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I left St Jo’s in 1995, having studied Art, Economics and Geography A Levels. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do as a career, but I knew I wanted to be in something creative. I started at De Montfort University a year later, on a Design Management degree course. I’ll be honest, it was the only option that didn’t require me to do an interview - which in those days wasn’t that easy when you were on the other side of the world. Luckily it turned out to be a brilliant course - and I majored in metal-smithing and jewellery-making. Something I’d never have thought I’d be doing!
It took a little while to get going on my career. After uni I worked in the hospitality industry for a while, and in 2000 moved to Brighton. There was a great buzz about the place. I loved the creativity and the sense of opportunity. But I was really missing having a creative outlet. My girlfriend (now wife) convinced me to quit the bar work and get out there.
I found a small studio below a friend’s shop, and joined forces with another young, local artist, Ben Allen. We would hang out downstairs, listen to hip hop, and paint, in the main influenced by graffiti and street art. I opened a small gallery over the road from the studio. ‘Studio 113’, a tiny space. It wasn’t the most profitable operation, but I sold a pretty steady stream of paintings, and it was a great way to get my name out there and meet people. A few local pubs took our work too.
It was 2002, during a local exhibition, including my work, that I was approached by a local video games Artist, Jason Green. He liked my work and asked if I wanted to come in for a chat. I went, not imagining I’d have much of a chance, given I didn’t have the first idea how games were made! Sure I liked playing them, but that was about it. But, Jason really appreciated my artwork and had faith that I could pick the technical side up with training.
And so, in the summer of 2002, I started my video games career as a Texture Artist for work-for- hire developer, Climax Racing. My first three games were for the MotoGP THQ franchise. We would faithfully recreate race tracks from around the world, and it was my job to ‘paint’ the textures in photoshop, before they were imported into the game.
Over the next few years I worked on several racing games, and moved from being a solely 2D artist to also working in 3D (I now work mostly in Modo), which meant I was modelling the environments in the game as well as texturing them. In 2006 we were taken over by Disney, and became Black Rock Studio. Disney bought us specifically to make games that would appeal to the teen market. The acquisition enabled us to invest more in our games and we developed two, stand-out racing games for Xbox/Playstation - ATV racer ‘Pure’ and explosive action racer ‘Split/Second’. Both highly critically acclaimed, but sadly for Disney, not blockbuster sellers.
As well as creating better and better games, I was now working in a Lead Artist capacity, having worked my way up through the ranks. My specialism was Environments, and I lead the creation of everything from desert race tracks to a downtown city. I enjoyed leading a team, and having more of a say about how the final visuals would look. We were a studio of 140 people by that point, and a lot of inspiring talent. But by 2011, with a real shift in the market away from console gaming to free to play mobile gaming, and not a lot of financial success to show for their global investments in games development, Disney’s strategy shifted. That year they closed Black Rock Studio.
It was at this point my wife (who was a director at the studio) and a mate decided we would take this opportunity - and our redundancy payments - and start our own games studio! There was a real entrepreneurial spirit going round the industry at that point. The App Store offered an open platform for publishing games. Games engines such as Unity 3D were democratising the games dev process. You no longer had to pour years on of investment into making a proprietary games engine - you could license them.
So, PaperSeven was born, and I had somehow become an Art Director! Which in fact, in the early days, meant I did everything vaguely arty :) And I had to learn a lot of new skills, such as video editing, character design, and web development on the fly. One of our first big projects was for Channel 4, and we ended up making not 1, not 2, but 3 games for their ‘Made in Chelsea’ franchise! Which was a bit random to say the least...but we won a Broadcast Award, and hit no 2 on the free to play games charts. So, I can’t be too rude about it.
We went on to develop a number of work-for-hire games and apps, for brands such as Nokia, Bentley, Egmont and Disney. But we knew we wanted to try and tackle making our own games. We slowly grew the team, increasing to a team of 10 by 2015. And stepped into the slightly scary world of creating our own IP.
We did three of our own games, our most celebrated being in 2017, ‘Blackwood Crossing’, a first-person narrative adventure, exploring the mysterious world of siblings, Scarlett and Finn. We won a couple of awards and several plaudits. But we weren’t about to become millionaires! In 2018 PaperSeven started contracting for a big local studio, and I took on a Project Art Director role. In 2019 we started an exciting new game (not yet released so I can’t give details), and once again it was original IP. It’s a large dev team, so I’m now directing a team of around 20 artists. Which is a big step up from PaperSeven projects. And we’re in a challenging environment post-lockdown.
Consequently, most of my days are spent in meetings. With most of my hands-on time happening out of hours. Making games is great fun, and rewarding, but software development can be a complex beast, and days of excitement and pleasure are often matched by ones of total frustration! But, we can’t complain. We make games for a living.
9 years on our business is still going and we employ 10 staff. For sure we’ve made some mistakes along the way, but I’m really proud of what we’ve achieved! I’ve realised how much I enjoy creating an IP - being able to create a world, and a game, from scratch. The setting, the characters, the art style, the lighting, right through to the branding and marketing.
You’re involved in such a broad spectrum of areas, and no two days are the same, which I love. It can be a hard slog, but the feeling of satisfaction when you see the finished game is very cool indeed.
I’m getting to a stage in my career where I’m wondering whether I’ll always make games ... I’ve started drawing again, on the iPad. Picking up my ‘artist’ hat again. And I love to draw and create things with my two daughters. I’ve also been whittling a lot of spoons. I really love the precision, and the simplicity of the process. Just me, some wood, and a knife ... It’s so different to my day-to-day work life.
So, who knows, perhaps a simpler artistic endeavour awaits me in the future!
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