Women
Artists at Presto Studios

By Darcy
Danielson and Jenny Guenther

While
at the 2001 E3 in May, JA’s own Darcy and Jenny met up with two of the talented
female artists from Presto Studios who worked on Myst III: Exile: Tracy
Koering, who did modeling and 3D work on the game, and Kelly Standard, a texture
artist. We were able to take a peek into the design of Myst III: Exile from
the perspective of two of the women involved in the project.

Kelly
and Tracy

We were interested in how these accomplished women became
involved in doing computer graphics and game design for a living, a coup many
of those aspiring to jobs in the game industry are certainly envious of. Tracy
reports that she graduated from college and once out on the job market began to
intern. She found that she learned the most from the intern work she did. Later,
she applied to Presto and signed on there.

Kelly has been in the industry
for four years, an old hand certainly in today’s mercurial gaming job market.
With a degree and background in fine arts, she fell into the industry and said
that she was very much taken in and helped along the way. She studied color and
composition and finds that she uses what she learned every day.

Tracy told
JA that she loved the original Myst, and she found that for the most part
the artists at Presto liked Myst better than Riven. She explained
that one of the interesting aspects to the creation of another Myst title
by the Presto team was that the designers tried to take the parts of the earlier
titles in the series that people loved and bring these aspects of the franchise
in to the new title, in a new way. This gives the game not only a fresh look,
but a comfortable feeling of familiarity at the same time.

Edanna, the
“life age” as the Presto staff working on it called it during production,
featured the clever and realistic natural textures of artist Kelly, who worked
as part of the Edanna team under concept designer Ron Lemen. The age itself is
designed to be a world as island, contained in a 400-foot-tall, 160-foot-wide
garden, with ever-deepening paths, which Kelly was also involved in producing.
Kelly tells us that it was thrilling to be able to work on the organic structure
of Edanna, and she enjoyed the challenge of making everything in that age look
alive.

During production, Kelly encountered a problem unique to Edanna,
that of scale. Textures previously used would not work because of the sheer magnificent
size of the organic “structures” in the age. Because of this, a texture
that looked good up close would not have the right feel to it at a distance of
50 feet. To rectify ths problem, Kelly together with Ron began to gather and create
new textures at a prodigious rate, using books and trips to local public gardens
to get the correct impression of the natural textures. Kelly brought in and scanned
at high resolution what was found, then painted on them using Photoshop.

Together
with texture artist James Rochelle, Kelly developed a technique for the texture
of the floor inside the buildings at J’Nanin, so that the texture would precisely
follow the shape of the room, adding the touches that give this interior area
the feeling for the player that he has stumbled into a lived-in yet old room,
with dust near the cracks and scuff marks in heavy traffic areas. These delicate
touches have given Myst III: Exile the immersive sensation that players
have been looking forward to.

Kelly says, “Trying to use computer graphics
to made believable plant life has been a huge challenge, but one I grew fond of
instantly. I’m not much of a botanist, or even a gardener for that matter, but
I feel at home in this age. I try to push things to give them believable variety–I
want everything to feel alive.”

We queried both regarding their personal
interests and favorites as far as gaming goes and found out that Kelly is not
much of a gamer but does enjoy playing a good game of Spyro. Tracy, on
the other hand, is more involved in gaming from a player’s point of view, in addition
to design. She admits that her all-time favorite is Resident Evil 3, and
she finds regular Mario Kart tournaments with her friends a lot of fun.
She played Myst when it came out and told us of playing the game straight
though one New Year’s Eve, with only a short break to ring in the new year, then
back to the immersion in Myst. Tracy said that she found she was regarded
with awe by other gamers when word got out that she had signed on to work on the
third Myst game.

Each age in Exile was designed using its
own set of artists, and so neither Kelly or Tracy had seen the entirety of Myst
III upon its completion. As both had worked only in specific areas of the
game, both said it was nice for them to be able to explore the other ages of the
finished product and play them simply as another gamer experiencing the ages for
the first time.

Tracy found that in addition to being on the front lines
of a project with a very high profile such as Exile, she was, as a Presto
staffer when Exile went gold, in the enviable position of being able to
play Myst III with a friend to beta-test it, thereby becoming one of the
very first people of the planet to get a taste of the new ages of Myst in
their entirety (which certainly had to have elevated her status among her gamer
friends, we suspect).

The conversation then turned to general Myst talk.
Susan Weyer, Public Relations Manager for Presto Studios, told us that the Exile
trailer was showing in UA movie theaters nationwide, in what must be a first in
adventure game marketing.

And as a point of pride to the people that had
put their all into this latest incarnation of Myst, Susan, Tracy, and Kelly
told us that on receiving and playing the final product, the feedback they received
from Cyan (original developers of Myst and Riven) was very positive–Cyan
said they felt at home in the Myst worlds that Presto had created, which
was the highest of compliments to the Presto team.

We found Kelly and Tracy
to be extremely lively and fun, and their exuberance and style is certainly evident
in the beautiful worlds they helped create.