Tuesday 23 February 2010

Tristan Reidford - Valve

Representing Valve developer of the Half Life and now Left for Dead series Tristan spoke at Animex with focus on the latest Left for Dead 2. Tristan studied transport design at Coventry university and landed work with, the now Crytek owned, Free Radical Studios working on the the successful Timesplitters franchise.


He moved to Valve and has been with them for 3 years, by the sounds of his experiences he's had a part to play in many areas of the game production however character design is his forte.  the design for Left for Dead is realistic and for the human characters real actors were cast and digitally doubled for the game.  The design process for these human characters was:
  • Biography (outlined personality)
  • Concept Art (silhouette)
  • Casting
  • Reference 
  • Modelling - mudbox sculpting (2-3 weeks)
  • Voice Recording
Tristan mentioned that the characters were modelled in T Pose and kept symmetrical on axis. With this restriction asymmetry was achieved using normal map simulated deformation.  Over the course of the talk some great concept work and examples of their design process were shown.  Valve are one of the developer super powers in my opinion with their franchises gathering mass appeal across the world, they were recruiting so definitely worth contacting Tristan (I can give you an email if wish to contact him).  He outlined that the showreels/portfolios they want need to have work of quality similar to theirs in them.

No comments: