It's TSL Team Tuesday. Today we feature Bruce Brennesie, a talented illustrator who does work on both Four Winds and Episode 5.
Name: Bruce Brenneise
Location: Seattle, Washington, USA
Role on the team: 2-D artist (Four Winds illustrations, The Silver Lining background art, assorted other art concepts/assets for TSL)
Occupation: ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher, for the moment, until I can harness my portfolio and credits from TSL to get a paying job in the game industry!
What skills do you have? Digital painting, scientific illustration, creative writing, photography, teaching.
How long have you been on the team? I've been on the team since April 2012, so a little over a year.
How did you first hear about The Silver Lining? I was living and working in China at the time and happened upon the AGD remakes as well as TSL. Needless to say, I was overjoyed to see that exciting things were continuing to happen for the King's Quest games and ongoing narrative and even more enthusiastic at the thought of possibly joining in the fun.
What made you decide to join? This was the perfect opportunity at the perfect time! At the time, I was considering my career--after six years of travel and (mostly) teaching work in Asia. I wanted to get back to my illustration roots and develop a career out of making concept art and 2-D assets for the video game industry. And like magic, I found
The Silver Lining: a team in need of artists who also happened to be working on a project related to one of my all-time favorite adventure game series.
What’s your first King’s Quest memory? I spotted King's Quest 6 in a store when I was about 10 years old. My aunt had told me I could choose one game as a reward for helping out at her wedding. That illustration of Alexander and the minotaur really sold me on the game! My cousins, sister, and I then had an amazing time playing the game itself. I recall that my family had to buy our first computer mouse so that I could even play KQ6--getting the coin out of the chest in the very first scene of KQ6 is a huge hassle if you're only using the arrow keys!
Favorite KQ game and why? King's Quest 6: It was my first point-and-click adventure game; it opened up a world of other Sierra adventure games to me; the art and story really made me imagine a whole world out there, waiting to be discovered. You can imagine my excitement to find that
The Silver Lining had extended the explorable areas of all the Green Isles. I remember constantly imagining and wondering what Beast's castle, the checkerboard land, or the city of the winged ones were like. Now I know!
What’s it like to work on The Silver Lining? It's great fun, mostly due to the awesome teammates. Just imagine lots of oddball humor getting thrown around in the moments when we're not hard at work making TSL. Also important to mention are the critiques that we give each other that have helped us all improve our skills.
How have you grown professionally and personally since joining Phoenix Online? I feel I've come a long way in terms of technique as well as understanding of pipelines and processes used to make a game. While I was living in China I mostly did pencil sketching and didn't have access to a tablet, so I couldn't really do any digital painting. As a result, my college-developed art skills had gotten a little rusty. The rust seems long gone now, though. I've developed a much greater facility with programs such as Photoshop and Painter as well as deepening my overall knowledge of composition, color theory, anatomy, and perspective.
What’s your favorite piece you’ve done for POS/Four Winds? All the illustrations I did for the Andrew Greyson storyline were quite enjoyable. I felt that Brian (the writer) and I had a great rapport, bouncing ideas back and forth as the stories and illustrations took shape. I think my most technically-accomplished work in that narrative, though, would be the one showing the destruction of Tanalore. Here was this city that we had put so much thought and feeling into creating. Now, however, it was to be torn apart and wiped from the face of the world. I put all that woeful energy into the painting, and so the results were quite emotive.
Favorite non KQ game? Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, the Fallout series, the Elder Scrolls series, the Quest for Glory series, Ultima Underworld 1 & 2--it's so hard to choose an actual favorite!
What are you currently playing? As many of the other team members will confirm, you definitely don't have as much time to play games when you're making them! That said, Diablo 3, Mass Effect 2, The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav have all gotten some play time recently in my off-hours.
Link to portfolio? http://bbrenneise.wix.com/works
