Carrier Weapons Revealed - Ben Boesel Interviewed! news

01 - How did you originally hear about Spiral Game Studios?

It was a ordinary day of surfing the internet for fun games to play and inspiration for art when I stumbled upon the Orion series. I found a page called "Got Skill? Looking for Talent?" on Epicgames.com - where hundreds of artists post their best work and companies post their open positions for jobs.

Out of pure luck I clicked on a link that said, "Spiral Game Studios presents 'ORION' - Positions available!" - the first image I saw instantly won me over. The collage of these 4 images amazed me: dinosaurs and color like I've never seen in any digital medium. From that point on, there was nothing in this world that could stop me from making the very unlikely attempt to join the Spiral team.

02 - What is it like working with David Prassel?

The unfunded Spiral Game Studios team is comprised of ~20 developers who work sleepless nights in order to produce a game that competes with other AAA titles. For this reason, all 20 of us have been drawn together in an unique relationship that cannot be described.

Working with David is an experience like no other. David is not a usual CEO of a business who priorities himself around his wants and desires, but rather a CEO who is a part of the team effort - even stepping in as the creative director, level designer, human resources, PR, and Marketing, design, level development - and the list goes on.

Working with David (and the rest of the team) is more like working with a group of friends rather than working with other employees. We spend any free time after work together, playing the games we love and of course playing the developers build of Orion- it's amazing.

03 - Where do you find inspiration for what you do?

Inspiration is a very hard thing to define because inspiration is truly derived from a mesh of life experiences. In general, for environments – I pull memories of trips my parents thankfully took me on when I was young. For anything non-organic, I am inspired from just about any high tech machine- phones, computers, robots etc.

In terms of art philosophy, not necessarily the actual art style, I am inspired by the uniqueness and attention to detail that the Blizzard team has created in Starcraft II (and in all of their other titles), and movies like Avatar, Transformers, Star Wars, and District 9.

04 - What has been your hardest task so far?

My hardest task so far has been creating the main human character design for Orion: Prelude. The design philosophy called for something totally different from anything I'm used to drawing in a character design- I incorporated lights, bright color, and small panels and pieces to increase flexibility.

Spiral Game Studios has converted my ideology of art to integrate color in even the darkest shadows and the grayest metals- to help break the videogame industry from the redundant use of browns, grays, and blacks as their main color palette.

05 - Are the deadlines as crazy as David makes them sound?

The deadlines are for sure not as crazy as David makes them sound, but it surely isn't a cake walk at Spiral Game Studios. We are all working together to make sure we make a game we are proud of and want to play on a daily basis after it's released, and for that reason it is troublesome to call this "work " and "deadlines".

We all have put everything we have into this game thus far, so much that each concept, animation, model, and media post is not deemed an assignment or a task, but simply something that we do as a part of our daily lives.

06 - What's your favorite game outside of ORION - ever?

Starcraft II- it's the best game! I love blizzards art style and addictive game play in all their games. It is a regular game that all of us at SGS play in our free time- go try it if you haven't, and post on the forums when you want to start a match!

07 - You were tasked with redesigning ALL of the weapons and items in the new game - what was that like?

When I was assigned to design all the weapons and items I was without a doubt honored more than I can even describe. I was thrilled to be given the freedom to help shape the visual experience of Orion: Prelude. Alongside the other artists, and a lot of input and advice from the team as a whole, I started each design with at least 8-10 sketches that were one by one narrowed down until we all decided on the final design for each gun and item.

The ideology behind these designs was to create guns and weapons with straight edge geometric shapes (to contrast the curvy designs that the Altair "alien" class has) and color and lights not usually seen in gun designs in videogames. It was indeed an amazing process and more of a group collaboration than solely one's work- Thanks to everyone on the team for all the help and especially for all the inspiration from previous Orion guns in the Orion Source Beta.

08 - What was your favorite piece that you have created so far - and why?

My favorite piece(s) so far has been the sunset battle scene I did for the media. It incorporated everything about Orion that I love - the massive dinosaurs, the mechs, jetpacks, and of course color!

But, because I could not decide- Although it doesn't look like much, the Carrier Medic design was my favorite actual concept piece, because it fit perfectly with what I envisioned as the style for human class in Orion and it has blue lights!

09 - What's your favorite feature or element from ORION?

Wow... if you forced me to pick just one element from Orion: Prelude I would pick the dynamic and unique battles one experiences while playing Orion. While fighting your foes and attempting to complete certain tasks - you are challenged to defend yourself and your team from a huge T-Rex, a group of pesky raptors, and a couple pteranodons poking at your skull.

This unique experience that you are constantly presented with while playing Orion opens a whole new array of teamwork opportunities and replay value to the game- it's truly a whole new level of immersion and excitement!