Oyvind Steensen
MMO Game Artists

Caverns

MMOG Hell: How do you create your Art, what tools and techniques do you utilize mainly?

Ïyvind: I've always been drawing mostly in black and white, often with a pen. Ink drawings are one of those techniques I'm most fascinated with. I also did quite a bit of water-colour painting a period, definitely inspired by Alan Lee and Alex Ross.

In my work at Funcom, I've mainly used other tools. I've been a long-time World Designer for Anarchy Online now, and thus, most of what I created was made with our in-house world editor Tide. This is the editor where the grand scale of the in-game graphics are slowly built while our graphic artists produce smaller items and parts in 3D Studio Max. After I took over as an Art Director, it of course means that I've been able to do an increased amount of concept art and illustrations. I've mainly been using Photoshop, but I tend to draw sketches on paper as well. I love having time to do a lot of 2D stuff again, and I'm enjoying the responsibility of directing the visual look of the AO-universe. In many ways it is the answer to my teenage dreams of creating and designing universes with an intricate and exiting story and gallery to play on. The AO universe is a fantastic setting for exploration. It's full Funcom property, and I think the background material from Gaute, Ragnar and Didrik is great. I like to shape a 3D shape in 2D with lighting and all, and also catch the atmosphere more easily in short time there. I will continue doing some World Design though. I enjoy that a lot, and it works for me in a slightly different way than doing concept art, so I guess it fills in some gaps in my psyche. It's enormous fun to see an area come into the game, and start living it's own life after launch. How will the baby grow up to be? Only months of Live play-testing can tell.

Adonis City

MMOG Hell: You obviously enjoy game art, but how do you feel about the restrictions in an environment like Computer Games, would you say you can you express yourself fully, even with limited resources? (Keywords Polygon count, Texture size)

Ïyvind: I think that would be a lot bigger restriction two years ago than now. With the newer generations of super-powerful hardware, you can express most of what you

Wolfman

want in real-time graphics. We have polycounts reaching millions and texture sizes big enough to trick the eye on anything else than right-up-close range. And what that doesn't do, you can do with detail-textures, bump-mapping, normal-mapping and highly evolved light-and shadow systems. However, I think there is too much tech-head talk about poly-counts and shader effects. All those fancy technologies doesn't create good game graphics; -they just expand the tool set the game artists have to work with. So a good artists can create great art with lesser tools, and good tools doesn't equal good result. Of course, in a game world, good technology gives you a lot for free. Using a good water technology doesn't require you to be a good artists to use it. It's when you combine those fancy features with great art direction that it really shines, and I think anyone would see the difference immediately if we only saw it more often in the game industry. I'm bored of looking at all the contemporary military shooters and generic D&D worlds. As good as those games can be, they give me little in terms of atmosphere and immersion. I like fancy designs and unexplored territory. :)
One thing I'm missing but seems to be coming slowly is wide open, detailed environments where you can see far into the horizon. We are quite a bit away from creating "real" scale environments with tree-clad hills that roll out and swallow the sun in the distance. Fog is still a level designers unwanted but necessary friend.

MMOG Hell: Anarchy Online has a wide range of diverse environments, ranging from high-tech towns paved with Skyscrapers to vast lava areas inhibited with tons of vile creatures in the Shadowlands. What is your favorite Area, from an artistic point of view, in Anarchy Online?

Ïyvind: Hmm. That's hard. I often tend to just log in to walk around and see what we have created. I'm very happy with how we did Shadowlands artistically. At Funcom, we have so good World Designers and Graphic Artists, not to mention the art direction of Didrik Tollefsen as a basic, that frequently you have to just stop and look at stuff, even though you've seen it a hundred times before in the editor etc. I think what I'm the most happy with artistically of my own work is the center of Adonis City. I think we really nailed the grand atmosphere and look there. I'm also very happy with the windy paths in Scheol and, to drag out an old play field, the mountainous landscape surrounding the rivers in Broken Shores. Shadowlands contain so much diverse beauty though, so it's hard to decide for an area. I think both Nascence and Elysium turned out very beautiful and atmospheric. The first time you come out of the Jobe Research gates and face the grandness and mysticism of the Shadowlands beyond is a great moment in AO. And closing in on the Redeemed temple in Central Elysium is a very unique and beautiful experience that almost brings a tear to your eye.

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