Naughty Dog Environment Artists in Vertex
Take an inside look into how the environmental artists at Naughty Dog operate and how they design, create, and make game worlds here at the studio.
Last week, among the hustle and bustle of PAX Prime, a digital book about video game art development was released for free online. This book, called Vertex, is an industry wide collaboration project organized by Ryan Hawkins. I’m very excited to share this because I and a few other developers at Naughty Dog contributed some of our knowledge to it.A unique inside look at our specific disciplines within the field
To be precise, the Dogs who wrote the articles with me are all on the Environment team. Jeremy, Anthony (@Vaccaro3d), Brad and I (@DBal) took some time to write a little about what we do on a daily basis at Naughty Dog. As each of us are specialized within our field this is a unique inside look at our specific disciplines within the field, but together, we show a progression of how we work as a team to make the environments of Uncharted and The Last of Us. Combined, our articles total 31 pages worth of techniques, in-game examples and images that show a behind the scenes look at how we create our detailed levels.We push each other every day to continue making the best games we can
The book has many more articles written by some very talented individuals throughout the gaming industry, weighing in at an amazing 300 pages total. I have to thank Ryan Hawkins for pulling this all together and giving it away for free on the internet. His goal has been to share the knowledge of professionals in our field to help fuel the passion of those who are interested in the game industry.
Working on this book really reminded me of how talented my coworkers are and how we push each other every day to continue making the best games we can at Naughty Dog. When I wrote the article, it was difficult to think of what I should write about at first. But all I had to do was open one of my level files and the inspiration flooded in. It was a great way to look back and do a post mortem of my level. I know the other artists who also wrote articles are very excited to share their findings as well, and we hope anyone who is interested in what we do enjoys the book. You can find us here:
Or in the final book from pages 64-95. We’re constantly learning and changing how we do will better do things here, so be on the lookout for more from all of us at Naughty Dog.