Steve Theodore

Team Fortress 2

Half-Life

Current project:
Team Fortress 2, CounterStrike. I help design and animate characters for multiplayer online action games. I also helped to design the animation system and the tools we use to build the character models.

Academic Info

College: Williams College (BA), Brown University (MA)
Degree: Classics (BA), Roman History (MA)

Were there any particular projects or areas of study that you pursued?
No.

Did you do any internships?
No.

Career Info

Tell us about your first job in the industry. How did you get the job? What was it like? What were your responsibilities?
When I graduated college I intended to be a Roman historian, and I spent several years working on a PhD. While I was a grad student I started doing freelance work as a graphic artist (this was the early days of desktop publishing and there was a lot of demand for people who could use tools like Photoshop and Illustrator).

Eventually one of my clients needed some animated titles for a video production, so I started experimenting with cel animation packages like Director. Consumer-level 3D was just in its infancy but I started following the field closely. This was in the early 90's, when revolutionary jumps in computer graphics seemed to be happening every few months. As the field became so much more interesting I found that grad school couldn't hold my interest. I spent all the money I made with the business on an SGI workstation and a seat of Alias PowerAnimator ($40,000 at the time!) and sat down to teach myself how to be a "real" CG animator. I ran my own freelance studio for three years before deciding that I wanted to work on something more fun than architectural presentations and corporate training videos.

My first job in games was with FASA Interactive in Chicago, where I worked on MechCommander and MechWarrior 3. I found out about the position at the SIGGRAPH job fair in 1995 and submitted my demo reel at the show. At the time I had a big advantage as FASA used PowerAnimator, a very expensive package which relatively few people knew how to use. I'm not sure I would have gotten the job if there had been more competition.

I worked primarily as a modeler and texture artist on MechCommander. At first I built and textured Mech models and environments which were passed off to other animators. Since we were working on sprites, rather than real-time models, I got to be very lavish with textures and modeling detail, which was great practice. Once the model library was finished I helped to animate the big cinematic sequences for the opening and ending of the game. Some of our shots took more than 12 hours to render each frame! While I was sitting around watching progress bars all day I started to get interested in modeling and animating for real-time 3D (this was just about when Quake was released) to escape the lag-time in cinema work.

What jobs have you held in the games industry thus far? Briefly describe the career path you took to get where you are today.
I left FASA in 1998 and came to Valve. Valve knew I didn't have a lot of real-time modeling experience but they were willing to bet that I could learn it. I was very aware of the chance they were taking on me and I spent a lot of time and energy absorbing the rules of low-polygon modeling and restricted texture budgets. I joined the Half-Life team, where I worked as a modeler and animator.

When Half-Life shipped I started working on Team Fortress Classic, which led me into my current specialty as a character animator for online games. Since HL I've worked on Team Fortress Classic, Ricochet, CounterStrike, and am currently working on Team Fortress 2. In addition to design and production work I also do a lot of 'translating" between the coders and the artists, who have to work together even more closely than usual in a multiplayer environment. I also do a lot of work with the mod community, supporting mod teams and other companies who have licensed our engine.

Advice

What fields of study, specific courses, or life experiences would you recommend to students interested in your field?
A good art education is essential, although this does not mean you have to attend an art school - in some ways I prefer people with regular 4-year degrees, since they generally have a broader set of experiences to bring to their work than people who've spent 2 or 4 years isolated in a studio. For animation, you also need to have good command of one or more of the tools packages - being a good illustrator - or even a good traditional cel animator -- doesn't guarantee you'll make a good CG animator. It's important to realize that knowing 3D Studio Max or some other package is not the same thing as being an animator - but it's not possible to be a good animator without a solid knowledge of at least one tool. Fortunately the two most common tools, 3D Studio Max and Maya, both offer "introductory" versions for people who want to learn without shelling out $3-5,000.

Is there anything you wish someone had told you before you got into the games industry? Is there anything you would have done differently?
The games business is in transition right now. When I started companies were usually smaller and in a lot of ways more amateurish. The good thing about those days was that companies were very eager to find people, and there were a lot of opportunities for folks who were bright and talented but didn't have formal training in the areas they wanted to pursue - most of the people I knew back then were largely self taught. As the industry matures, paper qualifications and resumes are becoming more important which is a shame, because it means people need to decide on a career path earlier and be more narrowly focused. On the other hand, the quality of people coming out of computer graphics programs today is much, much better than the general run of people in the old days, so it's a trade-off. There are still a lot of openings for people who have talent and drive but no track record - certainly much more so than in older industries - and the constant bubbling up of new startups and boutique companies means there should always be a "backdoor route" for outsiders. I hope that the large mainstream companies don't become to bureaucratized and continue to take risks in hiring talented folks, whatever their backgrounds.

As games increase in complexity, what are the various kinds of jobs that you foresee development companies needing in the next five years?
The line between artists and programmers is getting blurrier all the time. While there will always be a need for people with strong traditional skills like illustration and design, there is going to be increasing demand for people who can apply artistic judgement and design skills but who use code, or hybrid code-art tools like scripting languages, to create game content. People working right where art and programming intersect are going to be very much in demand in the near future.

Do you have any other advice or recommendations to share with students who are interested in doing what you do?
The single most important tool for somebody seeking work as an animator or modeler is the demo reel. Companies will be glad to know if you have a portfolio of figure drawings, a scrapbook of performance art pieces, or a straight-A transcript in your studio classes but the thing that will make or break your job search is the demo. A good reel is concise, under 5 minutes. It showcases only your best work - if you put on something you know isn't great just in order to pad out the time, viewers will think you don't know the good work from the bad. The choice of material will say a lot about you as an artist and as a person, so consider carefully what kind of impression you want to make.