Employed!!!

I don't see how people do it, sitting at home all day.... not for me. It will be good to be getting back to work again. I start later this month. Wish me luck.

The Wild Ride- part 1

Too many people have asked me.."What Happened?". My response is, I'm not really sure it matters at this point. People have been contacting me to get the dirt on 3dr etc. etc. I'm not about to dish dirt, because, there is no dirt to dish.

My part of the story began like this..(abbreviated version for those ADD'rs) George and I were introduced by a colleague of ours, Cliff. Cliff wanted to invite me into this group and said that I should contact George about it. So, I did. This was around mid 2002, I believe. George and I would chat from time to time on ICQ. We would talk Duke, the industry, games, etc. Typical things you would think game industry guys would talk about. We had a number of things in common as far as work related items were concerned. We continued to stay in touch over the years, talking about DNF every once in a while, nothing too heavy just kinda touching bases. Then around summer 2006, I was in the Dallas area speaking at a convention and George invited me out to dinner. Keep in mind, I had never met George in person before, so this was a bit, shall I say, "different" for me. I'm just now remembering all of this as I'm typing. It was George, my son Donald (11) and myself. I can't remember what we ate.
Anyway... we ate, shot the shit, and rolled out, back to 3DR.

I saw the game that evening....I was very impressed. The game looked good, it played well, but most importantly, it felt like a Duke game. From the time Allen Blum fired it up, until the end of the demo, it was Duke Nukem 100%. After that demo I was like...sign me up..........TO BE CONTINUED>>>>>

The Wild Ride Part II

.... so not too soon after that meeting, maybe, 2-3 months, I signed on as the Art Director for 3D Realms. That was around August 2006. Of course, all of my friends wondered if I was crazy and Why would I go to 3dr? The funny thing is, I knew what I was signing up for. This was not a situation were I was told one thing only to find out everything was **cked up (not sure why I blanked out "jacked' but what ever). George made it perfectly clear in our discussions prior to me joining that this would not be a walk in the park. You got to respect the man for that. I came to find, that's JUST how George was, in your face, no B-jive, this is how it is, this is how I am, take it for what it is. As we used to say at Obsidian...."it is what it is". The funny thing is, 3dr didn't have anything more wrong than most other companies. ??? What's that you say??? 3dr was no different than any other developer??? Yep, I said it, their (our) problems were no more insurmountable than the next studio. Details? naw, not really important, again.. this is just a brief history of my time at 3Dr, not some tell all book. I'll just say that the problems were easy to solve, mainly because I've solved or seen them solved before at other companies.

Shortly after my arrival...just timing mostly, some people decided they had enough, so they quit. I really wish I would have had the chance to work more with them and to learn from them but I totally understand why they decided to jet. I don't really know their complete story so I'm not going to make up or assume the true reason(s) behind their departure. I will tell you this.. I talked to some of the guys after we all departed 3dr and they were genuinely upset about the outcome. They still cared for the product and the company as if they were still working on DNF. ...

Ok, got a little side tracked....soo, looks like I had some spots to fill now,....done. Everyone was in place on the art team. People were learning, growing, geling ..becoming a team. Of course if took us a little bit of time but we all came together. We were getting lots of things done. The game was looking much better than it did when I got there. That was completely due to hard work on all fronts, design, programming and art.

Fast Forward to ...around Christmas 2007 ... someone had the bright idea to make a teaser trailer for DNF. I honestly don't remember who came up with the idea...Jay or Jeron,... one of those guys. The kicker was, it had to be done on our own time. George wanted us to be focused on getting the game done (between the hours of 9am-7pm) ;-) What I do in my spare time is none of his business ...lol. We never planned to release it, it was only supposed to be a surprise for George at the Christmas party. We all busted our butts for that trailer. I think it was well worth it. Everyone that could, pitched in. I'm very proud of not just the outcome but the effort and love that went into that project. It was a small victory for the team. It demonstrated what it takes to create something from scratch to finish in a short amount of time. This small project gave the team a boost of confidence that would set the tone for the coming new year.

Needless to say, George was visibly moved by the gesture........TBC....

Wild Ride Part III

Ok, so..."its been a long time, I shouldn't have left you..." Sorry about the gap, but its been a really busy couple of months.

Where was I... oh yeah. The video was a hit. No one was sure if George would even put the video out. When he decided to go ahead and drop it, all we could do was sit and wait to see what would happen. I thought it would make a nice headline but didn't think it would blow up like it did. We dropped it on Shacknews first and the demand for the video brought their servers to its knees. Not too shabby for a game that everyone joked about right? I'm not really sure how long the servers were down but I do know that day we proved a point. Love him or hate him, Duke was still in demand. People wanted to see the game, they wanted to see what many years of dev time looked like. Over all I think the feedback was 90% positive. 2+ million viewers on youtube can't all be wrong, right? This doesn't take into account the various other outlets that had the video linked to their sites.

I'd have to say, the next couple of months the crew was riding high. We used that positive feedback to push us even harder. We also used the negative feedback to make some changes to the models and textures. We even made some serious changes to some of the characters during this time. I know what you are thinking...of course you did... THATS why it was taking so long. Not at all, by this time we were turning around finish in-game models in about 3 weeks. Additionally, this didn't have any impact on design or programming progress. Production wise, we were on a good track, but we still needed more organization to get the whole team running at the same speed and in the same direction. What did we do.....we got a producer. Enter...."The Hook" (Brian Hook)..... TBC....

Pip Boy images for Fallout

"State Penn" comic page

Odd world Concept I thought was cool, so I started to model it

This is all max work right now, will take it into z-brush after I get all the straps and do-dads squared away.