Interview with Fiona Zimmer of Filament Games
Hello everyone! This week's interview is with Fiona Zimmer of Filament Games. Fiona is an illustrator/concept artist/character designer. As usual, I haven't changed Fiona's responses at all, although I did add the links and the images/captions. For more information on Filament Games, you can either visit their website or read their company profile which I put together and posted several days ago.
Geek Girl Talk's first question: What do you do as a Illustrator/Concept Artist/Character Designer for Filament Games?
Fiona Zimmer: As you might have guessed from the multiple title, I sort of do a lot of things at once. All the game-sprites, landscapes, buildings, trees, even the control buttons - literally everything you see in our games, has to be designed, drawn and built. I - or rather, we - make all the art that goes into the game. I have help; I'm part of a team of artists, and we all work together. Most of the time we're working on 2 or 3 games at a time, so things can get a litte crazy in the office!
Concepting is the first step - that's where the asset transforms from a vague idea inside our Designer's head to a sketch on paper. That sketch goes back to the Art Director and sometimes the client, to get approved - or (more often) tossed back to us with a list of changes. Sometimes it can take a lot of concepting before an art asset is 'just right'. Then we scan the approved version into the computer and build the asset to go into the game. Exactly HOW we build it varies from game to game - Most of our games have been for the Web, so we use a lot of Flash and Photoshop. Even so, most of initial designing - deciding what's in a room, or what a character should look like, and so forth - happens outside of the computer, which is why my classical training as an illustrator comes in handy. I have the title of Character Designer because nearly all the characters that have appeared in Filament's games in the last four years are my work in some way. People are my specialty, whether it be the realistic portraits you find in the JASON Project games, or the little roly-poly cartoon lawyers in our iCivics series, but it's also not all I do. I also work on animations, UI elements, and lots of other stuff - trees, flowers, mountains, spaceships, chickens - you name it, I've probably drawn it!
How long have you worked for Filament Games? Did you work at any video game studios before Filament Games?
FZ: I've worked for Filament Games for almost four years now. The first year - 2007 - I worked for them as a freelance contractor. Before then, I spent nearly six years working outside the video game industry, doing freelance magazine illustration and graphic design. (along with some pretty terrible day jobs!) I graduated from the Academy of Art College in San Francisco in 2001 with a BFA in Illustration. Even in school, though, I knew this was what I wanted to do.
What is an average day like at Filament Games?
FZ: Filament Games is a pretty small office - only 17 people. My bosses (Alex Stone, Dan White and Dan Norton, collectively known as 'the Dans') deliberately cultivate a very 'laid-back' feel. This makes it a very pleasant place to work. People get in to the office pretty early - in 'crunch time', when we've got a big deadline coming up on us, sometimes we'll all get in before 6 and work 'till 7 or 8 at night, but that's pretty rare. Most of the time we'll all get in between 7:30 and 8:30AM, power up our computers, and work on whatever's in the queue until normal end of day. For the Art Department, of course, that's the art assets we need for the current projects. Our project manager, Spencer, doles out assignments so nobody gets overwhelmed, but a lot of times we'll swap them out between us. We're pretty independent. So on a typical day, Rebecca will be working on character portraits to my left, Tyler will be designing UI elements behind me, and I'll be building a walkcycle animation at my own desk. We're always calling each other over to our desks and soliciting feedback, and sometimes we'll swap tasks completely for a while, and then swap back. This is called 'round robin-ing', and it can really help when you're stuck on something. Occasionally we all go to lunch in a big group - there are a number of tasty places to eat by our building - and talk over our projects. Some time between noon and two I tend to touch base with the various project leads to make sure nothing's slipped through the cracks for that day - and usually end up with a few more tasks! We have some game systems in the break area, too, so in the evenings those of us who stay late will order pizza and have for 'Left 4 Dead' and 'Rock Band' tournaments after work.
How did you land your job at Filament Games?
FZ: Well, I was freelancing at the time, so I had a system. Every week or so, I'd make a lot of 'cold calls' to confirm addresses for various companies, and then send out a batch of sample portfolios to solicit work. 'Cold calling' has sort of a bad reputation - people hate doing it, because you get a lot of negative responses or no responses, but the reason to do it is because it does work eventually. Filament - which at that time was four people - needed an artist for their current project, and the Dans really liked my portfolio. For the first two projects I was coming into their office every spare moment and billing them per piece, as if I was still doing magazine illustrations instead of game art. Eventually we got away from that and they hired me part time, and about six months after that they finally got me on full time. I've never looked back; I don't miss freelancing at all.
Which Filament Game has been your favorite project to work on?
FZ: Oh, it's so hard to pick just one. One of the things I love about working here is that nearly everything we do has a wonderfully zany feel. Even the 'hard science' games tend to have little easter eggs and in-jokes in them - for instance, the fictional 'villain' scientist, Dr. Cull, in Resilient Planet;NW Hawaiian Islands, was actually based on the Dans' UW Professor, Dr. Jim Gee (He has a wonderfully villainous face, though by all accounts he's really a nice guy). They wrote him into the game as a surprise, and smuggled me a bunch of pictures of him so I could make the portraits. I'm not sure, but I think Dr. Cull is the only fictional researcher in any of the JASON games, so that's quite an honor!
Of our currently published set, I think 'Eco Defenders', on the JASON Project's site, is my personal fave. However, if you look up 'Space Rustlers GDD' on the Filament Games website, you'll see the greatest game we never made - we did all this work and then the project stalled, but the premise was hilarious and awesome: Chicken-ranching on Mars, to teach math skills. I hope we do get to make it someday!
A screen shot from "Eco Defenders," one of Fiona's favorite Filament Games.
6.) Can you tell us anything about the Filament Games that are currently in development? Or, can you tell us what Filament Games has planned for the future?
FZ: Well, our partnerships with the Jason Project and iCivics are still going strong, and we'll continue to make great, accessible games for them. Look for some new, geology-based Science games at JASON.org in the coming months - one is out now, and I think we have three coming total. On iCivics.org, we're working on a game where government types are represented as giant monster machines. The machines are pretty awesome, if I do say so myself, so I'm really looking forward to seeing the finished product. In addition to that, we've just started a new partnership with PCI Education that has the Dans all a-twitter. PCI makes learning materials for developmentally disabled children and adults, and I think the first game will be about life sciences. We'll start building that game in 2011, so it's a little ways out still. Pretty exciting though!
From your experience, is it a handicap to be a female in the male dominated video game industry? (Do you think it is male dominated?
FZ: I think it's certainly less of a handicap than it used to be, because the video game industry isn't as male-dominated as it was. The industry is changing because our society is changing. For instance, it's now dangerous to assume competence (or incompetence) by gender, and I can remember a time - in my lifetime - when that was not true. When I was very small, the default assumption was that girls got to be nurses, boys got to be doctors, and it was because - seriously, people thought this - girls weren't smart enough or moral enough to be doctors. Of course, anyone who said that today would be laughed out of the conversation, but the prevailing attitude 30 years ago (or even 20 years ago) was pretty awful. I believe in the transformative power of feminism and feminist activism - I have to, because I've seen the changes happen. Gender bias is real, and you do have to watch out for it and fight against it. But the good news is that with each generation, more and more of it gets swept away. I think eventually common sense will prevail, and people won't associate an individual's competence with their gender - or their race, for that matter, but that's a different discussion.
What piece of advice would you give to a person seeking to become a video game Illustrator/Concept Artist/Character Designer?
FZ: Okay, here it is: Don't Specialize. I don't mean that you shouldn't emphasize your own talents and interests - you definitely should do that - but don't let yourself get pushed into a box. Everyone you meet - employers, peers, teachers, everybody - is going to want to push you into an area of specialty. Resist. Don't ever turn up your nose at learning something new, either: Learn everything, be interested in everything. Even if you think to yourself, 'oh, I don't have to learn programming because I'll never be a programmer', just learning the basics of programming can help you better communicate with programmers - and that's important, because that's who you're working with!
It's good to get known for being the best at one thing, but you have to be adaptive, too. Being the best at one thing and nothing else means eating a lot of ramen noodles when that one thing isn't in demand. Develop a reputation as someone who is not only good at what they do, but who also learns new things quickly. That's the skillset that will, in the long run, serve you best.
Chicken farming on mars in Space Rustlers! I am loving the chicken's bubble helment!
What advice would you give a girl seeking to enter the video game industry?
FZ: Well, first off, learn to speak up if you're not assertive. Really, I think this is good advice regardless of your gender, but it's especially important for us. As women, we get a lot of cultural programming telling us to be 'nice' - to be quiet, listen, and speak second or not at all. We think of this as courtesy, but it's usually perceived as meekness - and it can be absolute death if you're trying to be heard over a bunch of loud, assertive guys who are theoretically your social equals. As has been said before, 'well-behaved women rarely make history'. That said, I think women in the games industry don't necessarily need to be more assertive than guys - but we do need to be as assertive as guys, and sometimes that can be very, very difficult.
In a way, I think it's easier for artists to get out of this trap than other people. We're trained to observe, in order to draw from life, and that skill can serve us in other ways, too. A good artist - like a good programmer - can look past the surface of things, break up patterns into smaller shapes that are easier to see, and this is as true for social patterning as it is for light and shadow. Being observant is the first step in being adaptive. Whatever social environment you find yourself working in, observe your co-workers. Make them your study. And when you see an opportunity to make a change - either in yourself, or to address an inequality, don't shy away from it - DO IT. If you find yourself getting talked over in meetings, copy the speaking habits of the folks who don't get talked over. If the dress code in your office is casual for guys but not for girls, ask why. Maybe you can get that policy changed. I think I'm very lucky, in that Filament Games is a pretty liberal and egalitarian workplace, but I also know that not every workplace is like that. So, observe. Learn to be assertive and find your niche. And if you encounter resistance, don't be afraid to raise a little hell. Revolution is good for the soul.
Do you have any closing comments or remarks?
FZ: Well, first of all, thanks for the interview! It's always great to meet new people, and I hope I've been entertaining to you and your readers!
We often say around here that all games are learning games - it's just that a lot of them don't teach anything worth knowing. There's a logical corollary to this: If all games are learning games, then every game teaches its audience something. If you're coming into the video game industry, realise that you're not just here to make games. You're also shaping the minds of all your players - young and old, male and female, people of varying colors, religions, philosophies and so forth - even if you're not working for an 'Educational Games' company. Contrary to what marketing execs would have you believe, very few games are played by just one demographic. A good game - and we all want to make good games, don't we? - appeals to everyone. So, when you build your good game, what will it teach your players? What will they learn - intentionally or unintentionally - from it? Right now - today - the politicians and businessmen coming into power are from the generations who grew up playing the videogames of yesterday - the atari games, side-scrollers, first-person shooters. What did they learn from them?
I guess what I'm trying to say is, you can't work in the video games industry and not have the ambition to change the world. It's practically all we do.