Peter Söderbaum – Media Artist

My role within the VDG (Visual Development Group) at Crytek means I get to be involved not just in Crysis 2 development, but a whole variety of projects. My tasks range from designing everything from logos to magazine covers, as well as working with art directors to create content and concepts.

Over the past month I’ve been creating some large-scale artwork for our Crysis 2 booth at E3. It was a bit of a headache as working with such large file sizes can became a problem. As the layer count rose, manipulating the image became slower and slower until simple processes such as saving and loading a file would take up to 15 minutes. By isolating the background, foreground and mid-ground then collapsing the layers I was able to keep things manageable but, even so, the files ended up being upwards of 2GB each.

My other main project has been designing in-game mock advertising for Crysis 2. This presented a whole other set of challenges as the sheer volume of images needed to populate the city was staggering. I began by looking at just how much visual material litters our living environments, and noticing that what stood out was the diversity in quality and the clash of styles. So I started making logos for companies that don’t exist, learning about logo design on the fly, and working in different styles to ensure variety.

Using these logos as a base, I set about making billboards and posters. I soon realized that each ad needed its own little back story, even if it was just in my mind, so I began by playing creative director for every product I invented. Once I’d imagined how it could be marketed, then I could go about creating ads for it.

The other aspect of the challenge was the legal side. If we were marketing shoes, for instance, we couldn’t just take a nice picture of some trainers and slap on a logo and some fx because we’re not allowed to use any real-world products. We also couldn’t use stock photography, as the cost involved is so prohibitive. This meant making a convincing-looking ad for every fake product with no photography other than what we could take ourselves and use legally. In the end, it came down to getting creative with what we had and painting the rest.

This is probably the best thing about my job. I get the opportunity to try out so many different disciplines, and have the opportunity to learn from so many talented artists in my department. I believe learning and improving a skill can be one of the most satisfying experiences there is, and I’m lucky I can combine this with my work.