Aug 19, 2010

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Arnie Jorgensen Interview – Star Wars Celebration

Next up in our series of interviews from Star Wars Celebration V, we have Lead Concept Artist Arnie Jorgensen.

Arnie provides a glimpse into his role on Star Wars: The Old Republic, a little bit on his background, and confirmation that yes, even at this stage, they are still creating new stuff! We don’t have any video for this one unfortunately, so this transcript will have to do.

Tomorrow we hope to bring you our fourth and final interview in this series, which will be a video interview with Clint Young, Senior Concept Artist (Environments). Also, don’t miss our Celebration interviews with Hall Hood and Drew Karpyshyn which were posted in the last few days. Enjoy!

Ask A Jedi: Hi Arnie, thanks for joining us! Could you tell us a little about your background, projects you worked on before joining BioWare,and your role currently?

Arnie Jorgensen: Going back a ways, I went to art school, Joe Kubert’s school of Graphic Art and Animation. Got out of there and did one summer with Rolling Stone magazine and from there I went to DC Comics, Marvel Comics and just about every major comics house except for Dark Horse, which is still a black strike on my record.

From Comics I went to ION Storm in Dallas for one year, then I went to Retro Studios for one year, then I went to Sony forĀ  four and a half, five years where I was the Lead Concept Artist for Star Wars Galaxies and now I’ve been at BioWare for about four and a half years as Lead Concept Artist on Star Wars: The Old Republic.

AAJ: How long were you involved with the project, were you there at the formation of the studio?

AJ: I was there before we were actually BioWare, about four or five of us together at first and we were trying to come up with a name for our company before we knew that BioWare was actually interested. And was there when Rich Vogel and Gordon (Walton), I don’t know how they contacted Ray and Greg at BioWare but they say they put forth the feelers, that we’re interested in doing an MMO in Austin. Ray and Greg were then open to doing an MMO through BioWare. So we hooked up with them and became BioWare.

AAJ: Was the idea pitched as being a Star Wars MMO right from the beginning in the Old Republic or was it an MMO project in general?

AJ: I do believe at first we were looking at multiple different IPs, Star Wars: The Old Republic was always at the top and it was the one we were always hoping for. And when it finally came through, we stopped all other pitches, stopped all other design docs and went straight into it.

AAJ: So as a Senior Concept Artist, you oversee everything, from characters to environments to placeables like you mentioned… Out of those things, what’s most interesting to you? Is it creating environments and seeing them through, or an interesting character that you heard the story and the bio of in creating that?

AJ: Actually my job is usually more hands on with the characters, that doesn’t mean it’s my favorite, just seems to be what I gravitate towards but now I’ve had to pull back. It sounds like a cheesy answer but I’ve had to focus on everything. So I can’t say, this is my favorite thing because it really isn’t. So what I have to do is oversee the whole world so that, as much as possible, it looks like one artist did it all.

AAJ: In a setting like Star Wars, so much reference material already exists. Does that make it harder or easier to conceptualize new ideas?

AJ: The backlog of the amazing art from Star Wars is what we mirror, it’s really helpful. For the most part we’re just trying to not let what’s come before us down. So a lot of time we take what they did and say “what would it look like in our timeframe?” But we use what has come before us as a base to build off of. We’re actually using episode four, five, and six as a general look but we’ve had to go to other episodes for things such as Jedi palaces, etc. It’s really helped having a huge body of work to reference.

AAJ: Do you guys do things where you get out the pad and start sketching or do it all strictly digitally?

AJ: This is the first job at BioWare where I’ve not done any 2D or any non digital work. We do have guys sit at easels sometimes, they pencil the drawings and then color it digitally. Nobody colors not digital anymore. You have to wait for things to dry and to change colors, it’s a lot easier to do it on the PC. Everybody works their own way.

AAJ: Are you guys still creating new concepts at this point for the launch game?

AJ: Absolutely! Oh yeah, beyond creating wearables and paint-overs for characters, one of the main things we’re doing is tweaking. We’re playing the game a lot, taking screenshots and throughout our gameplay process looking to see if this area is up to what it should be or this area doesn’t work. We paint over it and send it back to the environment guys to rebuild the area, relight it. There’s a lot of polishing.

AAJ: Last question, for all of the aspiring game artist out there, what advice would you give to someone pursuing a career like yours?

AJ: There’s no real silver bullet that will get you into a job in games or as a concept artist. You certainly don’t need any credentials, you need an amazing portfolio so draw, draw, draw, draw.

AAJ: Thanks for your time, looking forward to the game!

AJ: Absolutely! Thanks.

  1. Nice to hear they are tinkering graphics still in game live off the server, Great interview as always!

  2. I know Arnie well and not only is he a remarkable artist, but he’s one of the funniest human beings I’ve ever met.

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