WinampSkinners presents Interview with ~intolerant3d

Personal Info:

Real name : Mikey Spano
Age : 24
Location : Raleigh, North Carolina
Profession : Environment artist - Epic Games

Favourite artists : Far too many to list - H.R. Giger, Ralph Steadman, Jason Sho Green
Favourite skins : Anything from the Breed guys!
Hobbies : My kids, Games, Working too hard


I’ll start by asking you about your profession. I have no doubt that you’ll be enjoying it the most (working too hard is a hobby for you; you're one of the luckiest persons in the world Can you tell us what exactly your role in game development is and how you got into it?

haha, so where to begin? I'm an artist over at Epic Games in Cary, NC (Unreal, Gears of War). I do a lot of 3d modeling, texture work, environment building, and lighting. I finished up Gears of War a couple months ago, and I'm currently working on Unreal 2k7. I cannot answer any questions about that stuff, so don't ask!!!!

I started out when I was 18 at Red Storm Entertainment (Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six) working on the ghost recon franchise and wriggled my way up to a lead position. After a few projects as a lead, I wanted to try something different, so I decided to make the move to Epic (not an easy feat, I must say ), and here I am! I'm having a blast over here, the people here are insanely talented, and every day is like vacation (hanging out with friends, making art, and playing games! what could be better?).

Games I've worked on include (in order of production):

Sum of all Fears (PC)
Ghost Recon (Xbox)
Ghost Recon: Island thunder (PC)
Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield (PC) - Cinematic artist
Ghost Recon Island thunder (xbox) - Lead technical artist
Ghost Recon 2 (Xbox)
Rainbow Six 4: Lockdown (PS2) - Environment lead
Rainbow Six 4: Lockdown (PC) - Lead visual and technical artist
Gears of War (Xbox360)

That's an impressive set of games You've said in your journal that you'd be releasing your game artwork in your personal site soon. Can you tell us how soon it will be?

Someday

Your art background?

Education-wise I am certified in digital art and animation, but I suppose most of my background consists of game art.

You feel your education and game art background has helped you in skinning?

Absolutely. I think that any experience is good experience, and school and game development have both given me a lot of opportunity to grow as an artist. I think that this can go both ways though, as skinning has taught me a lot about what people like, where to cut corners, and how to texture using lots of cheap tricks

How you got interested in skinning and tell us about your initial experiences?

Well, I was working in tech support and my cubicle-mate showed me some cool winamp skins; I thought to myself 'those are pretty cool, but I have some ideas I want to try out' - everything just sort of fell into place from there.

How’d you describe your style and what are your favourite styles?

I consider myself very lazy when it comes to skinning , so my style is pretty much whatever suits my mood at the moment and whatever I can make quickly. I draw a lot of inspiration from other skinners and from real world machinery. My favorite style will always be Techy SciFi stuff, but lately I've been into very clean minimalistic designs.

The evolution of your designs toward minimalism is very apparent in your recent skins. Both the styles are lovable Your opinion about the various skinnable programs? From your gallery I could see that you prefer Winamp for skinning, can you explain?

I'm only into skinning things I will actually use, so Winamp is the natural choice for me. I don't really have any interest in skinning any other applications, although I may someday make an exception for Trillian.

You’ve done 2 modern skins, how was the experience in comparison with classic skins?

I've actually published a 3rd skin for a company, but they tried to put adware in the skin so I was worried to take credit for it. See if you can find which one I'm talking about .
Getting to the question though, I really like making modern skins because I'm able to get very freeform with the shapes and functionality, but I don't like relying on a coder to make my vision come to life. I do miss the good old days of classic skinning, but I've moved on and I don't plan on turning back .

Any clue about the other skin? Too tough without a clue

Well, the skin starts with an M and the name of the company starts with an N – Enjoy

No luck I’m leaving it to the readers to guess the skin. We see you’ve done only the graphics for your modern skins. Why not coding?

I don't have any XML experience, and I do these skins for fun; so I'm not really interested in learning a whole new set of rules just to have a little fun .

In your opinion which is more important for a skin, creativity or usability?

Creativity for sure! Who cares about usability?!

That's a pretty solid disposition We’d like to know about your design process of a skin. You start with all the components pre-planned or improvise?

I just wing it. I'll make an initial shape, then I'll just start throwing pieces around until I get something I like. After that, I just clone stuff around and fill in where I need to. Like I said, I'm lazy

I think every artist faces with a creative block at one time or other, how do you deal with it?

Whenever I get a creative block with skinning, I just stop for a while. I keep telling myself that I don't have time for skinning, but somehow I keep getting sucked back in (I blame 883, he's always inspiring me ).

Usually how long it takes you to finish a skin?

I usually finish the graphics in a couple hours, then I just iterate until I feel like it's final. The lengthy portion comes from going back and forth with a coder.

I think you had modern skins in mind while answering that. About classis skins?

Classic skins are dead to me Sorry all you classic skinners

We know you’re a member of breedart, deviantArt and WinampSkinners. Any other communities in which you’re a member of? What do you think about the various skinning communities and how’d compare them?

I tend to exploit communities like these to get exactly what I want out of them . I use Breed to get feedback from really talented people, I use deviantart to find random inspiration, and I hang out with WinampSkinners because I'm a Winamp skinner. I'm not really interested in mass appeal or fame or anything like that; I just need something to do while I'm rendering a big image or when my wife falls asleep at home (which isn't often these days - 2 babies = no sleep).

What do you think about the present state of skinning compared to the past and where'd you place it in the future?

I think skinning now is pretty much dead compared to where it used to be. I know there are a lot of talented skinners out there, and I love to see all of their work, but I feel like I almost never see a skin I want to use anymore. I miss the days of monaux and vida, and all those other great skinners that have moved on to other things. I'm hoping skinning becomes easier to do in the future so that maybe some new skinners will be willing to try their hand at it.

Your future plan regarding skinning?

My plan is that I don't have a plan . I'll probably just make stuff whenever I find the time, so don't expect much from me

Any WIP? We’d be glad if you could share a screenshot.

Sure, here's my latest project (see left) Very simple, but something I'm looking forward to finishing. Kabir?

That's splendid Waiting to get our hands on it.

Thanks for the questions!


See deviation here: [link]