HZ-Meet Senior Artist Will Burns

Meet Senior Artist Will Burns

January 19th, 2010 |

Will’s illustrations are featured in the Commonwealth art book and poster available inside the Limited Edition Game Box.

Will, tell us what you do at Hi-Rez.

I’m a Senior Artist at Hi-Rez. I spend most of my time doing concepts for the environments in Global Agenda- everything from rough paintovers to Disneyland-style maps of levels and detailed landscape and architectural renderings. I recently contributed to the illustrations for the poster and timeline book that shipped with the GA collector’s edition box. I work exclusively in Photoshop with a Wacom Cintiq digital tablet monitor.

Describe how you got into the gaming industry; how long have you worked on games and what brought you to Hi-Rez Studios?

I’ve been working full-time in the game industry since 2000, making illustrations for Vivendi Universal Games titles like Curious George and Spyro the Dragon before moving on to Hi-Rez. I heard about Hi-Rez from another illustrator named Skip Kimball, who referred me here after he went to Radical to lead the art team on “Prototype.” I originally just fell into the games industry by accident when an art school buddy who was busy with other projects passed along a job lead at an educational software company. I kept in touch with people there and one project led to another.

Describe your video game experience; when did you start playing? What really got you thinking about game development?

I’m showing my age, but I actually started playing games on the Commodore 64. I tried programming some graphics when I was about 10 and quickly realized that my talents lay elsewhere. Years later when I was in college, Myst came out. I loved the detailed environments in that game and I decided that’s what I wanted to work on. But that same year FPS games just exploded, and the requirements of frame-rate made graphics go to crap for about five years. Counter-strike got me back into PC games again, and I jumped at the first opportunity to make one.

What is your favorite Global Agenda class/character to play?

Probably Recon, but being a good one means you’re a total a-hole, so I only play that class with my alt.

What part of Global Agenda are you most excited about?

I enjoy seeing people get blown up on the environments I design.

What experience do you draw from when creating the content that you do for the game? Is there anything specific you draw from for inspiration?

I was fortunate enough to spend several years designing storefronts and fixtures for flagship Disney stores. I had to work with architects and think about how my designs would actually get built, and even do plan and elevation views to scale. Now when I design for virtual environments, I still try to make them look like they could really be built, and be structurally sound. Although GA has a futuristic setting, I try to keep things plausible by researching present-day environments and then extrapolating them into the future. I do my best to avoid ripping off well-known sci-fi franchises like Star Wars and Aliens. Instead I go directly to the source. With GA, my inspiration was a mix of industrial/military technology and cutting-edge architecture by people like Frank Gehry and Norman Foster.

What advice do you have for someone who wants to break into gaming?

I can only speak to my specialty, which is environment illustration. I guess my advice to budding artists would be to spend a lot of time drawing, painting and learning perspective before you try to break into the industry. Technology changes all the time, but the fundamentals of art never do. No software will help you make great art if you don’t have the chops. Once you put in the time to learn your craft, just be persistent and your portfolio will speak for itself.