Interrogations with Adam

By Kaylah Hasson, Art Director

How did you first know about Humble Sage Games?

I first met the Humble Sage crew at my university showcase around 4 years ago. I was at the end of my first year of uni and I remember people were saying, “Oh industry people are going to come look at all your stuff”. I thought “Yeah sure, why would they come look at us? They would go look at graduates, they're not going to come into our room. Why would they bother talking to me?” Jake and Dean (the co-founders of HSG) came in and looked at my work. They ended up talking about what I did and my animations and things like that, and apparently it caught their eye and they gave me a business card. I went for an interview with them, ended up doing my internship at HSG and eventually I was just part of the arts team. About a year and a half, maybe two years later, I started running the arts team to create Cast VR.

Was this a career path you saw for yourself?

I wanted to be an author for a very long time, but my punctuation is terrible, I would not have made it as an author! I ended up at a careers expo in high school and they had a little booth for SAE in West End, Brisbane, which was the university that I ended up going to. They were showing animations, and back in primary school they had this little stick figure animator program and I would spend ages making little stick figures do cartwheels and cheer-leading routines and literally anything I could make them do. Animation looked like it could be fun and at uni I learnt what I wanted to be. University taught me everything from concept art to full fledged animation and rendering. I fell in love with 3D animating. I love games, I’m a gamer and I always have been so working on games is pretty awesome.

Is it exciting to see your work displayed to the world?

Oh yeah it’s crazy! Like, even if they just post a silly gif of an animation I’d been working with and the team were like, “that’s funny, we’re gonna put that on our facebook page.” And I’m like, “Wait, what?” As an artist you want people to look at your work, you want people to appreciate it for the work that you've done. And to be on such a scale as this and creating a game like Cast VR such as this and especially since I’ve done a little bit of everything in this game I’m really, really excited, and proud of what I’ve done and what my team has done. We’re so excited that people will get to see our work and I really hope people enjoy it.

Do you view 3D modelling as a technical or artistic skill, and why?

I think it's a technical medium with artistic flare. You can push that artistic flare as far as you want to or you can keep it quite rigid. Everyone has their own take on how they build things but there’s art to be found if you really want to make it your own.

How would you describe the style or inspiration behind your art?

I do a lot of animation so I guess I see a lot of inspiration in the movement around me. When most people physically stand up, they don’t think about what foot goes where or how the weight and center of balance shifts. When animating you actually have to recreate things that are so natural you don’t think about them. Reference is key! I’ll find videos and images to make sure I get it right. Or even myself, I'll just stand up or sit down a hundred times at my desk - so I know I understand each precise movement. I guess the biggest inspiration for what I do is the world around me which is funny since I spend my time creating different worlds. I love how brilliantly we are created to be able to make movements so when you try to recreate anything it's so, so difficult to get it just right but in real life it just happens.

What have you learnt as the leader of the art team at HSG?

I’ve had to learn a lot of new skills from a practical and a leadership perspective, such as how to manage small and big teams. I learnt to collaborate with programmers, game designers, writers and audio engineers. I’ve also had an opportunity to try my hand at different roles as well as animation and the arts. I helped with writing narrative and actually had the privilege to try out some voice acting and some few other bits and pieces as well. I’ve definitely learnt a lot and grown a lot and as an artist and as a person.

What do you want to say to people who want to be in the game development industry?

My team is awesome! I love them. You can't do anything without a good team in this industry. You need good people around you. Even if you come up with a really awesome idea on your own, try and get one or two people on board with you. Just give it a go. And just create stuff! That’s probably the best advice I can give anyone. Just go out and make stuff. If you ever get too bogged down with a project go and create something unrelated that’s fun. Go animate something else for once, go do something you enjoy to remind yourself why you love what you do!