original level design. Some of those dungeons I lit were Dunwich, Our Lady of Hope, Statesman Hotel, Evergreen Mills, and the Mechanist lair, among many others.
