Magnus Larbrant – Art Director of Crysis 2

As the art director for Crysis 2, I’m responsible for the visual look of the game. This means everything from the concept to the models and their placement in the levels, plus the lighting and color grading within those levels. It’s my job to make sure that everything follows the style of the game and is up to the high visual standard Crytek is known for. If it’s not good enough, I have to make sure that it gets there one way or another.

One of the biggest problems for my team is the sheer amount of things we have to get done in a short space of time. We have a huge number of buildings to place, aliens to tweak, and plenty to do on effects and characters to make sure they look great on every platform.

At the moment I’m spending all my time in Hell, racing towards our first big deadline. Hell is a room where two groups of level artists, special effects guys and concept guys work round the clock to make sure that every level has all the assets in and that they’re all completely up to spec.

I start the morning with a level review, in which I create a hit list of stuff we need to concentrate on, then I spend the rest of the day doing whatever it takes to get that done. The next day, we start again on the next level. The concept guys help out by doing layout changes, working on the placement of objects or just by making the objects look better. Everyday problems include getting assets finished and often tweaked or reworked so we can place them in the level before you jump to the next mission while keeping the game running...

The most pressing challenge at the moment is working out how we’re going to get everything done on time! I try to keep my team focused on the goal at hand without anyone getting side-tracked. Right now, I’m wrestling with beautifying levels while optimizing them for the best performance. I tend to stay in the office until I’ve worked through everything on my hit list. Sometimes that’s a regular eight-hour day, sometimes I’m here until late.

I’ve been working at Crytek for eight years now, and one of the things I love about my job is the amount of responsibility and creative freedom I have. But the best thing is seeing the way everyone’s hard work comes together as we get closer to our deadline.