Paul Steed was an artist and and 3D innovator who introduced 3D to Chris Roberts games, and gives his name to the UEES Paul Steed. He is also famous for his involvement in Quake.[1] Over his career he worked as Art Director, Game Designer, 3D modeler/Animator, Creative Director, CCO, President, GM and Game Director.[2]
Career
In 1991, after serving six years in the United States Air Force, Paul answered an Origin Systems advertisement looking for a fantasy artist. He was a gifted sketch artist, and while Origin didn't have the budget to hire a "proper" artist they liked Paul's attitude and saw talent when he came in for an interview so they invented an art design assistant position for him. He joined Chris Roberts’ team doing 2D work for Strike Commander. Feeling that 3D polygons like those used in the Falcon series and others weren’t good enough, Chris Roberts had initially decided to use pre-rendered sprites like those in Wing Commander I and Wing Commander II for the game’s warplanes while the ground and less detailed objects like buildings would be done in actual 3D.[3][4]
Paul was assigned to test the software for the 3D portion. He came into Chris Roberts office a few days later to show a beautifully built 3D fighter inside the engine. Because of Paul's work and talent Origin decided to throw out entirely the Wing Commander 2D sprite rendering and everything went 3D, including the cockpits - many years before anyone else had done any of that in a game.[3][4] Paul had invented low-poly texturing.[5]
He went on to build every single object in Strike Commander and then to train Origin’s artists on the system themselves. As such he was responsible not only for Strike Commander’s graphics, but the 3D art seen in Wing Commander Armada, Heart of the Tiger, The Price of Freedom, Pacific Strike, Wings of Glory, Bioforge and others.[4] At Origin he created the“Yellow Pixel Theory”, placing a yellow pixel in the corner for the producer to spot and request changed, so they wouldn’t ask for anything else to be changed, as they would have felt like they’d done their job. He spent four years at Origin.[6]
He then worked as art director at Virgin Entertainment and as designer at Iguana Entertainment.
Paul Steed joined ID Software where his name and art style became synonymous with the Quake games. He also gained controversy for creating the Crackwhore skin for a Quake II contest sponsored by a group of women gamers named the Crackwhore Clan, as an homage to said women's clan.
In 2000 after being fired from ID Software he went to work for WildTangent making several dancing girl visualizers for Winamp and a third-person shooter called Betty Bad.
He published the influential books Modeling a Character in 3D Studio Max ,1st and 2nd Editions, as well as Animating Real-Time Game Characters, on the now-industry-dominant 3D modeling techniques he helped create.[5]
He served on the Advisory Board for the Game Developers Conference for many years and as creative director at Microsoft where he worked on the development of the Xbox 360 and XNA tools. He was part of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group, whose task was to show game developers how to exploit the game hardware as much as possible.
He was also creative director for Atari.
He left Atari in 2006 to co-found the global game art company Exigent with Garland Wong and Jesse Rapczak, where he was President and Chief Creative Officer.[4]
He worked on Strike Commander, Wing Commander: Privateer, Wing Commander Armada, Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger, Wings of Glory, Bioforge, Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom, Quake, Quake II, Quake III: Arena, Bad Betty, Shadow Ops: Red Mercury, Neverwinter Nights 2, Marc Ecko’s Getting Up, BattleZone, Act of War: High Treason, Test Drive Unlimited, Kwari, Sorcery.[4]
He was active in the game development community and gave talks not only at the annual Game Developer's Conference, but also at universities and art institutes. He initiated and sponsored several modeling contests.[5]
Paul died unexpectedly in August, 2012, leaving behind a body of work and an impact on game design for which he will be long remembered.[4]
Quotes
"This is not a job. It’s a life style, requiring your heart, your soul and putting all your passion into it" -Paul Steed[6]
References
- ↑ Happy Hour Museum: Wing Commander Privateer, Star Citizen, YouTube, 31 march 2017
- ↑ Paul Steed, mobygames
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Goodbye, Paul Steed, Wing Commander Combat Information Center, August 12, 2012
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 “Quake” Video Game Industry Legend Paul Steed, Has Passed Away, .jacehallshow.com, 11th August 2012, archived
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Best Of GDC: Paul Steed On 'The Trip' From Artist to Entrepreneu, Gamasutra, February 28, 2008, archived
