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Realtime Roots

Peter Bottomley

27 episodes

9 months ago

Benni Hill is the Creative Director at Bonsai Collective developing Luna Abyss.Benni and I had similar trajectories into the games industry, founding our first studio together over 12 years ago (as of recording in 2024) so this discussion focuses on early trials and tribulations of making a game over 4 years without income, how Benni thinks about Creative Direction, and building a new team in Bonsai Collective.About Benni HillStudio: https://www.bonsai-collective.com/X: https://x.com/Benni_Hi...

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All content for Realtime Roots is the property of Peter Bottomley and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

Benni Hill is the Creative Director at Bonsai Collective developing Luna Abyss.Benni and I had similar trajectories into the games industry, founding our first studio together over 12 years ago (as of recording in 2024) so this discussion focuses on early trials and tribulations of making a game over 4 years without income, how Benni thinks about Creative Direction, and building a new team in Bonsai Collective.About Benni HillStudio: https://www.bonsai-collective.com/X: https://x.com/Benni_Hi...

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Episodes (20/27)

Realtime Roots

Benni Hill - Creative Director at Bonsai Games on bootstrapping, building teams and creative direction

Benni Hill is the Creative Director at Bonsai Collective developing Luna Abyss.Benni and I had similar trajectories into the games industry, founding our first studio together over 12 years ago (as of recording in 2024) so this discussion focuses on early trials and tribulations of making a game over 4 years without income, how Benni thinks about Creative Direction, and building a new team in Bonsai Collective.About Benni HillStudio: https://www.bonsai-collective.com/X: https://x.com/Benni_Hi...

1 year ago

1 hour 6 minutes

Realtime Roots

Ian Forrester | Senior Firestarter at BBC R&D on creating tools for real-time industries to customise experiences to the audience

Ian Forrester is the Senior Firestarter at BBC R&DIan specialises in open innovation and identifying new disruptive opportunities through open engagement and collaborations with start-ups, universities and early adopters.In this episode we talk about the R&D happening outside of the real-time industries on how they're approaching linear content. My conversations with Ian are always facinating, and although we go deep into subject areas, I'd open by making an ask of you. Try to listen ...

2 years ago

1 hour 3 minutes

Realtime Roots

Martin Bell | Writer / Director on his roots as a blockbuster film visualisation supervisor to creating solo animated films in real-time

Originally from a Yorkshire mining community, Martin moved to London and became an animator over 15 years ago. Now a film visualisation supervisor, he has helped create huge action sequences for blockbuster franchises such as Jurassic World, Marvel, Fast & Furious, James Bond, and the DC Universe. His credits also include THE LITTLE MERMAID, ALADDIN, 1917, and THE WHEEL OF TIME. He has recently completed production on his fifth - and most ambitious - solo CGI animated film, PRAZINBURK RID...

2 years ago

58 minutes

Realtime Roots

Realtime Recap 2022 w/ Hasraf 'HaZ' Dulull

In today's episode, we review the shifts realtime industries experienced in 2023. We talk about how processes changed across the year, the exciting new opportunities along with technology adoptions we've taken on throughout the year. About Haz DulullWebsite: https://hazimation.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hazfilm/About Peter BottomleyWebsite: www.whitepapergames.comX: x.com/pete_bottomley

2 years ago

1 hour 4 minutes

Realtime Roots

Mo Davoudian | CEO & Creative Director of Brain Zoo Studios on his roots in storytelling and creating new experiences using the latest technology

Today's guest is Mo Davoudian, CEO & Creative Director of Brain Zoo Studios. Mo Davoudian is an Emmy Award-winning Executive Creative Director and CEO of Los Angeles-based Brain Zoo Studios, where he has overseen projects with partners such as Warner Bros., Disney, Marvel, Activision, Electronic Arts, Mattel, Hasbro, Microsoft, Lego, Sony and more. He’s been producing real-time animated productions for over 20 years and recently created Marvel’s first real-time animated production on...

2 years ago

1 hour 3 minutes

Realtime Roots

Dan Pinchbeck | Creative Director of The Chinese Room on his roots in exploring the incredible and unique way you can tell stories and create worlds in games

Today's guest is Dan Pinchbeck, a founder and Creative Director of The Chinese RoomThe studio started it's journey publishing survival horror mods before releasing Dear Esther in 2012 which published to critical acclaim.Since then, The Chinese Room have released Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture and Little Orpheus. In this discussion we talk about the creative process of working in video games alongside discussing the role of a creative director in a team that...

2 years ago

1 hour 1 minute

Realtime Roots

Lina Halper | Principle Animation Engineer at NVIDIA on her roots in developing animation tools that have impacted some of the largest teams in the industry

Lina is a principle animation engineer at NVIDIA working on Omniverse, a real-time simulation and collaboration platform for 3D production pipelinesLina has over 20 years of experience from working on titles such as “Battlefield”, “Gears of War”, “Paragon”, and “Fortnite.” During her 12 years at Epic Games, she focused on motion and animations of characters. She led the Unreal Engine Animation System & Tools effort, developed the Facial Animation System (Pose Blending) and the ControlRig....

3 years ago

58 minutes

Realtime Roots

Tim Repa-Davies | Group General Council at SUMO Digital on his roots in law and legal areas to consider on a studio's journey

Tim Repa-Davies is the General Counsel & CoSec at Sumo Digital Ltd which is part of the SumoGroup Ltd.He has an article series online called 'Contract Killers' which is definitely worth reading through. In today's talk, we break down a studio's journey into 3 sections: Years 1-4 - Shipping first projectsYears 5-7 - Creating a strategyYears 8-10 - Preparing for investment and long term projectsAbout Tim Repa-DaviesLinktree: https://linktr.ee/dontfeartherepaX: https://x.com/dontfeartherepaA...

3 years ago

1 hour 21 minutes

Realtime Roots

Hasraf 'HaZ' Dulull | Founder & Direction at Hazimation on his roots in real time cinematics and interactive experiences through the route of Hollywood scale productions

HaZ is the co-founder of production company HaZimation producing animated feature films, series and video games based on their propriety pipeline utilising Unreal Engine. Currently the company is in post-production of RIFT (animated feature film) as well as several video games and metaverse projects. In today's episode, we discuss the use of Unreal Engine as both a Pre-production & Post Production tool, creative team dynamics when working across a range of industries, how not overma...

3 years ago

1 hour 13 minutes

Realtime Roots

Adam O'donnell | Senior Lighting Technical Director at Industrial Light & Magic on his roots in lighting and look dev at Industrial Light & Magic

Adam is a senior lighting technical director & Lighting Lead at Industrial Light & MagicHis work includes shot lighting and look dev across projects such as Transformers, Star Wars, Jurassic Park & Aladdin.Throughout our discussion we chat about how Adam thinks about real-time technology from a film, visual effects and lighting perspective.We talk about the tools and software he uses on a daily basis and also how he approached his career in becoming a lighting technical director. ...

3 years ago

58 minutes

Realtime Roots

Steve Lee | Level Designer [Irrational Games, Arkane Studios, Half Mermaid] on his Roots in approaching level design through a holistic lens

Steve is a level and game designer most noticeably known for his work on Dishonored 2, Bioshock Infinite, Alba & more recently Tactical Breach Wizards. Steve has spent most the last 15 years in the games industry as a level designer and has spoken about his work in various places including his 2017 GDC talk titled "An Approach to Holistic Level Design" which I'd highly recommend digging into.Steve also has a YouTube channel where he teaches level and game design principles that he be...

3 years ago

37 minutes

Realtime Roots

Jamie Smith | Principal Game Designer at People Can Fly on working on AAA games whilst fostering a collaborative team culture

Jamie Smith is a Principal Game Designer at Sumo Digital with over 12 years of games industry experience.His experience has led him to work on Driver: San Francisco, The Crew, Tom Clancy’s The Division, FIFA, Hood Outlaws and more recetnly Call of Duty: Vanguard as a Campaign Systems DesignerJamie has judged multiple BAFTA games awards along with having experience as a Senior Lecturer in Games Design at Teeside and through all this experience, Jamie articulates his thoughts about Game Design ...

3 years ago

1 hour 5 minutes

Realtime Roots

Des Gayle | Studio Executive Production at Radical Forge on his roots in founding an omni-channel development studio with a focus on story, quality and accessibility

Des is the founder and CEO of Altered Gene, a remote games studio currently working on two unannounced titles for PC. Des has over 24 years experience starting in the games industry 1998 and has since won 2 Develop Awards and a BAFTA award. Des is also the GamesAid vice-chair, a board member UKIE and a founding member of POC in Play.We discuss omni-channel games and experiences and what current shifts the games industry is making. We tackle everything from process in storytelling down to fina...

3 years ago

1 hour 4 minutes

Realtime Roots

Dan Da Rocha | Co-founder & Studio Head at Jaw Drop Games on his roots in starting companies, shipping critically acclaimed titles and being acquired

Today I'm speaking to Dan Da Rocha, a game creator who made QUBE, recently re-envisioned for its 10 year anniversary release.Dan has worked in the industry for over 12 years and has been named on the Forbes under 30 in 2019 as well as being an avid industry speaker whilst growing a strong network of collaborators. Dan currently runs Jaw Drop Games and has 2 projects being developed; Deathground, a dinosaur survival-horror game, and Gun Jam, a rhythm FPS game. Jaw Drop has over 40 team members...

3 years ago

50 minutes

Realtime Roots

Hannah Watts | Principle Environment Artist at Crop Circle Games on her roots in senior mentorship & the various forms her work and tools take depending on the realtime mediums

Hannah's work has ranged from AAA production at Ubisoft reflections to smaller, independent titles at Coatsink with many side projects and team collaborations along the journey. In this discussion, we talk about her approach to seniority and how Hannah's developed her approach to feedback over the years. We dive into what she looks for in studios and elements of company culture she believes all teams should have.Throughout her time in industry she's transitioned across multiple 3D roles and c...

3 years ago

53 minutes

Realtime Roots

Peter Harries | Senior Game Designer on his roots transitioning between independent and AAA game productions and his role as a senior designer

Today I speak to Peter Harries, a senior Game Designer on Wardogs at Bulkhead.Peter is credited on 8 game titles across his 10 career in the games industry. Peter's roles have seen him starting in a AAA game development environment before transitioning to smaller, independent games and then back up to AAA projects before coming to Bulkhead who are a 100 person independent developer in the UK. We discuss the role of a senior designer as Peter reflects on skills he's developed over the years an...

3 years ago

58 minutes

Realtime Roots

Jared Thompson | North West Cyber Resilience Centre on thinking about keeping your studios secure in a digital environment

We're doing something slightly different today and chatting about real-time tools.Digital security is an important topic that I wanted to dig into for my own knowledge which I also hope benefits a lot of other creative studios who maybe don't have it on their list of priorities due to pending milestones and deadlines.We tried to keep the information concise and succinct to give you as much information as we could, but please also consider listening in chunks. You don't have to do everything a...

3 years ago

1 hour 5 minutes

Realtime Roots

Jon McKellan | Founder of No Code on his roots in growing and sustaining an award winning company working on new IP

This week I spoke to Jon McKellan - the founder, writer & director at No Code. No Code are best known for Observation & Stories Untold and Jon's background among other projects was the UI / VHS / DLC guy on Alien Isolation.He's a BAFTA award winning developer & No Code have been awarded one of the best places to work awards twice over among many others. We discuss No Code's trajectory from mobile games startup into the weirder, more narrative driven content they're now known for. ...

3 years ago

1 hour 3 minutes

Realtime Roots

Ryan Garry | Founder of Unlimited Motion on his roots in virtual production

Today I'm chatting to Ryan Garry, the founder of Unlimited Motion. Ryan works on a wide range of projects including performance capture, virtual production, 3D scanning & visual effects. Recently his work has been featured on the BBC show Strictley Come Dancing where he presented virtual dancers in real-time to dance alongside a real performance, live on national television with millions of viewers. We also explore what new capture techniques and approaching to creating interactive experi...

3 years ago

50 minutes

Realtime Roots

Barry Meade | Co-founder & Director at Fireproof Games on his roots in putting players first

Barry Meade is a Co-founder & Director at Fireproof Games. In an industry where we can sometimes fall into the trap of believing the more followers and likes you get are the key to your projects success, Barry simplifies it down to key perspective: Great games are made my great teams. That's it.From starting as an art outsourcing company for the first 4 years and almost going out of business in the first year, Barry alongside the rest of his founding team have built Fireproof games into a...

3 years ago

1 hour 3 minutes