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        <h1><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b><i><a href="../../index.html">loonygames</a><br>
          <font size="1">a <a href="http://www.bluesnews.com">blue's news</a> 
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<p>&nbsp;</p>Vol. 

                2, Issue 5<br>
                December 6, 1999<br>
                </b>
              <b> 
                </b>
               
                <b><i>Taking 
                  Aim at Paul Steed '99</i></b></p>
                An 
                  interview by Russell 
                  &quot;RadPipe&quot; Lauzon</p>
              
              

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               <i>P</i>aul 
                Steed: the Man, the Myth, the Legend. We couldn&#146;t let issue 
                2.5 pass without taking another shot at our beloved modeler/animator/writer 
                from that little black cube down in Mesquite, home of id Software. 
                Stephanie &#147;Bobbi&#148; Bergman was lucky enough to interview 
                him last year (at QuakeCon &acute;98, no less), but this year 
                was my turn. I caught him on the phone (after 8 tries on 3 different 
                nights), and here&#146;s how it went:</p>
              </p>
              <b>So. 
                How&#146;re you doing?</b></p>
              </p>
              Good.</p>
              </p>
              <b>Tell 
                me, what&#146;s the strangest thing that happened to you in the 
                last week?</b></p>
              </p>
              Strangest 
                thing that&#146;s happened to me in the last week? Um. </p>
              </p>
              <b>Put 
                you on the spot, eh?</b></p>
              </p>
              The strangest 
                thing, uh, would be...Oh, okay, well it&#146;s not really a strange 
                thing, it&#146;s something I just had the urge to do. I was driving 
                to work the other day, I missed my exit, so, I kept going south. 
                I decided that I didn&#146;t feel like hitting the next exit, 
                or the next one. So I just kept driving for 300 miles, until I 
                hit the golf coast. I eventually drove to the end of Texas.</p>
              </p>
              <b>300 
                miles!</b></p>
              </p>
              I drove 
                300 miles to the end of Texas, got out of my truck, walked around 
                on the beach, checked out the ocean. I kicked around some surf, 
                talked to some really cute girl in a really small bikini.</p>
              </p>
              <b>Is 
                this burnout at work?</b></p>
              </p>
              No, no, 
                no. It&#146;s one of those minute crisis situations that I solved. 
                You know when you get in that kind of mode, &#145;well I don&#146;t 
                really feel like doing something&#146;, like playing hooky, basically. 
                So I drove to the coast, had a bite to eat, turned around and 
                came to work.</p>
              </p>
              <b>300 
                miles that must have been &#150;</b></p>
              </p>
              I put 
                650 miles on my truck in a matter of 10 or 11 hours.</p>
              </p>
              <b>Okay, 
                yeah, that&#146;s pretty strange.</b></p>
              </p>
              I guess 
                you could qualify that as strange.</p>
              </p>
              <b>Yeah, 
                I would. From past conversations with you, I know that you had 
                somewhat of a troubled youth in your family, in that you jumped 
                around about a half dozen states, and in and out of about 20 high 
                schools.</b></p>
              </p>
              I went 
                to like, 22 public schools before I graduated high school.</p>
              </p>
              <b>How 
                do you think that has affected the way you are today with people?</b></p>
              </p>
              It&#146;s 
                easier for me to meet people. </p>
              </p>
              <b>So 
                you think it&#146;s made you more open to&#151;</b></p>
              </p>
              It&#146;s 
                made me more extraverted I guess, because, I really don&#146;t 
                care. I&#146;m probably going to be gone tomorrow, so what does 
                it matter what you think? &lt;chuckles&gt;</p>
              </p>
              <b>Ok. 
                Heh. I read in a Kenneth Scott interview a little while back that 
                he was really into plastecine modeling when he was young. He&#146;d 
                sit there and model, like comic book figures. What was your creative 
                outlet when you were a kid?</b></p>
              </p>
              I was 
                big into comics. And I drew. I got into art and I wanted to be 
                a comic book artist for a long time.</p>
              </p>
              <b>You 
                wanted to go to Kubert&#146;s School, was that it?</b></p>
              </p>
              I was 
                accepted to the Kubert School and I bailed on that. I wanted to 
                be a dietician for a while, but that&#146;s a whole other story. 
                So, I basically did the model thing, not plastecine models because 
                those were too expensive, but I built car models and I would build 
                them then blow them up with firecrackers so they&#146;d look like 
                car wrecks.</p>
              </p>
              <b>That 
                sounds like fun. How old were you when you applied to Kubert?</b></p>
              </p>
              That was 
                about 11 years ago. </p>
              </p>
              <b>So 
                how come you didn&#146;t go in if you were accepted?</b></p>
              </p>
              Well I 
                was in Germany at the time &#150;</p>
              </p>
              <b>Oh 
                you were in the Air Force at the time?</b></p>
              </p>
              Yeah I 
                was still in the Air Force right. I was going to go to Kubert 
                School, but then I wanted to be a dietician, because I didn&#146;t 
                want to do art for a living. Art was one of those things that, 
                no matter how crappy I felt about life, I figured if I did for 
                a living and I started hating it, then I wouldn&#146;t have that 
                outlet. You know what I mean? So I decided I didn&#146;t want 
                to be an artist for a living. I wanted to be something in the 
                medical field. I worked out, I was into bodybuilding, and I knew 
                a lot about nutrition because I&#146;m interested in it. So I 
                started studying to be a dietician and I volunteered at a hospital 
                back in Germany. And after about 3 months of volunteer work, I 
                decided I didn&#146;t want to be a dietician anymore, because, 
                it sucks. There&#146;s a reason why 90 percent of all dieticians 
                are women. It&#146;s because you have to have that level of patience, 
                perseverance, understanding, compassion. And I would tell people, 
                &#147;Hey you&#146;re fat. Stop eating.&#148; And that wasn&#146;t 
                a very good approach as a dietician. It wasn&#146;t very, I guess, 
                nurturing.</p>
              </p>
              <b>I can 
                understand that. And I&#146;ve heard a few people say that you 
                don&#146;t want to make your life&#146;s work something you really, 
                really enjoy because you&#146;ll end up hating it. </b></p>
              </p>
              Right. 
                Yeah. And the thing is, professionals; dieticians and psychologists, 
                they become that because it&#146;s something they&#146;re trying 
                to overcome with themselves, so they help understand it by studying 
                it. So anyway, I took some classes after that. Somehow I ended 
                up doing computer games for a living, I don&#146;t understand 
                how that quite worked out.</p>
              <br><br> 
              &nbsp;
              
              <b>Whose 
                artwork did you admire the most there?</b></p>
              </p>
              Oh there 
                were plenty of people. The main guy was this guy named Dennis 
                Loubet He was the first artist hired at Origin, basically. The 
                guy was just one of those really gifted artists who didn&#146;t 
                shy away from the technical. Because at Origin there was a clear 
                division between 2D and 3D artists. It was like this elitism. 
                I come to find out that the 3D artists are all that, because they 
                were doing 3D and they were doing the cinematics and everything 
                else, and the 2D guys are like, they&#146;re just 2D guys. We 
                can do both, they can only do one. So Dennis Loubet was the first 
                guy I saw that was really a nice mix of both.</p>
              </p>
              <b>Is 
                there like a lot of this segregation between different art groups?</b></p>
              </p>
              Yeah there 
                is, because you have to understand that it&#146;s really competitive. 
                It even happens now. I take for granted sometimes. That&#146;s 
                why I like teaching this stuff, because I want to break down the 
                walls of this thing being intimidating. It&#146;s just a computer 
                program. You have to conquer it like you have to conquer everything 
                else. You have to set your mind to it. It&#146;s really how dedicated 
                you are to making it work.</p>
              </p>
              <b>Ok 
                let&#146;s move on here. How did you get your job at id?</b></p>
              </p>
              I was 
                working at a company called Virgin. And a head hunter called me 
                and said, &#145;hey. There&#146;s a little company in Texas that 
                needs an artist and I was wondering if you&#146;re interested.&#146; 
                I said, &#145;what&#146;s the name of the company?&#146; Because 
                I was an art director there and I kind of had it made. Anyways, 
                he goes, &#145; It&#146;s a company called, id,&#148; and I hung 
                up on the guy. So he called me back and said, &#145;I&#146;m serious&#146; 
                and I thought yeah right. Who would ever leave id? Why would id 
                need somebody? Anyway we got to talking, and I only had my original 
                demo tape that I had made all my copies from and I didn&#146;t 
                have a copy, and I said, &#145;screw this, the only company I&#146;d 
                leave for is id and I was a big fan.&#146; So I sent it to him 
                and the guy called me back the next day and said, &#145;you know 
                they got the tape but they never really looked at it because they 
                made this other guy an offer.&#146; And I thought, oh shit there 
                goes my tape. </p>
              </p>
              <b>Doh.</b></p>
              </p>
              And so 
                I figured I gambled and lost, whatever. And the guy goes, &#145;don&#146;t 
                get too discouraged because the guy might turn them down. And 
                I&#146;m like, what fucking moron is going to turn id down? And 
                sure enough he calls me back the next day and says &#145;hey they 
                want you to do a phone interview with Kevin Cloud because the 
                other guy turned them down.&#146; And I thought you&#146;re bullshitting 
                me.</p>
              </p>
              <b>Do 
                you know who it was?</b></p>
              </p>
              No, they 
                won&#146;t tell me. Because I want to buy him a Volkswagen or 
                something. I want to give him something to show my appreciation. 
                So anyway the guy turned them down for the dumbest reason. He 
                should be kicking himself every day for the rest of his life.</p>
              </p>
              <b>Do 
                you know what the reason was?</b></p>
              </p>
              No. Well 
                yeah I know what the reason is. I think, a little bit of money, 
                a little bit of fear that his creative input wouldn&#146;t be 
                appreciated or some crap like that. But anyways he messed up. 
                But I think the reason why I was selected was since I was the 
                last applicant, my thing was on top of the stack. And Kevin was 
                so desperate to get somebody in for Quake II, he was like, &#145;God 
                we just gotta get somebody. Ok this Steed guy, ok let&#146;s give 
                him a call.&#146; So I talked to them and the phone interview 
                went pretty well. They flew me down and pretty much made me an 
                offer on the spot. </p>
              </p>
              <b>What&#146;s 
                your daily routine like?</b></p>
              </p>
              I get 
                up.</p>
              </p>
              <b>About 
                noonish?</b></p>
              </p>
              I usually 
                try to get up about 9:00 or 10:00. In to work before noon. I don&#146;t 
                try to get in early like some of the others that get in by 8:00. 
                I work out about 3:00. Do some dinner. Come back to work and usually 
                get home around midnight or 1:00am. </p>
              </p>
              <b>How 
                about your favorite websites?</b></p>
              </p>
              I haven&#146;t 
                really been hitting any lately. I do the usual. I go surfing across 
                the usual. I do Blue&#146;s, 
                PlanetQuake, Redwood&#146;s, 
                the typical stuff. I just don&#146;t have time. I haven&#146;t 
                hit a website in a long time. If I&#146;m in a mood to be pissed 
                off, I go to sCary&#146;s 
                msgboard and get my dose of frustration over the really insightful 
                things I read up there. </p>
              </p>
              <b>Yeah 
                he really needs to implement some kind of password authentication.</b></p>
              </p>
              You know 
                what, he does. I&#146;m not really for the whole censorship issue, 
                but in some situations I think it&#146;s okay. Which is a contradiction 
                of course, but I won&#146;t tell anyone.</p>
              </p>
              <b>Who&#146;s 
                the funniest guy at id?</b></p>
              </p>
              The funniest 
                guy at id is Adrian Carmack.</p>
              </p>
              <b>Get 
                out. Really?</b></p>
              </p>
              He is, 
                without a doubt, no question, the funniest guy at id. He&#146;s 
                fucking hilarious.</p>
              </p>
              <b>He 
                seems so introverted.</b></p>
              </p>
              Get a 
                few drinks in him, and he&#146;s like Chris Fucking Rock, the 
                guy will just have you rolling. It&#146;s amazing. It&#146;s shocking. 
                He could do stand-up.</p>
              <br><br> 
              &nbsp;
              
              <b>And 
                Tanya is just gorgeous in that picture.</b></p>
              </p>
              Thanks. 
                I like Tanya. It was one of my favorite pictures. You know what 
                I like about that picture is the hands. You always try to improve 
                certain things in your drawing.</p>
              </p>
              <b>You 
                know what else that really comes out in your pictures is eyes 
                and lips. You can really tell &#150;</b></p>
              </p>
              I spend 
                a lot of time on that.</p>
              </p>
              <b>I think 
                the first picture I saw of yours, you know what, was one of your 
                pictures for your tattoo. I had to look at the face three times 
                because I thought it was a photo picture and I thought, &#145;holy 
                god that&#146;s really good.&#146; And that comes out in all your 
                pictures. Because they&#146;re all really cool that way. And you&#146;ve 
                done a lot of sketches from Playboy too.</b></p>
              </p>
              Oh yeah. 
                Yeah yeah yeah. I like the newstand editions.</p>
              </p>
              <b>A lot 
                of different sketches, a lot of different poses.</b></p>
              </p>
              There&#146;s 
                a difference. I don&#146;t like Hustler kind of stuff. Back when 
                they started strip clubs, I wouldn&#146;t go to all nude places 
                because it was kind of like somebody pointing a flashlight in 
                your face. You know I mean? Don&#146;t point that thing at me. 
                It takes away the whole mystery of the thing. I think of women 
                too much as like an art form. In today&#146;s society they use 
                the female form for everything. There&#146;s a reason for that, 
                because it&#146;s just so appealing. On a really basic level, 
                the female form is a provocative thing.</p>
              </p>
              <b>And 
                it&#146;s beautiful.</b></p>
              </p>
              It&#146;s 
                beautiful.</p>
              </p>
              <b>Beautiful 
                thing.</b></p>
              </p>
              I know 
                you&#146;re a fellow philogyner so you know what I mean.</p>
              </p>
              <b>You 
                know you kind remind me of that guy from the movie Skin Deep with 
                John Ritter.</b></p>
              </p>
              Oh yeah 
                yeah. The glowing condoms in the dark. </p>
              </p>
              <b>Yeah 
                exactly. He had a big problem with women. </b></p>
              </p>
              Well I 
                don&#146;t really have a problem.</p>
              </p>
              <b>In 
                his case it was a problem.</b></p>
              </p>
              He had 
                that whole sex-addiction thing, which I&#146;ve never understood. 
                Because everyone is addicted to sex. Jesus. It&#146;s a problem. 
                Why is it a problem?</p>
              </p>
              <b>Yeah 
                this guy&#146;s normal. What&#146;s the movie about? Anyway let&#146;s 
                move on here or we&#146;ll never get through. You first gaming 
                job was at Origin. How humbling was it when you first got there 
                and you saw the talent that was around you. </b></p>
              </p>
              Jesus 
                Christ I was depressed for days. Weeks. I was just devastated 
                because I was so sure of myself, and so full of myself in the 
                way I drew and the things I drew, and the things I thought about 
                were so unique. I thought, geez, because I never met anybody who 
                enjoyed those kinds of things, I guess. And man I go there, and 
                man, it was like everyone there just completely kicked my ass. 
                It was very humbling. But it was cool too. Because I love to be 
                challenged.</p>
              </p>
              <b>And 
                you got to work with these guys.</b></p>
              </p>
              I didn&#146;t 
                start as an artist, I started as a gopher there. And basically, 
                I became an artist by going in and trying to learn this stuff. 
                And I tried to learn 3D first, and what I realized is that there 
                weren't very many people that learned to do 3D. So it was kind 
                of like, why isn&#146;t anyone learning 3D? It was just a little 
                studying and stuff. Evidently it was pretty intimidating.</p>
              </p>
              <b>And 
                soon you were in a field by yourself.</b></p>
              </p>
              Well there 
                were other guys there that did 3D, but they did all the high-poly 
                cinematic stuff. What I ended up specializing in, for no other 
                reason than no one else wanted to do it, was the low-poly stuff. 
                This was back in &#146;92. I did all the planes and stuff in Strike 
                Commander. So, I just got in there and showed them my drawings 
                and stuff, and came the big day and I wanted to apply to the art 
                department. I brought my stuff in and the guys were cool and stuff, 
                and I had already talked to them because they saw me coming in 
                there at night and they asked me, &#145;why you going in the art 
                room&#146; and I said, &#145;I want to learn, I&#146;d like to 
                do this too&#146; and they&#146;re like &#145;ok you go ahead 
                kid.&#146; So, I applied. I finally got my stuff together. I got 
                my 3D stuff, my 2D stuff, I did like some ePaint drawings. And 
                they looked at them and everything and I was pretty proud of them. 
                It wasn&#146;t as good as they did and they knew it, but they 
                saw something there so they go, &#145;yeah you know, your stuff 
                is pretty good. But are you cool?&#146; And I said, &#145;what 
                do you mean?&#146; And then they proceed to ask me all these questions 
                about like what movies I liked and what artists I liked, and a 
                little bit about my background &#150;</p>
              </p>
              <b>And 
                what&#146;s your inspiration.</b></p>
              </p>
              Right. 
                What&#146;s my motivation and everything else. And I was really 
                impressed by that. Because it was like, &#145;you got the ability 
                but that&#146;s not really what&#146;s important. What&#146;s 
                important are you going to fit in with the rest of us?&#146; And 
                I think that&#146;s something that&#146;s lost in the industry 
                today. People don&#146;t focus on the team mechanics enough. They 
                just focus on the corporate aspect of it. </p>
              </p>
              <b>They 
                got no heart.</b></p>
              </p>
              Yeah exactly. 
                That&#146;s what it is. It&#146;s heart. And the guys at Origin 
                had lots of heart.</p>
              </p>
              <br><br> 
              &nbsp;
              
              <b>That 
                happens I guess. Some of us try really hard to get into computer 
                games.</b></p>
              </p>
              I didn&#146;t 
                know people got paid to do this.</p>
              </p>
              <b>There 
                you go. Tell me about some of the comic book artists you really 
                liked when you were young.</b></p>
              </p>
              I started 
                collecting comics in &acute;79 or &acute;78, and I did it for 
                the collecting aspect of it, because I had like 100 issue run 
                of Incredible Hulk. So I would go to flea markets and try and 
                find these things. This one kid on my bus one time, said, &#145;hey 
                I got this box of comics I&#146;ll sell you&#146;, because I always 
                talked about comics and I was cool and I wanted to be a comic 
                book artist, so I go &#145;really&#146; and I&#146;m looking through 
                it and he had X-Men #94, and all these early X-Men issues that 
                were worth a lot of money, so I bought that. Then I started looking 
                at guys like John Burns. But early on, my favorite artists were 
                John Byrne, Michael Golden. I like John Buscema, I like Barry 
                Windsor Smith. And then I picked up one of the early Frank Miller 
                Daredevils, and I was just completely enraptured by Frank Miller&#146;s 
                work. There was something just so dead-on. Something about that 
                work that just grabbed me. And I&#146;ve been a Frank Miller fan 
                ever since and my comic art kind of reflects it. </p>
              </p>
              <b>Yeah 
                he does good stuff. He worked on Spiderman, Ronin, Dark Knight...</b></p>
              </p>
              Yeah his 
                first work for Marvel was Spiderman, then he did a couple annuals 
                with Dr. Strange. But then he kind of hacked out with city stuff. 
                I like the high-contrast black and white stuff, you know the Ronin 
                stuff was cool, the Dark Knight stuff, but my favorite thing of 
                his was &#147;Electra Lives&#148;. It was a one shot graphic novel. 
                And he did it with his girlfriend Lynn Varley. She&#146;s a colorist 
                and a real good artist. With the two of them together, and they 
                did amazing work. That was kind of like the quintessential Frank 
                Miller because that was when he made the transition from the traditional 
                comic style to more of the Japanese &#150; well he did it in Ronin, 
                but here he made the whole Japanese style of dividing a page into 
                grids and doing sequential art in the grid. He perfected that 
                whole thing with Electra Lives. It&#146;s a really good book. 
                You should get it and read it.</p>
              </p>
              <b>Maybe 
                you can lend it to me sometime.</b></p>
              </p>
              I&#146;ll 
                send it in the mail tomorrow.</p>
              </p>
              <b>In 
                your sketchbook, what comic book character do you draw the most?</b></p>
              </p>
              I stopped 
                drawing so much. When I did draw, it was mainly guys like Daredevil, 
                or mostly [other characters] Frank Miller had done, I guess.</p>
              </p>
              <b>One 
                of the sketches that really struck me is a picture of Wilson Fisk.</b></p>
              </p>
              Wilson 
                Fisk yes, from Daredevil.</p>
              </p>
              <b>It 
                struck me as a really cool picture, because he&#146;s got the 
                cigar and he has smoke curling around his face. Which made me 
                think, would you take a comic book character and draw him completely 
                originally, or were you mostly into recapturing something you 
                see?</b></p>
              </p>
              Well in 
                that particular instance, I was copying Miller. But what I would 
                do too, is I&#146;d study stuff like that and then go and do, 
                &#145;What would it look like from the other side?&#146; So it 
                was more, I really tried to understand a process. I mean I was 
                so into Miller&#146;s work. And I was like, &#145;how does he 
                arrive at this conclusion with this panel arrangement and this 
                particular composition?&#146; You know I&#146;ve never taken any 
                art classes, which kind of sucks because I have to learn as I 
                go about color theory and everything else like that. So that&#146;s 
                why a lot of my early stuff is black and white because I just 
                didn&#146;t know about color.</p>
              </p>
              <b>You 
                know I bet a lot of people are like that.</b></p>
              </p>
              Oh yeah. 
                I mean, the thing is, look at people who are good at what they 
                do. A lot of them are self-taught because they&#146;re really 
                motivated. Me, I got really bored of college pretty fast, because 
                nobody took me seriously. It was just a bunch of losers out there. 
                They would look at me like, &#145;what are you crazy? You&#146;re 
                trying.&#146; So it just turned me off of the whole learning thing. 
                </p>
              </p>
              <b>I&#146;m 
                looking at another sketch you did here, and it&#146;s called, 
                &#147;Tanya Kidnapped&#148;. And I think of all the pictures that 
                you sent me, that one struck me the most. If there&#146;s a picture 
                worth a thousand words, than there&#146;s ten thousand coming 
                out of this. What was that done for?</b></p>
              </p>
              Okay. 
                Back in &#146;94, I was Project Director at Origin, and they knew 
                I was going to quit and they said, &#145;look, what&#146;s it 
                going to take to keep you here?&#146; And I said, &#145;get me 
                my own project, and I&#146;ll stay. I want a team of people to 
                do a project like I think it should be done.&#146; And they go, 
                &#145;okay.&#146; So they gave me a bunch of guys. So basically 
                I sat down, and I closed the door to my office and I go, alright, 
                I&#146;m going to write down all the things off the top of my 
                head that I like: I like motorcycles; I like rock and roll; I 
                like women; I like violence; I like science fiction. So I took 
                all that and rolled it into this game I called Cyclone Alley. 
                Which basically was a racing game like Road Rash, except you&#146;re 
                on these Hover Bikes and you can do 360 loops inside these tubes 
                and you&#146;re in this space station in outer space. That was 
                the general premise. It&#146;s a good storyline where you&#146;re 
                this hero. One of the stories was, you were racing and you&#146;re 
                doing really good, and the whole time you get these emails or 
                voice mails, which is how the game system runs, and some of them 
                are cutscenes, and one of them was your girlfriend saying, &#147;hey 
                meet me here.&#148; Lo and behold you finish the race and you 
                get to this place and she&#146;s been kidnapped and these guys 
                are pressuring you to race for them, or throw some races or fix 
                some races or whatever. They&#146;re mafia in space. So that was 
                Guido. Guido kidnaps Tanya, and if you win the race, well there 
                was a whole intricate story. What I wanted to convey was Guido 
                was just this sleazy guy and you need to save her.</p>
              <br><br> 
              &nbsp;
              
              <b>That&#146;s 
                cool. Why were the hip hop and ballet animations created? Was 
                that an experiment?</b></p>
              </p>
              Yeah it 
                was just me tweaking stuff. That was mo-cap. Motion capture data. 
                Just a way to fit our characters. During [my seminar at] QuakeCon, 
                I dropped my computer, it was hosed. So that whole last minute 
                solution of switching out computers with Paul Jacquays threw me 
                off. And I forgot my glasses so I couldn&#146;t even see the thing 
                they had set up. It was basically a desperation move. Get some 
                humor in there, because when I give talks I always try to get 
                people laughing a little bit and loosen them up, and then they&#146;re 
                more tolerant of you if you don&#146;t really deliver on something 
                educational.</p>
              </p>
              <b>Either 
                that or you serve booze. </b></p>
              </p>
              Well yeah, 
                booze helps too. I give out free stuff.</p>
              </p>
              <b>So 
                you did that all with motion capture. You did that yourself right? 
                You put on the ping pong balls and stuff.</b></p>
              </p>
              For that 
                particular, for the ballet and that, no I didn&#146;t. But just 
                recently I did and I got some movies of that. It was pretty cool 
                because it&#146;s what I used to choose my powers. The first time 
                I did it I went to this place and I was watching this guy do it. 
                And I was thinking, I can do that. It&#146;s not too bad. I&#146;m 
                in pretty good shape. I thought, screw this, next time I&#146;ll 
                do it myself. So I did. Then I did it again but you know what, 
                next time, if I do it again, I&#146;ll definitely pay somebody. 
                It&#146;s just not worth the pain. Because it gets pretty painful 
                sometimes. And you&#146;re so conscious of your time, because 
                the longer it takes in the studio, that&#146;s pretty expensive 
                stuff. In the end I think it&#146;s worth it. I just got some 
                data back from Locomotion, the guys who did it, the stuff turned 
                out really good.</p>
              </p>
              <b>It&#146;s 
                either really expensive to pay somebody to do it or you build 
                your own studio.</b></p>
              </p>
              Well yeah, 
                you build your own studio but you still have to pay somebody to 
                maintain it. The good thing about me doing my own motions, is 
                the fact that I&#146;m the animator and I know exactly what I 
                want. Because you&#146;re always trying to pantomime your stuff 
                to the guy.</p>
              </p>
              <b>How 
                much sketch work do you in preparation for modeling a character?</b></p>
              </p>
              It depends, 
                if I&#146;m going off my own sketch than it&#146;s usually pretty 
                rough. Like that one sketch I sent you, the Barbara-Fett, that&#146;s 
                pretty detailed for me these days. Normally I just scribble stuff 
                down for sets of mass, or what I&#146;ll do is I&#146;ll sketch 
                it out to the point to where I can scan it in &#150; I normally 
                build from a front view and a side view. If it&#146;s not too 
                complex, like just a normal &#150; I just built a PMS model, built 
                it yesterday, I just did that from tweaking models that I already 
                built. But I really don&#146;t do that much. I like to build other 
                people&#146;s sketches, to be honest. Because it gives me new 
                ideas. I feel like I&#146;ve tapped myself out sometimes for original 
                ideas because I&#146;ve done it so many times. I like taking Adrian&#146;s 
                or Kenneth&#146;s sketch, scan it in. Because they&#146;re really 
                good artists. Real artists. Their sketches just amaze me with 
                the skill.</p>
              </p>
              <b>How 
                about the Mynx model? Actually, here&#146;s a question that Mynx 
                (the original Dear Mynx) gave me: What will the gestures be for 
                the Mynx model?</b></p>
              </p>
              We can&#146;t 
                really do the taunts like in Quake II. But I&#146;ll do something 
                special for her. I&#146;ve got the whole little special animation. 
                When I went to the House of Moves, I got some motion capture for 
                it, I hired this girl to do some stuff for me, and one of the 
                things she did was she did this kiss thing that I&#146;m going 
                to use for my logo model that I built. Basically I&#146;m going 
                to have Mynx making out with one of the other characters as part 
                of the Bloopers. Because I&#146;m doing a blooper thing for the 
                credits. And I did all these blooper &#150; when I did my first 
                mo-cap, I wanted to get this blooper mo-cap for the characters. 
                You&#146;ll like it, I&#146;m basically going to display the credits 
                that way.</p>
              </p>
              <b>Are 
                you going to be doing the cinematics again?</b></p>
              </p>
              I&#146;ve 
                storyboarded out and art directed the cinematics with Digital 
                Anvil as we speak. There will be cinematics, it won&#146;t be 
                as story-driven as Quake II was, but it will be better quality 
                and it will be higher res, and it will have true-color high-res 
                versions as well as the standard knockdown version. But Graeme 
                Devine did 7th Guest, with full-motion, he&#146;s done a lot of 
                work with compression so it&#146;ll look a lot better than Quake 
                II looked. Plus the fact I&#146;m not doing it on the weekends. 
                Let somebody else do it.</p>
              </p>
              <b>I heard 
                you did a lot of the Quake II cinematics on a 486.</b></p>
              </p>
              Yep, it 
                was 486/66 with 64 megs of ram.</p>
              </p>
              <b>One 
                more question. What&#146;s after Quake III Arena?</b></p>
              </p>
              Good question. 
                I have no idea. I&#146;m going to go to Australia for a while. 
                I want to go to surf school in Hawaii. I want to pick up snowboarding. 
                Yeah I like to go skiing. But I got rid of the skis this year 
                for snowboarding because they have much cooler clothes. And I 
                was a big skateboarder. I want to learn how to surf, I want to 
                go skydiving, you know, the whole mid-life crisis thing I guess.</p>
              </p>
              <b>Very 
                cool. Thanks Paul Steed.</b></p>
              
              <i>- 
                Russell &quot;RadPipe&quot; Lauzon is currently exhausting all 
                his free time researching Beer Goggles.</i> 
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