Christopher Seavor is best known for his work on Conker's Bad Fur Day, Conker: Live & Reloaded, Killer Instinct, and various other games. He founded Gory Detail Limited in 2012 and is currently working on their second game, The Unlikely Legend of Rusty Pup. Follow their blog here. Be sure to watch his interview with Sup Holmes and his playthrough/director's commentary of Conker's Bad Fur Day afterwards.
Tell us a little about yourself and your experience.
I’m a terrible cynic, I have an obsession with anything HP Lovecraft, and I make games. After university I got a job with Rareware as a 3D graphic artist just as they were making Both Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct. I ended up on Killer Instinct, working as an artist on all the related projects but not including the recent MS reboot (which I had no input on.. Didn’t even get a gratis copy, but might have got a credit. Maybe; not checked).
After that I worked on the doomed Conker Twelve Tales, which became Conker’s Bad Fur Day where I carried on producing art, but also took over as designer and team lead, then reworked it for MS with Conker Live and Reloaded, and also some canned prototypes notably Perfect Dark Core (designer) and Urchin (designer). Departed from Rare and after farting about for a year or so founded a small studio to make some more games. Parashoot Stan for mobile and tablet and now working hard on our second game, The Unlikely Legend of Rusty Pup which will also be on selected consoles and PC.
What drove you to choose your career path?
Well, I started in the industry about 20 years ago, straight from University where I’d amassed a BA in Graphic Information Design at Falmouth, an MA PGdip at Bournemouth. Both these colleges have great things in common academically but the main and most import similarity were the fine selection of ale houses and the beach.
Although my BA was mainly graphic design stuff, by the end of my last year at Falmouth the course got a very early version of Max called 3D Studio.. I had a little play (made the obligatory Starship Enterprise from primitive shapes) and was immediately hooked. My MA was only the second year of the course which had been helped to set up by a chap called Liam Scanlan who’d actually helped program the original 3D CG advert for Michelin, the earliest of its kind way back in the 80’s.
Liam just happened to be one of my tutors at Falmouth, invited me along to Bournemouth and concentrate exclusively on 3D graphics and I guess my career path was forged pretty much from there. 3D, CGI. Probably for the movie industry, but then that all changed.
How did you go about getting your job? What kind of education and experience did you need?
An old friend from Bournemouth (he was on the year above me) Adrian Smith had just started at Rare and had mentioned to another friend that they were hiring aggressively for some big projects they were working on. I’d never heard of Rare, mainly because during my college years I’d kinda skipped a whole generation of gaming specifically the NES and SNES. However, I did know Ultimate and was surprised they were even still in business. As I’ve said before, I turned up unannounced, got an impromptu interview and was offered a job a week later; never looked back really.
What do you actually spend the majority of your time doing?
That is the broadest question imaginable. Where do I start ? Everything that isn’t coding, so graphics, design, sorting out biz stuff, doing bloody interviews ;) , pretty much everything else. Graphics are my real passion which is handy as they take up most of the time. Design is very much a front loaded affair for the most part, then you tweak, tune and fiddle with towards the end of the project. It’s quite a juggle when you’re multi-tasking, but it also quite liberating as you get to make sure things are just right..At the moment though, right now, my time is 50–50 between making graphics assets and designing / building levels in the editor.
What misconceptions do people often have about your job?
That I’m really organized and everything is carefully planned and said plan then meticulously followed. Nope. Nah, it’s like an explosion of ideas which then get distilled, then distilled again so that slowly and steadily the initial ideas that are impossible or impractical, get replaced by similar or sometimes better ones, that are actually achievable. We kind of hack, but we know where we want to go and usually, eventually we get there. It’s a very healthy system creatively but not so much for our sanity.
What are your average work hours?
It varies really, but I can do anything between 8 – 15 hrs a day. Probably 6 days a week at the moment, but I usually end up at my desk at some point even on the day off, scribbling chatting with the coders about bugs , implementation etc or just finishing something off.
The thing to remember in a creative industry like this is you never really stop working. I always have my note book (iPhone dictation these days) so when out on long dog walks I can make a note of any ideas that are buzzing around my head. Indeed , I tend to solve technical or design problems not actually sat at my desk staring at the screen, but out in the wild. When it’s your own studio and money, that amps its up even more so.
What personal tips and shortcuts have made your job easier?
Get your pipeline sorted as quickly as you can and stick to it. Don’t reinvent the wheel every time you start a new project. Your engine is your legacy to the next game Never ever start again from scratch with regards code.
What do you do differently from your co-workers or peers in the same profession?
As far as Gory Detail goes we have a few simple rules:
- Keep it tight (ie, minimal if at all possible zero waste )
- Stick to what we know
- Don’t be over ambitious
- Don’t have middle management
- Only work with people we know
- No deals with publishers
- No Kickstarters
Maybe others work like that too, but there aren’t many, and we’ve pointedly codified it.
Do you have any advice for people who need to enlist your services?
Sorry, you mean for people who want to hire me? Why would I want to do that? I’m the one on the back foot. Heh, I really don’t know; 3 day week, free bar and 250 grand a year. That would do it, maybe.
What's the worst part of the job and how do you deal with it?
Business ad PR. We’re only a small studio so all of that sort of ‘non-game’ related stuff has to be done in our spare time. Anything that takes me away from making graphics or designing levels means we taking longer to finish the game and that messes with our focus and ultimately the release date. This is why we don’t go to shows, don’t have a central office and try to keep press stuff at arms length although the latter is a double edged sword.
Press is great when it’s positive and if a media outlet or some such entity is genuinely interested in what you’re doing then it’s very beneficial indeed. In fact for us it’s the only chance (aside from word of mouth) we will get to tell the world about what we’re doing. Ideally if the game is amazing then in theory you don’t need PR, but the truth of the matter is depressingly otherwise.
What's the most enjoyable part of the job?
Give me a scrap of paper, a pencil and an open brief and I’m as happy as Larry. Let me take these scribbles and put them on a screen so I can control them and demo to others. I’m ecstatic. Polish and finish that little demo and releasing it to world is the best feeling ever. It’s all good when you’re working on the thing you love.
What kind of money can one expect to make at your job?
God, I dunno. Depends on what the deal is with the game you’re working on, are you a contractor, full time, etc. The mainstream industry at the moment has definitely shifted to the short term contract model so they can ramp up and down at will. It’s cost effective up to a point but freelancers tend to be a lot more expensive, particularly if you’re really good.
As far as my experience is concerned, my income could vary wildly over different years simply because Rare had royalty deals for the teams, and bearing in mind the kind of sales some of those game garnered this could mean literally millions of dollars split between a team of 30 or so people and not evenly either. So work it out. Sometimes it was just the wage, sometimes it could be 3–4 times that. Just depended on the game really. It was a good system, because you were actively invested in making the game the best possible thing it could be.
How do you move up in your field?
My field is pretty broad so let’s focus on my first and preferred discipline. Graphics; just learn your trade and the best place for that is from your peers. If you’re good, then get better than the people you admire. Just keep doing it everyday. It’s your passion, isn’t it? If it’s not then what the fuck are you doing here? Strive constantly to improve what you do and always be self critical. A bit of humility always goes a lot further than a self-blown trumpet as counter intuitive that may seem. This last one I learned the hard way ;)
What advice would you give to those aspiring to join your profession?
Pick a discipline and stick to it. I got lucky with my job in that I could dance relatively effectively between design and graphics but really if you turn up for an interview not sure what it is you want to be you might as not turn up. They’ll spot it a mile off. Be awesome at one thing, just that, then do that thing so well they can’t afford to lose you. Keep your head down, do the hours,and don’t tell other people they’re shit, even if they are. Well, not to begin with anyway.
It’s a lot tougher to shine in the industry than it was when I started out as the technical possibilities are up there with the best of any big budget movie.. Especially graphically. It’s incredible some of the stuff artists are doing in games these days and it’s also a real pity designers don’t seem to have matched that evolution. In fact, for some big budget projects you could confidently say it’s devolving.
Holmes talks to Chris Seavor, the voice of Conker and project lead of Conker's Bad Fur Day, to discuss his time with Rare Entertainment and his new game, The Unlikely Legend of Rusty Pup.