3DTotal: What it is about this particular sector of CG that you really enjoy?
Tim: I have always loved games and I’ve been playing them since the day my Dad brought a Commodore 64 home, so it’s a big thrill to be making them. I enjoy the fact that I can be creative at work and spend my time working collectively with so many talented people. I enjoy the camaraderie of the team and also being able to hear from other people how much they’ve enjoyed, or even disliked, the games I’ve been
working on

3DTotal: Being creative at work is obviously important to you but do the technical aspects of developing games ever counteract this freedom at all?
Tim: I think it depends on your perspective. I know some artists who thrive on having restrictions in place and others who struggle to adjust to them. Personally I enjoy working within the technical constraints that games provide. With every new generation of console technology there are new techniques to learn and I love pushing myself to discover what I am capable of doing within these limitations.

The restraints can drive an innovation of their own, and it can be incredibly satisfying to formulate and realise good looking procedural systems within games. I had a lot of fun working with Mike Spalding (Lead Character Artist) and Ben Hindle (Lead Technical Animator) on the customisation system for Mass Effect. The system had very strict texture limitations and texture look up restrictions in place, but with careful formulation we created a fun, powerful system which meant that not only would the game be populated by characters of varied appearance, but they would also fit within their memory constraints.

3DTotal: What prompted your move abroad and consequently your return to the UK?
Tim: I moved to Canada to work at Bioware after having being contacted by an artist who had gone to work there. It was a great opportunity to work on an Unreal 3 Engine powered game and also work with some very experienced and highly esteemed developers. I certainly leant a lot at the studio and had a fantastic time in the process, however my wife (who had relocated with me) needed to return to the UK to study and increase her professional opportunities.

3DTotal: You mention working on the award winning Mass Effect. What do you think makes the game so successful, and in what ways did it prove to be “a great learning experience”?
Tim: I think Mass Effect is a unique experience, offering a strong story-driven game that allows the user to drive their own destiny. The immediate parallel I can make is with the old, “choose your own adventure books”, however with Mass Effect you not only choose your own adventure, you battle in real time and get to watch everything unfold before you.

The art style of the game was distinct and vivid, requiring a lot of clean modelling and texturing. It pushed me to a level of realistic modelling and texturing that I hadn’t achieved before and I adapted to the style well. Working with a great team and using the Unreal 3 Engine gave me some great exposure to creating shaders and also a lot of insight into customisation systems, since I spent a lot of my time helping rework all the assets used for the player customisation.

In addition to the Human heads I was also privileged to be able to create a lot of the Alien species heads and in the process was exposed to the facial animations systems. So I was immersed in technology and techniques that were new to me; an ideal situation to learn from.