It’s been about a year since the seventh class of Game Design students at VFS graduated. One of the teams from that class created a third-person action-strategy game called Bloom, which would end up helping the five teammates – Mike Wilson, Guilherme Ramos, Brennan Massicotte, Adrian Audet, and Brian Vidovic – begin their professional careers.

One year later, we asked them to reflect on their experiences at VFS and to discuss careers: 5 grads in 5 different roles at 5 different game companies.

This is the third part of five in a series of interviews we’ll be running all week. Read Part 1 with Relic Narrative Designer Mike Wilson and Part 2 with BioWare Cinematic Designer Guilherme Ramos.

In many ways, Brennan Massicotte is the black sheep of the Bloom group: a skilled artist in a program that teaches key aspects of game art but isn’t specifically focused on training artists. So if that’s the case, what can a program like Game Design bring to the table for an artist like Brennan?

Brennan Massicotte
Then: Bloom’s Art Director
Now: Concept Artist at United Front Games

Your art was pretty refined before coming to VFS. What drew you to the art side of games, and concept art in particular?

By the end of high school, I knew I was going to pursue some kind of artistic career, but none of the available options – fine arts, graphic design – seemed to fit what I was after.

As is often the case, the answer was in front of me the whole time. I considered that the main thing distracting me from art was games. It just made sense to combine the two and seriously consider aiming for a career in concept art.

There are many reasons I find concept art much more appealing than other fields of illustration. Concepts are so much more about the purity and clarity of an idea than just being pretty. They solve problems and answer questions. That means every day you’ve got a new creative workout ahead, and by the end of the day you’re one step closer to achieving a compelling and justified world. You just don’t get that kind of experience in different work environments.

As a concept artist, do you find that a familiarity with the other aspects of game design to be useful?

So far I’ve found many principles of level design are exceedingly important in the concept phase. The concept artist must have a firm grasp on the way the game spaces are explored and the things they say to the player. When it comes to tackling these complex qualities, the concept artist and level designer are wearing the same hat.

I also notice similarities between game designers and concept artists. The role of both is to ’sell’ ideas to others. Whether it’s a detailed doc on a feature or an inspirational illustration, it has to say the right things.

What did you get out of being part of the Bloom team?

Well, most importantly five friends. I’d never been more proud or excited than working with those guys and the other collaborators. It showed me the potential of creative minds with intense determination and passion.

On a practical level, it prepared me for professional work and what would be expected of me. Those three months crunching every day pushed us to the edge and revealed to each of us how much we could handle. That in itself is nice to know before getting engaged in your career.

You were Bloom’s Art Director – how has that role informed your current job at UFG, if at all?

Only after the project was finished and I started my first gig did I really gain an appreciation for the true value of our experience on Bloom.

You have to consider that the development cycle of the project was extremely short, uninhibited by outside influences, and run by a core team of five people. That’s got to be about as pure as the game design process gets.

Bloom showed us all the importance of planning for solid design and ’story’ or ‘world’. We learned what fiction was needed to properly inspire the art, and in turn the information required from the art to inform the rest of the production team.

By the time we touched our first assets we had locked down the important aspects of the story and an art style guide based on those ideas. Any questions or decisions later on in production could be justified by these earlier commitments. Everything down to the last colour in the game was deliberately conceived from a common vision.

VFS Game Design Senior Instructor Andrew Laing on Brennan:
We were actually able to gauge the big improvement in Brennan’s art skills over the course of the year he spent here – truly remarkable. And he seems entirely too happy at his new job over at United Front Games!

Check out Brennan’s art in his gallery at CGSociety.

Next: Adrian Audet, who works in QA at Blue Castle Games