MechWarrior Online Developer Interview #1
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MWO: What is your first MechWarrior® experience? Video games or BattleTech®?We've mirrored all of the new Atlus concept art over in our image gallery, as well.
AI: Oddly enough, I believe my first experience was with the Somerset Strikers cartoon which sparked my curiosity, followed by the sega genesis game, then MechWarrior® 2 Mercs.
MWO: Did you start drawing Mechs after that or did you always draw giant robots?
AI: The Mech stuff started probably after the sega game, or MW2mercs, but became a serious habit once I started getting into the novels at around 12 or 13. However, I've always liked drawing exploding combat stuff as best as I can recall, the earliest art I remember making were crazy looking crayon doodles of stick figure airplanes and tanks blowing each other up when I was 4.
MWO: How did you get involved with Catalyst Game Labsâ„¢?
AI: By pure luck. Around late 2007, Mike Vaillancourt contacted me because he wanted a few illustrations for one of the Cthulhutech books. Afterwards, throughout most of 2008 he kept asking if I was going to go to Gencon that August and hang out at the booth. I was consistently unsure, and pretty much at the last minute decided, (Why not? sure.) What I had not realized was that 2 weeks prior, his company had partnered with Catalyst Game Labsâ„¢, and that we were going to be at their booth. Additionally, I also did not know at the time that Catalyst was comprised almost entirely of ex FASA writers and staff. Imagining that I might be at the booth for hours I brought my crappy laptop and a wacom tablet with me to kill time. When I actually got to the booth, Mike began introducing me to people, when I started recognizing names from the credits or covers of BT books from years prior. After my barely controlled mental regression to being suddenly 15 again, I guess I sensed it was a good time to start drawing Mech stuff right then and there. It apparently impressed their art director, Brent Evans, and a few months later I'm getting assignments to do book covers.
