Desingers with USC ties discuss accomplishments
Video game designers who have worked on effects and graphics for entertainment hits including Spike TV’s “1,000 Ways to Die,” “Avatar,” and “Grand Theft Auto IV” held a panel Tuesday night at the Columbia Museum of Art discussing what they’ve accomplished.
The electronic phenomena that tend to eat students’ free time is a lot more than just defeating the final, cheap boss or owning other players via online multiplayer matches — they require design and creativity on sound, physics, algorithms and even tree designs. The designers — some of them with ties to USC — elaborated on how they’ve applied their talents in the real world.
Steve Klipowicz is a USC media arts graduate. Now he’s the art director of Interactive Data Visualization, the creators of SpeedTree. SpeedTree has created trees seen in “Avatar,” the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies and many video games including “Grand Theft Auto IV” and “Batman: Arkham Asylum.” Game developers use the program to put realistic vegetation into their games, Klipowicz said.
“The margin is getting thinner. Games and movies are getting closer to each other,” he said about improvements in graphics.
Michael White, an artist with SunnyBoy Entertainment, talked about his background as a motion designer and how his company works on Spike TV’s “1,000 Ways to Die” by creating the title sequences and death reenactments.
“You wouldn’t believe some of the comments — ’Can I bleed a little bit more,’ ’Can we get more blood?’” White said.
His company is also working on the TV show “Around the World in 80 Ways.”
USC computer science graduate and Void Star Creations creative director Drew Card had a demo of his “Poker Smash” game, a Tetris look-a-like that played its way onto Xbox 360 Arcade.
Patrick Walsh, Walsh Family Media’s founder and a USC business graduate, talked about entrepreneurship in creative writing with family media while showing a 2001-themed video he made of Cocky.
The Columbia Design League held the panel to expose people, especially USC students who were there, to the video game design industry.