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themes

Themes:

  • The waterline:

    • are you contributing? Or filling in for other people's mistakes
    • Don't put people below the waterline
      • it's cruel
      • it's counterproductive: nothing get's better

  • The great compromiser:

    • reconciling different needs and interests
    • need to know enough about both jobs to do them well

  • "Watercolor"

    • Boundaries are fluid, hard to delimit
      • eg on State of Decay I designed the pipeline and also did production

  • Renaissance man

    • Not just because you know multiple things
    • But also because you pioneer things — Ex: alberti and the history of perspective * discovered by tinkerers * popularized by systematizers * revolutionized the way art was made * "tips and tricks" * Craft and Theory are complimentary Combining both opens new doors Being a “Renaissance Person” isn’t enough Multi-skilled people make cool discoveries…. …but without a system, discoveries remain curiosities How do you liberate creative energies? Exploration followed by packaging Make the fruits of discovery available to the crafts-people

  • process vision

    • Seeing making stuff as a system, not an act — identify time wasters — identify one-way gates — fight for short, straight pipelines
    • Negotiation does not work — "We just won't do that" is a lie * Phinney story * Moonrise story
    • What works is designing the process right — simple — flexible — as linear as possible
    • Example: level editing a shooter game — Socom vs TF2

  • talent for abstraction

    • Learn to see the visually significant cues that other artists see
    • ... and translate them in to tech.
    • Example: de-construct an image for the audience — glancing highlights — direct, indirect, specular, ambient etc — see contours and gradients as functions — see blend modes, etc
    • Not about just knowing what knobs to pull — also knowing what to ask for
    • Example: — "carved out of soap" — translate into: * soft contours * soft terminators * lots of mid tones

  • tolerance for chaos

    • Some engineers are "just so" people — don't like the boat rocked
    • TAs are the opposite: — "Interrupt driven"
    • Have to be able to deal with sudden chaos — psychologically * don't freak out * Ship sank? Build another! * example: - rebuilding hit boxes. — organizationally * good backlog * example: - good email reporting tools — technologically * good library of tricks up your sleeve * know how to use a roll of duct tape. * Example: Crytek files lib

  • Good memory

    • Somebody has to remember how things work — development is not linear or routine — we don't usually know how to do half of it — we imrovise and move on — god help us if we have to go back
    • It's likely to be the TA (see "memory alpha") who remembers
    • Documents fail — More tools, less process! — More tools, less documentation — if it can be automatic, it should be

  • Guilds, secrecy

    • medieval tradition — secretive — local — family based — inefficient!
    • renaissance — formal — literary — repeatable!
    • We constantly struggle between these two — guild life is actually kind of fun — it's tight, it's us-vs-them — it's also more secure * artists keeping secrets — But the open economy is vastly more efficient * cheaper * lower risk * no run-over-by-bus problem - 343 story — Moral Q: are we putting people out of a job? * No - if we could do it, so could somebody else * If we make things more streamlined we're making the people with us more valuable

  • Innovation vs iteration

    • Regular artists work best in iteration — try, view, judge, tweak, repeat
    • TA's need to innovate — new ways to work — new ideas to look at — proof of concept
    • These are complementary, but appeal to different people — TA = easily bored — Artists = hard to make them stop — innovators create a new process — iterators make it sing

  • Department or not?

    • I don't like departments
    • but they can be a necessary evil — engineers / designers don't always want to hear from artists * "Lazy artists" story — It helps if the whole company knows that somebody is there to speak for the process
    • OTOH the relationship between art and ta is special — if you're not close, it's not working — TA exists to make art more productive