Louis has been a lead artist at Tinderbox for over a year and a half with his hands in a number of pies. I recently talked with the freshly mustached artist about life at Tinderbox and games in general.
How would you define your role at Tinderbox?
Louis: At Tinderbox I do a little bit of everything. At least little bits of 2D everythings. My duties include but are not limited to: character animation, concept design, logo design, illustration and UI development. Most of the time I am animating 2D using Flash.
You’ve been at Tinderbox for over a year and a half, what keeps you coming back?
I enjoy working on Tinderbox because I feel like the whole team works together on every aspect of the development. I’m not just turning in work to be rejected or approved; we discuss all aspects of the game. Refining it together in an attempt to get the best product we can. You would be surprised how often it is the programmer who points out the most obvious flaws in a drawing or animation.
What game(s) are you currently working on?
Currently I’m working on Munchkin for the Xbox 360. Lots of people are familiar with that game so I won’t elaborate on it’s content. I am also working on Cosmic Corpse Corps, which is an original title we have been developing for XBLIG. It’s a pretty straight forward arcade style game. You control one of several revived historical corpses battling aliens in their dungeonous moon lair. It’s gonna be a lot of fun and all the cool kids are doing it.
What’s been your favorite thing to draw or work on to date?
I think my favorite piece of work I’ve done so far is the alien race I got to concept and animate in CCC(Cosmic Corpse Corps). It’s based on Bill Waterson’s aliens he drew in Calvin and Hobbes. They also have a real Flash Gordon, retro-futurism thing going on. I was pretty happy with them and they are animating really nicely.
Of the current projects, what are you most excited to draw in the future?
Well we are just about done with all the pre-production for Munchkin. I’m really excited to start being able to check off completed animations and assets for the final game.
What’s your favorite video game?
If I’m going purely by the game I’ve played the most times and spent the most hours on it would have to be Diablo 2. That really was the first game I played online with my friends and I’ve kept on playing it off and on ever since it came out. But if I had to pick one that was just pure enjoyment it was The Curse of Monkey Island.
If budget wasn’t an issue, would you make one large game or a couple of smaller games?
I don’t have any really grand Ideas for a game. I find my best ideas are more limited in scope, so yeah a few smaller games I think. I mean just look at Angry Birds. A game doesn’t have to be large to be good.
What’s your favorite artwork that never got used, and do you have something we can see of it?
My favorite art we never used was a some work I did for the cover of Game Storm 14. It had these gremlin kids controlling fighting grandmothers. While it was pretty funny, we decided it didn’t quite have the right message. We never got past the rough stage but here is what we did do.
Is there anything that you’ve found beneficial to your work that you’ve done, that you wouldn’t normally think would be that beneficial?
I quit smoking. Smoking breaks are nice but smoking screws with your energy levels in huge way. I have found that I can work for longer periods of time with better concentration now that I am not craving a smoke every three hours.
Check out some video of Louis working on one of the aforementioned aliens here:
