[ welcome ]    [ the game ]    [ requirements ]    [ controls ]    [ press ]   :: the team :: [ about | the team | Mark Taylor ]   Modelling Support   Producing a Team17 game takes a lot of time and effort and one of the guys you'll always find hard at work, is 'airbrush wiz' Mark Taylor. Mark comes from a traditional art background in which drawing skills are heavily relied upon. Indeed the place for any budding artist to start is to begin drawing and keep drawing. In this interview Mark will explain to us how his work has developed after switching to digital art after years of paint spraying craftsmanship...   Team17 know you're an airbrush wiz, could you tell us where and how you got involved in this? I dabbled a bit with an airbrush at art college but didn't take it up seriously until much later when I was trying to speed up my magazine illustration work. I was painting in oils, using a glazing technique, and had to wait ages for individual glazes to dry. Spraying acrylic inks with an airbrush gave me a more realistic finished effect and each layer of colour was dry almost instantly. It was then just a matter of practice. I started doing illustrations for computer magazines such as Sinclair QL World and Which Computer. As I got better at it I started to recieve commissions for paperback book covers, advertising and design work.   How did you find moving from airbrushing to Photoshop? And which do you prefer to do? Before working at Team17 I hadn't used a computer before, so it took me a little while to learn where everything was in Photoshop, but again it was just a matter of practice. I don't have a preference between the airbrush and Photoshop as they both have their good and bad points. They are both just tools, so I pick the one that suits the current project best.   Did any of the techniques from airbrushing work well with computer graphics? Being familiar with different airbrush masking techniques helped me to know what to look for in Photoshop. To then be able to adjust masks, use layers in an image, and be able to manipulate all this and more was like a dream come true.   What would you say has been your best piece of artwork yet? My best piece of artwork yet was a picture of a train that I painted with emulsion paint - on the back of my parents sofa. I was only two years old at the time and I thought that I was helping with the decorating.   When you start a picture, do you see a blank piece of paper or do you already have the picture in your mind? If I'm airbrushing I have to work everything out beforehand, usually starting with a pencil sketch, and the masking sequence has to be thought through as mistakes are time-consuming to put right - and the airbrush doesn't have an 'undo' button! In Photoshop things are more flexible because I can change things on one level, without spoiling things on other levels, at any time.   Artists are mainly the un-sung heros of computer games, can you see this changing in the future with the advances of technology. I don't know about artists becoming the 'heroes' of computer games in the future, but their work will be more 'gobsmacking' due to the advances in graphics technology. Gone are the days of having to produce graphics with very limited palettes, and it is becoming easier to produce very sophisticated images in 3D etc. But the computer is just a tool and good drawing and design skills are essential if you want the best results.     [ about | the team ] Team17 would like to extend their thanks to all who played a big part in Worms2 and the success of the original game, not least the thousands that gave us much valued feedback on our web-site.   Producer [ Martyn Brown ]   Development Craig Jones Paul Kilburn Paul Sharp Espen Lyngaas David Watson   Artists [ Danny Cartwright ] Animation, Graphic Design & Additional Background Art [ Rico Holmes ] Lead Background Artist [ Cris Blyth ] Video Sequence Design, Animation & Production [ Rory Little ] Modelling Support [ Mark Taylor ] Modelling Support   Paul Robinson   Programmers [ Karl Morton ] Game Code Design & Lead Programming [ Colin Surridge ] Menu System & Network GUI Design [ Phil Carlisle ] Network & Additional Programming   Rob Hill Martin Randall   Sound and Music Bjorn Lynne Allister Brimble   Web Design Paul James   Quality Assurance Paul Field Paul Dunstan Kelvin Aston John Eggett Mark Baldwin Grant Towell Andy Aveyard Guy Palmer Emma Aspinall   Original Concept [ Andy Davidson ]     © 1997-2025 Team17 Software Limited   [ contact us ] [ terms & privacy ]     [ top ]