Clint Young Interview – Star Wars Celebration

Wrapping up our series of Star Wars Celebration interviews with the BioWare designers, today we bring you Clint Young. Clint is a Senior Concept Artist (Environments) at BioWare and brings with him extensive previous Star Wars experience from his years at LucasArts. This is really a great read for anyone interested in the process of making games, especially the art process. Aspiring artists take note! On a side note, the audio is not great on this one. We do have a clean audio recording, and will try to dub it and re-load the video.

Also, if you missed our previous Celebration coverage, we also have interviews with Drew Karpyshyn, Hall Hood and Arnie Jorgensen. If you’re a fan of Star Wars: The Old Republic, all of these are sure to be of interest to you. Enjoy!

Ask A Jedi: Hi Clint, thanks for taking a few moments with us. Can you please tell us a little bit about your background, projects you’ve worked on and your current role on TOR?

Clint Young: Sure. I actually got a job at Lucasfilm back in 1994 just as they were finishing up Full Throttle with LucasArts, and I was then on to Rebel Assault. And that’s how I got my start.

I was a huge Star Wars fan. I had a portfolio and I was showing Lucas, and they were thumbing through it, and unbeknownst to me there was a drawing that I did when I was 12 shoved in there, a family member stuck it in there as a good luck sort of piece. It was a huge piece I did where I melted crayons, got my liquid paper stars. I was absolutely embarrassed when she pulled it out in the interview, but it turns out that’s what got me the job. She said anyone that’s been drawing Star Wars since they were 7 deserved it. Long story short, I worked at Lucas for 11 years and then came back to Texas where I’m from and by the grace of God BioWare came to Austin and they had The Old Republic IP and asked if I was interested doing Star Wars again. So it works like the mafioso, I got out and they pulled me back in!

It’s a fantastic job. I get to concept most of the environments. I’m the guy they hand the documentation to that says, “hey we wanna do Hoth but 3,000 years prior… can you design something new and fresh but on that same world 3,000 years before?” So I sit down with a blank canvas, and give them 30 or so drawings and we decide on the look for the planet.

AAJ: How early were involved in the project?

CY: Arnie (Jourgensen) was the first concept artist hired on, and I came on 6 months after him. So it was very early on while BioWare was first forming down there. I’ve been at the studio from the beginnings all the way up until now.

AAJ: As a concept artist for environments, what documents or briefings are you given to work off of?

CY: It’s different for every planet. If it’s a brand-spanking new planet that we have come up with and are introducing into the Star Wars galaxy, obviously I gotta hit all of those cool factors that make Star Wars planets cool.

But then there are existing planets. A great example of this is Hoth was great in the films, but there’s nothing there… it’s tundra. Fantastic for that big battle, but for an MMO doesn’t give you a whole lot to explore. So it really becomes a question of like, how do I put a forest on Hoth? It’s those types of things I have to sit there and think about. For example, we did lava pools. So in the lava pools, the snow melts and then re-freezes, and then there’s a canopy of ice that just goes on like a forest, like a crystallized forest. It’s that sort of “how do I make it cooler?” that I really get into and do it day to day, but its a slippery slope because everyone has a preconceived idea of what Hoth looks like.

AAJ: What comes first, the environments or the story that takes place in them?

CY: It goes both ways. Sometimes they come to be with something that’s very big, that comes with a lot of documentation and I have to draw it out. And sometimes it’s very little which gives me a wider palette to play in.

AAJ: We haven’t heard a whole lot about urban areas. What are the big themes we might see with those? More clean, pristine environments?

CY: Well there’s nothing pristine when drawing Star Wars, that’s rule number one. It’s one of those things… you’re capturing Coruscant for instance, but you’re doing it 3,000 years prior. It’s a slippery slope, because you want to give the fans the acknowledgement of what they’re familiar with. There’s also Nar Shaddaa, which nobody has seen a lot of. It’s been in video games, but it’s never been imagined quite like we’ve put it together.

AAJ: How do you approach the design of two worlds that might have similar environments? Tython and Alderaan may both have forests. Or there may be two ice worlds like Hoth and Ilum. How do you make them feel different?

CY: Well it all comes down to points of interest. You start with a basic shape… you draw the silhouettes and they become the points of interest. I’ll take your example Ilum. If I was doing Ilum, its a crystal world, it’s where the Jedi go to get their crystals, where they first start to become a Jedi and forge their lightsaber, so you want to make it a dangerous place. Because you know they’re still in their training and the elder Jedi are watching them do this hoping that they’re going to succeed. So I would start with sharp objects, like crystallites, stuff you haven’t seen on Hoth. The mountains may be sloped and broken or shattered. One might have 5 moons. Maybe you have ice asteroids that are in a low altitude orbit that are just crashing in. It’s those sorts of though processes that make the planets different and cooler looking than the ones previous.

AAJ: I have a feeling you’re a huge EU fan.

CY: When you work at Lucasfilm for 11 years, you know your Star Wars.

AAJ: How many pieces of concept art for an environment have to be created before it’s handed off for the world builders to begin building?

CY: I usually like to give them 5 fully painted scenes. Like the one I did yesterday which was an hour, I usually try to do one of those in a day, about an 8 hour painting. So I usually try to give them 5 paintings. Each one from a different zone… If there’s a battle zone on it, depending on what faction it is, I like to give them a piece of every zone. Or if there are several points of interest for instance Korriban, you’ve got the Imperial Palace, the Sith Academy or the Tombs, you want to give them all of those themes so they know exactly what they’re getting.

AAJ: What sort of approval process is there between your step and the time you hand it off to the world builders? Or is it more of a collaborative process?

CY: It’s absolutely a collaborative process, from the writers all the way up through management… from the world builders to the concept artists, everyone has their two cents to put in, and rightfully so because everybody is a Star Wars fan. So it’s like one of those things where we get together and say, “what do you think of this?” And that’s how it works.

AAJ: As a concept artist, you must have been influenced by Ralph McQuarrie and the things he’s done.

CY: I’ve met Ralph multiple times, and without a shadow of a doubt, he is the biggest influence in what I do and who I am in terms of concept art. Obviously the other players, Ian McKay, Doug Chang, Eric Tiemens, Ryan Church… all of these guys, I’ve watched them draw, I’ve met them, super nice guys. And I’m absolutely floored by the stuff they do. Every time one of those guys updates their site, I’m the first one to go up there and shoot them an email and say “awesome!”

AAJ: Do you work strictly in the digital medium, or are some things done the “old fashioned way”?

CY: Absolutely. I have to paint first because I have to find that palette before I digitally make it. And nine times out of ten, when I start a piece, the first thing I do is get a white canvas with black paint and I make brush strokes on it. I photograph those and use them as brushes in Photoshop. The trick is making your own brushes.

AAJ: For The Old Republic, there must be virtually every kind of environment… which is the most challenging to depict? Interior, Exterior? Atmosphere? Landscape? Organic? Mechanical? etc.

CY: Well, when you’re boss comes over and says “we need lightsabers” and “we want them to be cooler than they were in the films.” How do you do that? How do I make Tatootine cooler? How do I make the Millennium Falcon cooler? How do I make Hoth cooler than it was in the film? (No pun intended on that one.) How do I make these things more fanciful than they were in the films? I really am fighting with the 6 year old who saw A New Hope in ’77. It becomes a real challenge.  A lightsaber is cool because it is simple. It’s daunting in that you know that somebody out there is not going to like what you did. But there will be plenty of people that do.

AAJ: Of the planets revealed so far, which has been your favorite to work on?

CY: Well that’s a two-part question. What do I like best that I’ve done in the game? Tattooine beyond a shadow of a doubt. Why? Because for some reason its the epicenter… it’s where the Skywalker tale started. So I have a passion for that one. Not to mention I grew up out in the sticks. I used to take that John Williams music on a little cassette recorder and play that music while I was watching the sunset… no joke! So I have a real connection to that planet.

Also, I love Belsavis. That’s one of the ones… They asked “what do you want to do?” I said I want to do this ice world that’s got lava, and the lava causes these huge craters to form when the ice melts, it causes this lush forest at the bottom of the craters. And everything fills with this hot air. And they loved it and said lets do it!

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

CY: Persevere. I wrote to Steven Spielberg when I was in 9th grade and sent him some artwork. A lady by the name of Bonnie Curtis wrote back to me, she was his assistant on the film he was doing at that time. She said I’m sorry, I can’t show these to Steven, they are fantastic. But they are so good I wanted to write you a letter and tell you to follow your dreams and remember this word: persevere. And that has always stuck with me. It’s funny because I keep wanting to find Bonnie now. She actually went to his assistant on one movie, and I think by the time they finished A.I. she was executive producer or something. I always say persevere. Draw every day and persevere.

AAJ: Last question – what’s your favorite class?

CY: Smuggler. I am going to be a Smuggler.

AAJ: Appreciate the time Clint!

CY: My pleasure!