Nate Dearsley · Art Director, Squadron 42

With great difficulty. When you're comparing it to looking at something in what I would term 2D, which is film, as in a linear point of view, it's completely different. Everything needs to hold up, for a start. But a lot of principles do trickle through. The eye should never stare, it should always wander. There are certain things that you can do to feed into that. The laws of the golden ratio and lighting, the principles are still the same, it just takes a lot longer. You can do a beautiful corridor in a matter of a day, maybe two, but what's around the corner? It's very tricky. I can't really put into words the challenge, at least on, I know you get it in the PU, but on Squadron, that we have, especially with a game that deals with vast scale. I think Jake will attest to this. The biggest challenge that you have with our game is trying to portray scale in space. Because in everyone's head, when you're going across the surface of a space station, they're instantly going to go to the Death Star. And they're going to fly past all this greeble sort of stuff. In reality, the Death Star would be gone in a couple of seconds. That's the flight model that you're dealing with. So trying to balance those expectations is tough.

Jake Ganey · Assistant Art Director, Squadron 42

When new people come to join the team, that's always one of the biggest challenges: getting people to understand that scale, work at that scale, and understand where to keep the detail. You get someone who's used to making FPS environments and making the corridors and things, and then you go, okay, now we've got to make a solar system effectively. And they're trying to break it down in the same way that you would do a corridor. And it's about focusing the art in the right places. And then it becomes more about how do you craft the experience. And again, you're asking about why video games? And it's because of the experience. Sometimes you're not just directing or creating artwork, you're directing and creating an experience for the player, right?