The following projects and anecdotes occurred during the early years of our career leading up to AAA. Everyone starts from somewhere. While some examples may seem rough, the priceless lessons learned and visuals made served as the foundation of our career starting the following decade and beyond.
Sony: Lair
In 2008 we were hired by Sony San Diego, our first major employer, which became our breakthrough into the gaming industry. As a lighting artist for the action-adventure game Lair, we helped with cutscenes and polished key shots. At the time, it wasn't fully understood, the major difference between cinematic and gameplay lighting. But we also had no idea the next opportunity would certainly teach us that and more!
Oddly, Lair didn't gross well at launch because of a fatal decision to use motion instead of six-axis control for flight. It was a novel idea but poorly executed. Later it was patched to fix the problem, which made the game better, but was too little, too late. Nonetheless, we were grateful to be a part of it.
Play Lair on Playstation 3 >Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning
Our first project since arriving in California, the opportunity to work on Spyro came thanks to a close friend. After arriving in LA, a day before work started at Technicolor Interactive Inc., we had to hit the ground running. Production was already behind schedule, therefore we rushed to light cutscenes, set up rendered frames for compositing, and witnessed the final result exported to the game.
The files we received came from India, which weren't bad, but due to miscommunication it required a lot of work converting their format into our local studio's pipeline. Before lighting, polishing, and sending off to the render farm as we went along, prep had to be done. It was a great yet hefty experience and we learned a lot about the process of illumination for game cinematics.
Oddly, there was a rare chance to play Spyro while it was in Alpha and it was the first time we ever experienced an unfinished game. There was something magical about it. A part of us longed to know more and be a part of that. We had no idea the chance would eventually come, but in our first encounter with the world of making games, it was a fitting title to start of our journey, "a new beginning".
This may sound cheesy but it reminded us of our last day in Florida, before moving to California, uncertain about the future, we opened a fortune cookie with the message we kept in our wallet since, which read: "you will show them what you're capable of".
Learn more - Legend Of Spyro: A New Beginning >Thursday Counting 5-4-3-2-1 Gallery
It all started with a phone call from an old buddy in a pinch. Before moving to California, we learned the production company, Artificial Army, had contracted our friend to work on the band Thursday's song 5-4-3-2-1 under tight deadlines and needed all the help they could get. With just a few days left, he asked if we could handle modeling based on concept art. Normally, we focused on lighting, composition, and materials, so it was rare to take on a modeling task. Little did we know, it would also be our last gig before saying goodbye to the southern coast life we grew up with. Most of the elements created for both lighting and modeling ended up in the final cut.
While our role in lighting was limited to basic setup, compositing was handled by Artificial Army. They did an amazing job blending different passes together. Our main focus was modeling and design, taking concept art and bringing it to life. We improvised details when the artwork didn’t make sense, as often happens in post-production.
Behind The Scenes: Environment
There were six key locations, among them were: the train car interior, station platform, station exterior, and cityscape. Some of it was a blend between concept art and real-life reference. For the station interior, it was a lot of copy and paste. Time constraints meant modeling half of the space and mirroring it to save hours. After stitching, blending, and refining UVs, we were ready to move on.
The cityscape proved a bit more challenging. We had to embellish a lot of background noise without dragging down render times. Most of our effort went into the exterior building details, using a deco-art style. We then built modular pieces for the city's outer edge and assembled multiple scenes from these like LEGOs. The result was a richly detailed cityscape from a handful of pieces.
Behind The Scenes: Train
Finally, we had the train—a unique design with concept art that was over-the-top. We never created anything like it, and making sense of it was tough; there were plenty of suggested details and embellishments, leaving us to fill in gaps where necessary. Fortunately, given the tight deadline, we didn’t need to go too deep with UVs and texturing. Basic shaders and some lighting sufficed. One of the toughest parts was creating openings for the side vents and the front lamp, a focal point in one of the video’s close-ups. Though the 72-hour crunch felt insane, after a lot of cuban coffee, the detailed work paid off—many of the areas we didn't think would matter in the video ended up being key shots.
The project turned out to be a success, and we were proud to have been a part of it. It was a fitting way to wrap up our time on the Southeast and kick off a new chapter in California. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to take our time with it, but that’s the nature of the industry.
Interestingly, this project left us at a crossroads with two reels—one for lighting and another for environment art. We weren’t sure which path to take. Later, when we were hired at Sony, our supervisor felt the modeling reel was stronger, yet fate had other plans.
For more check out the video on YouTube!
Watch Thursday - Counting 5-4-3-2-1 >Early Works Gallery
After college graduation we co-founded a company called Mindjuice with friends which later became Finale Studios. We worked tirelessly on a series of projects, for television, web, architectural visualization, and more.
While we had many highlights, there were also setbacks, and among them were the ones subcategorized as either failures or losers. Failures fell short of their goals but losers were the projects we never bothered trying, criticized those who did, and got angry about it. After graduation we had to quickly discern the difference. Doing so helped us grow and learn from mistakes, resulting in the business staying afloat for a good while.
About two years into it, we wanted to do something different. Telling stories was in our heart and soul over everything else. We wanted to be like Pixar. So we directed an animated short where we co-wrote, edited, and lit the project. We were also responsible for running the business, managing animators, and side-hustling freelance jobs, to keep the production going. We also had to help manage the voice acting and sound aspect as well. Two and a half years later we ended up with a 12-minute fully rendered pilot short and submitted it to executives.
By that point, we burned out and along the way lost the company on a gamble our TV pitch would pick up and pay off, but it didn't. We lost everything and had to start from scratch. At the very least, by this point, we had nothing to lose but a lighting reel and the need to start over. And so our adventure began...
To learn more, check out any of the links below!