Interview with Senior Environment Artist at Rockstar Games

Name '(Hidden for NDA security reasons)',

What is your specific role as a Senior Environment Artist at Rockstar? And what's the difference between a senior environment artist and an environment artist? what kind of day to day jobs do you do? And do you think it would be possible to do this kind of work while being self-employed?

@ Senior Environment Artist: I can't talk about specifics. See your question about NDAs further down. I was hired for my passion and knowledge of real world driving and racing as well as my 9 years at Sony working on driving games.

@ Freelance: my specific job at Rockstar wouldn't work as on freelance. I'm working closely with designers and leads from different departments on a daily basis. Communication is key, a constant exchange of ideas. Doing that on freelance just adds way too much delay.

Do you have any Specific abilities that you gained which helped you get into your job position and is there any transferable skills required when interviewing for the job?

Coming from a mid sized Sony studio (Evolution Studios had about 80 employees) we had to be generalists and quite tech savvy as we had to fill multiple roles (level design, block-out, texture artists, outsource management, art reviews, optimisation, env art). Rockstar has way bigger teams and artists can afford to specialise more. One big bonus that helped me land the job at Rockstar was my life long passion for driving and racing. I spend a lot of my spare time riding my motorbikes on and off track, restoring old cars with friends or just exploring cool landscapes on road trips. That's a very specific skillset Rockstar was looking for at the time and landed me my current job.

With technology and software constantly being developed how has that affected your Workflow, how did you learn to adapt?

Learn the basics like life drawing, perspective, 3D maths, colour theory, art history, the basics of lighting and cinematography, film history, dramaturgy. Everything else is just tools. It's a life long struggle to keep up with things but never let the tools get in the way of the idea: does that fancy new shader REALLY make your game more fun or are you just trying to hide the fact, that it's not a great game idea to begin with?

What effect if any do marketplace developments have on them?

On tools or games? As with so many aspects in life: be the first or be the best. Evolution Studios always went for first. We never had the ressources to be the very best in a segment. We always achieved great graphics with solid game-play and usually released our games at new hardware launches. At Rockstar we have the ressources to take our time, make the very biggest and best games, nearly independent of hardware cycles.

When Sony evolution studios shut, how did you manage to find another job position and how did you find the transition to Starship?

With a certain degree of experience and track record, jobs find you. That also goes for juniors with impressive portfolios- Arstation is a good spot- and proven skills. PBR, photogrammetry, specialized hard surface tools (MOI3D, Modo, Fusion360) and Substance are the hot shit right now. Also, you forgot to copy/ paste "Rockstar" over "Starship".

Is there any health and safety issues where you work?

LOL