Today’s guest is James Adkins, Senior VFX Artist for Sony Playstation at Santa Monica Studio. James is a brilliant and talented artist who has worked on some amazing games and most recently the critically acclaimed God of War Ragnarok. We take a deep dive into his creative process, exploring how he finds inspiration across different media, and deconstructing what it is like to work on one of the most beloved franchises in gaming history. Also some fun facts about the Draupnir Spear (if you know, you know)!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mazze Whiteley (00:20):
Hello everyone and welcome to our podcast, clear as Mud,
where we talk to game developers andartists from all walks of life about
their personal and professional journeys.
I'm your host Mazze.
As always, our show is presented bymudstack, the only asset management
and collaboration platform custom builtfor game studios and digital artists.
Mudsstack is now free for artists.
So for more information, headon over to mudstack.com.
(00:43):
Today's guest is James Adkins,senior VFX artist for Sony
PlayStation at Santa Monica Studio.
James is a brilliant and talentedartist who has worked on some amazing
games, and most recently, the criticallyacclaimed God of War Ragnarok.
We take a deep dive into his creativeprocess, exploring how he finds
inspiration across different mediaand deconstructing what it's like
(01:04):
to work on one of the most belovedfranchises in gaming history.
We're so happy to have had the chance totalk with James on Clear as Mud and are
excited to share this story with you.
So without any further ado, here's James.
One of the things that I saw James, thatreally stuck out to me was you talked a
little bit about your, um, experience as akid with Tsunami and how that's what drew
(01:27):
you into the world of V F X in some way.
Can you just expand on that a littlebit cuz I found it intriguing.
James Adkins (01:33):
Yeah.
And uh, growing up I would comehome and I'd watch t nami when I'd
get back from school and like I'dwatch, oh man, was it Robo Tech?
It was like Dragon Ball Z.
It was like all of the, like the showsthat the anime and Sail moon and all
the stuff that they would have on there.
And I would just be like,yeah, this stuff looks so cool.
I don't know if it's likewhat got me into wanting to.
Create those sorts of things, but itdefinitely plays a part in it now,
(01:57):
especially today, like me going backand looking for any kind of reference
materials I file through the library ofwhat have I seen before that I can use to
help me get where I need to be visually.
Are
Mazze Whiteley (02:09):
there any inspirations that you've taken,
like almost lifted directly, likeyou mentioned, like Sailor Moon?
I find that so intriguing.
I was a huge fan of Sailor Moon.
Personally.
James Adkins (02:19):
I.
I don't know if there's anythingthat I've directly lifted, but the
Marvel movies like the MCU have a tonof really incredible visual effects
since the games that we tend to makeat Santa Monica are photo real, and
not even just in Santa Monica, but theindustry as a whole, they tend to be
gravitating towards games that can.
(02:40):
Can reach photorealism to some extent.
Those Marvel movies have anincredible amount of VFX to pull from.
And coming from pre-render vfx, it'seasy for me to say, okay, I can maybe
see how they did this in the movie.
Can I possibly do something similarlike that on the video game standpoint?
Mazze Whiteley (03:01):
There's just, there's been so many incredible leaps and bounds
in the V F X industry over our lifetime.
And so another question that I had washow do you stay up to date with that?
It's such a rapidly growing and dynamicfield, so is there any research that
you do outside of tsunami influencesthat helps you keep relevant and
(03:24):
drives your advancement in the field?
James Adkins (03:27):
Yeah, so I.
Particularly enjoy watching moviesand continuing now even still watching
anime and sometimes re watching anime,sometimes TV shows and video games.
I, I still try to ingest as much of it asI can because it's where a lot of the sort
of, it's where a lot of the inspirationcan come from, from other mediums and.
(03:51):
I would find it hard to believe thatan artist would be in this field, and
not even just in video games, but inany sort of creative role and not.
Be ingesting everything thatthey can get their hands on.
Even if they travel and they go tomuseums and they go to art shows, or
they're at a band or other concertand they're watching a band play.
They're watching the lights and how theycreate the atmospheres the band is wanting
(04:13):
and you find it in almost everything.
I try to keep up to date with video games.
I think these last like few weeks I'vebeen playing Zelda in tears of the
Kingdom, and then Diablo came out on.
Tuesday.
So I've been trying to jump into that,but I still haven't beat Jedi survivor.
I'm just like, oh my gosh, my backlogis growing of, it's getting filled with
games that I've just half completed.
(04:34):
But I think staying up to date onthe games that are releasing, it's
very important if you're a director,you wanna see movies that you know
can inspire you towards what youwanna do in your next project.
Yeah,
Mazze Whiteley (04:49):
absolutely.
Is there anything that you'velike grabbed onto recently?
You can get as technical as you wantwith this answer or keep it as vague
as possible, but is there anythingspecifically that you've gravitated
towards lately that you're like, ohwow, this is a really cool tool that
I'm using, or this is a really cooleffect that I'm diving into right now.
(05:09):
Maybe you haven't even employedit yet, but that's getting
you excited to work with.
James Adkins (05:14):
So as far as tools go, all of our stuff at
Santa Monica is proprietary.
So there are some things that I'm like,oh, this would be a cool thing to try
to implement, or this would be a coolthing to see if we can't create our own
version of, but not so much in that realm.
But as far as visuals go, I do haveone that, like I recently, I was
playing games as I normally do.
I was watching videos of people playgames too, and I came across something
(05:37):
from the uh, ship in Ultimate Ninja four.
And I was specifically looking atthe fire that comes off of these
beings that they're just like,it looks like it's part of them.
And I was looking at that andI was like, oh, that's so cool.
I was gonna see if I could try toget that in the game eventually,
but we have to have the timeto work on that sort of thing.
But that's one that I remember seeingthat I was like, I should probably
(05:59):
file that away and see if I can't usethat in some manner of something soon.
I
Mazze Whiteley (06:06):
feel like I have seen what, like I can visualize it
in my head a little bit right now.
Exactly what you're talking about.
Those are the,
James Adkins (06:12):
they're the ones that the UJA people use whenever they have
their, I'm about to get really nerdy.
This is the one that the UJA peoplelike Que and Madara and Hitachi and
all the other O chiha people, they,when they achieve Mangan, part of their
kick, their bloodline sort of trait.
It allows them to, I guess not summonbut like create this skeletal being this
(06:38):
sort of ethereal skeletal being thatcomes up out of the ground and protects
them and then certain forms of it.
It's a huge thing and it'sreally cool is what it is.
That's what it is.
I would see that in the game, theultimate N entity for game, and I'd
be like, okay, I need to see if Ican't try something at some point.
Mazze Whiteley (06:56):
One of the things that really interests me, especially
about vfx, what is a process?
If you have these ideas,do you have sketchbooks?
Do you have, do you do thumbnails?
When you have an idea and you need tofile it in store, is it all just in your
head or do you have a cool doc file?
Yeah, just, um, yeah.
I'm really interested in the conceptualphase for when you're trying to
(07:17):
like, think about VFX and likehow you're going to implement it.
James Adkins (07:22):
So it's totally that.
Like I, I do have asketchbook of ideas of things.
It's usually whenever I have the idea,because it's next to my, next to my
bed, because sometimes it'll be inthe middle of the night and I'll have
this thing and I'm trying to draw it.
And I wake up in themorning and I look at it.
I'm like, what the heck is this?
And then they're like, I try to.
Build off of it.
But yeah, it's totally that.
I'll usually will draw it in thelittle sketchbook, or sometimes
(07:45):
I'll try to hold onto it.
If I'm out somewhere watching amovie, like we were talking about a
little while ago from Spider Burst.
If I'm out and I see something in SpiderBurst, when I went to go watch that movie,
I saw a few things that I was just like,I need to make sure that when I get home
or when I get in my car, I can write in anote or something so that I can remember
to make a version of what I had just seen.
(08:05):
To, to try to make a version ofwhat I just seen because sometimes
it, it doesn't always work out.
But yeah, I definitely keep track.
I try to keep track.
Cause if I don't, I knowI'll forget about it.
Mazze Whiteley (08:16):
Do you have any unique challenges when you're trying to adapt
your skills to your creative process?
Is there something where if you getfrustrated, like you're like, oh, I
have this idea and I'm really tryingto implement it and stuff, is there
a breakdown point that happens there?
James Adkins (08:35):
Yeah, there.
There definitely is.
I'm fortunate enough to work with someincredible people at Santa Monica.
Our Bfx team is incredibly talented andsmart, so if I ever have that sort of
block, like what you're talking about,I, first thing I do is I ask them
because they're incredibly talentedand have created some amazing and
beautiful for our game as far as whatthe process ends up being for that is,
(08:58):
okay, so here's where I wanna get to.
Is there anything that we'vealready made that is similar?
And then from there we try to fillin the missing pieces in order to
get it to where it needs to go.
So it's very much collaborativewhenever there's a block, so to speak.
Mazze Whiteley (09:19):
I love to hear that because one of the things
that I find really intriguing aboutthe game industry is there's so
many diverse perspectives in it.
There's, you have these people whoare really hyper technical or they
have a computer science background andstuff, and then you have these artists
who are working in kind of this otherweird liminal space, but then there's.
(09:39):
This meshing point wherethey all come together.
And so could you go a littlebit more into that process?
Do you literally just knock on eachother's doors and be like, Hey, I
have this, I'm having this issue.
What does that communicationprocess look like?
James Adkins (09:54):
Y.
Yeah, pretty much it is that exactly,except for the knocking on the doors part
because I'm remote, so I haven't been ableto knock on anyone's door for a while.
But yeah, it's pretty much that.
I'll ping one of the artists or I'll pingour Slack channel, just be like, Hey,
so I'm doing this, but's not working,so what do I, does anyone have any
ideas in order to get me here to whereit's like towards where I want to be?
(10:20):
That's literally the process.
Mazze Whiteley (10:22):
I love that.
So going back, was there a point whereyou were like considering different
potential career paths and what kindof drove you to find V F X and be
like, Hey, this is what I can do.
This is, I feel confident that I cando this and I wanna stick with that.
James Adkins (10:42):
So I actually wanted to be an animator for Pixar,
Disney, all that kind of stuff.
I was in college.
To be an animator.
I went to the University ofTexas at Dallas and I was trying
to, and I was building my reeland all that sort of stuff.
And in my last semester there they offereda VFX class, like a pre-render like class
that taught that you learned VFX withHoudini, which is a side effects, uh, of
(11:06):
software developed by side effects and.
It's the counterpart to other softwareslike Maya or Blender, anything like that.
But the the cool thing with Houdiniis that it's procedural and meaning
that if you have a chain of things,if you take one of those links out,
it just continues to work because of.
It doesn't break down because youjust removed one chain, or you don't
(11:28):
have to un hit, undo a bunch andthen rebuild everything from scratch.
It's a pretty intricate andvery sophisticated tool, and I
highly recommend it to everybody.
But what I was trying to do was be ananimator, and then they offered this class
that taught the effects from Houdini.
So that's what made me fall inlove with the FX was because.
(11:49):
While in that class I was able tosee, I was like, oh, BFX uses a lot
of the same things that animationdoes, the 12 principles we have to
understand lighting and rigging andcharacter modeling to a certain degree.
And it encompassed a lot of whatI loved about being an animator,
the creative aspect of it.
And it added the technicalities inthere that I thought were really cool.
(12:12):
And about halfway through thecourse, I was like, I'm making it.
When I come out of this class,my goal is to have a demo reel.
So it's actually really funny cuz myfinal project, to exit the course,
you had to submit one thing, likeone final render and I submitted
two, which was like showing exactlyhow much I really enjoyed the class.
(12:34):
It was like a wall of smoke that wasbased on the Mad Max Fury road storm
that happens in that dust storm.
And then the other onewas just a waterfall, but.
If you know anything about renderingwater, it's not easy and it's not, it's
very time intensive cause you have toget things just right and all that.
But once I was done with that and I,I, I was outta that class, I was like,
(12:57):
yeah, this is VFX is definitely what Iwanna do, which is great because being
an animator, Getting a job as an animatoris probably one of the harder things to
do in the industry, and that's in filmand television, video games, anything,
because it's called 3D animation.
It's literally in the job title ofthe studios, so it's pretty difficult.
(13:20):
Whereas vfx, there's,they're like, come on in.
We need tons of VFX artists.
Have at it, learn it and putit in here, and then we will
make it, we'll make it work.
I, I would like to saythat the door to VFX.
To being a VFX artist was an easier doorto open, but I always was just like,
maybe one day I can transition back toanimation, but it's been VFX ever since.
(13:42):
It's just been incredibly fun andvery challenging, but I feel that
it's worth the challenge and you.
It's been awesome so far.
Mazze Whiteley (13:52):
To me, V F X just feels like such an empowering art form.
You're literally creatingthese momentous occasions.
Like we mentioned Marvela little bit earlier.
Those movies would notbe what they are without.
The killer VFX peoplethat are working on them.
My buddy
James Adkins (14:10):
works at Disney now and I always, whenever we'd hang out, cause
he went to college together and wheneverwe'd hang out and tell people what we
do, he'd be like, oh, I'm an animator.
And I'd be like, oh, I'm a VFX artist.
And of course they know what he does,but they're like, what do you do?
I'm like, okay.
So you know how he's an animator.
I make what he does look cooler.
Gist.
Superman flies.
(14:30):
He doesn't just.
What the end is, it's some dude posingSuperman with one fist out in the
air and the other one clutch like,like he's holding a football and
then there's nothing and that's it.
It's all he does.
But with VFX artists come in there,we add the streak lines and we add the
smoke that's trailing behind him or thewhatever, and we, if he buss through a
cloud, we have to make sure that he buststhrough the cloud and it looks cool.
(14:52):
It's always been my go-to introductionor people's introduction to vfx.
Mazze Whiteley (14:57):
I think that's a really good introduction.
To me when I think about it,it's momentum, it's movement.
It's being dynamic, explosive.
That's when, I don't know VFXartists, to me, they just seem
like they're having so much fun.
It's a lot
James Adkins (15:11):
of what you just said, but honestly, in my opinion, what
a lot of VFX end up being, yes,of course, they're bombastic and
they're spectacle, and they're loud.
But the quintessential sort of thing thatI look for whenever I look at people's
reels, whenever I see somebody play agame or whatever, my thing is that VFX
should be invisible in the project.
(15:32):
You should not tell that a VFX was everimparted into this thing because it
should feel like one cohesive thing.
Yes, it is bombastic, but it's also
Mazze Whiteley (15:43):
invisible.
There's so many potentials in thewhole premise, I guess, of watching.
Anything that's animated or somethingthat has a lot of VFX is like a
suspension of disbelief, right?
You have to suspend your disbeliefand it, if it's obvious that those
things are being rendered right inthe moment of experiencing it, that
(16:04):
takes you out of it right away.
I can imagine.
I feel like exactly what you just said,you want to have the lightest touch
possible even in the most dynamic moment.
Were there any mentors that reallystood out to you when you were, you
said you primarily went to schoolfor animation, so then in your last
course you're like, vfx, is it man?
It's where it's at.
(16:24):
Was there anybody like particularlythat you wanna give a shout out to
you that was just super helpful whenyou were developing your career?
Oh
James Adkins (16:31):
yeah, absolutely.
So one of the cool things aboutworking at my first job, my first
official VFX artist job, I was a jo.
I was a artist at a small VFX house inAustin, Texas called Mighty Coconut.
And one of the artists, one ofthe VFX artists that was there.
His name is Sean Cunninghamand he had worked at Digital
(16:52):
Domain Rhythm and Hughes.
He'd had a stint out in LA ofdoing movies and stuff like that.
I think he worked on, I don't knowif this is his oldest thing, but
he worked on True Lies, the ArnoldSchwarzenegger movie from a long time ago.
And he worked on that.
He worked on the original, I think itwas the original Spider-Man, or the
Spider-Man two, I can't remember which,but he worked on one of those, the, the
(17:14):
Sam Ramey directed Spider-Man movies.
He worked on one of thoseand he taught me an.
Invaluable amount of informationabout Houdini, about visual effects,
about the industry in general, andI still talk to it every so often.
I'll hit him up and they'll justbe like, Hey man, how's it going?
Whatcha working on sortof stuff like that.
(17:34):
We'll chat and swap war stories.
It's just like, He's one of thosepeople who you meet and you're
never gonna get rid of that contact.
No matter how good of a VFX artistI become, no matter or how good I
think I become, I will always, if Ihave a block on anything, I can go to
this guy and he'll be like, do this.
(17:56):
But yeah, he's been great.
Austin Heiser is another great one.
He was the composite VFX artist,so he, not too much on the
simulation side of things in the.
Pre-rendered VFX world, he does a,it's like a Photoshop where it's
the bunch of moving, like with justthe raw source sequences, and he
just takes them and he layers them.
And so when we created simulations forthe project that we did at my coconut,
(18:20):
Like, I would give him like a layerof smoke and my alpha pass and like a
distortion and a noise pass or whatever.
And I would give him thesethree things with different,
with different lights on them.
And he would blend them all togetherfor the shot that we were working
on, learning things from him, justabout the industry in general as well.
And what studios, what's whatstudio life is like in in la.
(18:41):
Cause he worked at Luma.
He has worked at a lotof places as well too.
Those two definitely have been reallygreat, great mentors to have for sure.
And there're there are a tonmore man, like any of my leads
that I've ever worked with.
Chris Chapman most recentlyat another realm, Armando Veda
from when I was at BioWare.
Yeah, Elliot as well toofrom when I was at BioWare.
(19:03):
There's a slew of people and.
As an artist, you have tobe as a new artist too.
Cause I was still fresh at that point.
I was like still trying to just understandwhat world I had gotten myself into.
You have to be willing to acceptcritique and advice from everybody.
Your leads, your peers, especiallyyour directors, your producers.
(19:27):
You have to be willing to takein all of that advice and use
it to the best of your ability.
So that's.
When it comes down to like having amentor, yes, I absolutely did and I had
so many and they are all like they are.
I was so undeserving of their fantasticinformation and just everything
that they have so incredible.
Mazze Whiteley (19:49):
Oh man.
Don't say you're undeserving.
I think clearly your work shows foritself that you were very deserving of
their attention and their mentorship.
James Adkins (19:58):
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Sometimes it's hard to get outof the, get out of and accept
the praise, but I'm working
Mazze Whiteley (20:04):
on that.
We've had a lot of people talk to usabout, specifically junior artist,
about feelings of imposter syndrome.
Can you speak to that at all?
You've worked on so manyiconic, huge projects and stuff.
With that comes.
Uh, pretty realistic dose of who am I?
What am I doing?
(20:25):
Am I good enough?
James Adkins (20:26):
Oh, no, absolutely.
So I've had the very rare opportunity towork on projects and games and franchises
that I've grew up playing and loved.
My first real time V effects in the videogame ministry was working on Star Wars.
The Old Republic SW tour isits acronym name, but that
(20:46):
was at BioWare and I remember.
Playing that game like four yearsbefore I had ever worked at BioWare.
So whenever I saw that they had a openingon the team and I'd be working on that
game, I was like, are you kidding me?
Yeah, I'm gonna try to work in this game.
This is actually pretty bad.
But I had, I had already accepted the joboffer at another studio and like, this
(21:09):
was when I was like transitioning betweendoing free render work and I was trying
to get into games and I already acceptedanother position at another studio.
I got an email from BioWaresaying, Hey, we wanted to talk to
you about coming onto the staff.
And I was like, oh, I've already, I'vealready accepted the job offer in the
studio, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And they emailed meback and they said, we.
(21:34):
We hear you, but whatwould it take to get you?
And then I was kinda justhave to make a choice here.
I went with BioWare with that particularone and that was really incredible and
I learned so much from the people there.
And being on that project of a game,I had spent a lot of hours running
and getting to see how it was madewas really cool and getting to meet
(21:54):
the people who had made it as well.
It was really awe-inspiring.
That is what I always advise if youcan do it, is work on a project that
you know you're gonna love, like.
When I went to work at Net Elm, Iplayed Mortal Combat, like NK nine.
Yeah, it was NK nine allthe way through college.
Like me and my buddies would like,we would stay up, we would talk
all this trash, and then we'd goback and, and go back to work in
(22:17):
the labs and stuff, and then, and.
Yeah, it was really cool to be able tojoin that team and work on MK 11 after
having spent so much time with MortalKommt nine, and it was again, a rare
thing that not a lot of people get to
Mazze Whiteley (22:31):
do.
I'm personally blown away by your career.
I'm super inspired, workedon so many cool things.
We gotta talk about God of war.
I have a few questions.
That I think we can talk about.
The first one I wanted to start with isjust, are there any other departments
that you're really just closely workingtogether with when you're trying
(22:52):
to make something happen in vfx?
This could be anyone.
What are the departments thatyou collaborate with the most?
James Adkins (23:02):
So we collaborate with pretty much every department,
audio, ui, accessibility, tech, art,lighting, design, breakables, animation.
We've got a hand in.
We all work together very closelybecause VFX is in so much of the game.
Global systems and Cinematicsboss fights enemies.
(23:22):
Things like that cuz so much of whatthe game is needs that extra coat of
paint to be as great a game as it is.
I think if we work with anybodymore closely, I think it's probably
designed because especially for bossfights and enemies we're hand in hand.
We're right in there.
We with them.
So that's a big one.
And animation for cinematics aswell, like in lighting I think we
(23:44):
touched on with a whole lot of stuff.
And Breakables and a rendering department.
We touch everything.
Mazze Whiteley (23:50):
Can you talk a little bit about what is that process like?
Is it a lot of back and forth?
We mentioned earlier a lot of backand forth on Slack channels and
things like that, or do you guyshave the really good workflow?
Can you talk a little bit about theprocess of working between departments?
James Adkins (24:11):
Especially for VFX coming in at the end of a pipeline, and this applies
towards most other studios as well.
What'll happen is when VFX comes inor is ready, or when VFX comes in, A
lot of the other stuff is sort done.
Animation is pretty locked in.
The lighting in the area ispretty locked in environment
Areas are locked in as well too.
(24:32):
So when we come in and we have thingsto go or have things to put in there,
we'll have a kickoff meeting thattalks about the area or talks about
the boss fight or the cinematic, andwe'll go over what the VFX requests
are and we'll talk about anything that.
Can potentially be a problem or somethingthat we'll need to work with or something
that, oh, this isn't a VFX thing.
This actually belongsto another department.
(24:54):
But things like that, of that nature,we'll surface in those meetings.
And then from there we'll go in andwe'll start to do our first pass and.
We'll usually sync with, for shotsthat are a little bit more, a little
heavier, we'll usually sync with thecinematic designer or the lighter or
whatever that shot main purpose like.
(25:15):
We'll usually communicate withthat person more so than we would.
We prefer something else with thatshot, but, The anime animation director
has a lot to say in those meetings.
The art director has a lot to say inthose meetings as well, and it really
comes down to here's what we want.
How can we get there?
And if when that happens, I cansneak in some little fun things that
(25:39):
I thought would be cool as well.
Usually I try to add themin an early iteration.
That way if no one likes themor if not, no one likes them.
Or if they don't work for the shot,they'll usually say, oh, what's this?
And they're like, oh, I'd put it inthere cuz I thought it would be cool.
And then people will be like,oh yeah, that totally works.
Or, nah, that's not thedirection that we're wanting.
So you get it outta the wayearly so that you can focus on
(26:01):
what the shot is supposed to be.
Mazze Whiteley (26:04):
So I guess the last question I have for you is just what
was one of the most challenging V F Xparts of the game that you worked on,
and is there anything that you feellike you just really absolutely like.
Home run.
James Adkins (26:19):
So there's actually a few things that were pretty challenging.
One of the things that was reallychallenging for me actually was
the, the combat indicator rings.
So if you played the game, you know thatthere's certain, when enemies attack
with a certain ability, you can, a yellowring will pop up, a default yellow ring
will pop up as they way to tell you thatyou, this attack can be paired or a red
(26:39):
one will pop up that says, You can'tpair this, you can't block this or this.
Or in God war Ragner Rock will havethe double blue ring that pops up
that letting you know to use the,use the shield bash ability on it.
Those are V effects and that was probablyone of the hardest things to just nail
down and get right, because the waythat lighting had worked in our game.
(27:03):
Those rings from the previous game fromthe 2018, God of War had to change because
the lighting was redone and it was allnew and crisp and great, but the rings
were no longer working, so we had togo back to the drawing board on those.
And there were so many different thingsthat people wanted to do with these
rings that we were just like, Have tokeep them as simple as possible, so,
(27:25):
and as cheap as possible too, becausethey're gonna be literally everywhere.
So that was a really hardone to get a nail right.
But we got it.
I feel, and I actually really liked them.
We were also able to incorporateaccessibility into those too, so that way
the colorblind people can pick the colorsthat they would want to have those rings
represented so that they can understandthe game to the best of their ability.
(27:48):
And that worked.
That ended up working out really great.
The Odin boss fight was aparticularly hard thing to work on.
Just because there was somuch going on in that fight.
There's so many different elements.
There's environmental hazardsthat you have to jump off of a
platform in order to get away from.
(28:10):
Like Odin has this Galindo bubbleat some point that he takes off
and flies into the sky with that.
We had a problem with for awhile cuz it wasn't rendering
correctly and then we had to.
Change it up, how itworked, and then it worked.
But then we had to have more stuff with,oh, he's flying in the air, but he has
this base that keeps following him.
So it was a whole lot and getting thatright was something pretty hard to do.
(28:33):
Cause all of those effects are expensive.
All of his effects are expensive.
And we had to get it in a way towhere that it worked on a base ps4,
and that was probably one of theharder things that I did in the game.
As far as anything that I thinkthat we just nailed from a
collaborative standpoint, I think.
That skull and hotty sky tear shot,that shot will forever like ring in
(28:56):
my heart as something that was just asprinkle on top, just cherry chef's kiss.
Just, it's so cool to see and it's like,I'll still go back and watch reaction
trailers of that moment in particularbecause it's just, it's such an.
Awe inspiring moment cuz that wassuch a huge thing that where so many
(29:17):
people were working on like lighting,tech, art, worked on that thing, the
animation for the wolves, the res, andit was, and it was so incredible and.
It's a beautiful moment because it'sa collaborative thing and it was
really just, we nailed that shot andI think it looked it like when we saw
it in the game for the first time, Ithink I cried because it was so cool.
(29:40):
And I think one that hit home with mepersonally, and this is gonna be one of
the smaller effects, was really cool.
So, In the game.
This is a spoiler for peoplewho haven't played it.
Kratos gets a new weapon called thedrop Near Spear, and I got to do the
effects for that spear and that weapon.
It was really fun, but the one that Iwanted to make sure I understood, the
one I wanted to make sure that I justnailed with that was how it gets summoned
(30:04):
because he just like punches down withhis hand and the spear pops outta it.
Outta the ring, right?
So, Whenever I first saw that andthe effect that it was that, that
I wanted to do with it was one thatkind of was a carryover from an
artist who had already worked on it.
I wanted to make it feel like it wasthe Assassins Blade from the original
(30:26):
Assassins CRE game, cuz you remember thatthing You would just hit up and it would
just flick that blade out and retractit back in and it, I would do that while
walking up and down in the game, likewalking up and down the streets for.
The entire time I played.
So after I got that spear and Iknew I was gonna be working on
it, I was like, I think I need totry to get it to feel like that.
So I worked with the animator and workingwith the designer for that as well too,
(30:49):
just to make sure that we understood thatwas the feeling that we wanted to have.
I think that the way that it cameout, I love that thing so much.
It's one of the coolest effects becauseit's so small and it's so minimal.
I'll just sit here and test and justbe like, flick and it's so cool.
It's, yeah, it's, it's fun.
That was, that's one that I'mactually pretty proud of as well too.
Mazze Whiteley (31:10):
I'm so excited to hear that you worked on that.
Honestly, like the drop your spear.
I wish that I had it from the beginningof the game because you get it a
little bit later and when I finally gotit, I was like, I'm just using this.
There's so much versatility and it's so.
I can't remember if you've had a spearin a God of war game before and I feel
(31:31):
like you've had to have had one at some,cuz it's such an iconic Greek weapon.
I wanna say
James Adkins (31:36):
that he had it in one of the P S P games, I wanna say.
Ghost of Sparta.
It's either it's, it was Ghost ofSparta or chains of Olympus, but I
wanna say it was Ghost of Sparta.
I could be wrong, but hegets something like it there.
But I feel for Ragnarok, we didthat thing way more justice.
Not to say that the original onewas bad, but we overhauled the
(31:59):
mess outta that thing and it's.
Drop near Spear and got go rag rock.
It was a great addition to itand I think it was such a cool
weapon to have for credos to
Mazze Whiteley (32:07):
have.
It had a lot of synergy too, with,they were introducing a lot of these
different long range mechanics andstuff, which you'd always had like
a mid-range to long range ish with,with the chains and everything.
But then they throw in atreus with thebow and it just made so much sense.
For that game, for Kratos to just beable to throw that at, I don't know.
(32:29):
It was very satisfying and it had thissynergy with kind of the way that I'd
seen how the combat system had evolved.
That's great.
I'm glad to hear you say that.
Those are all my questions.
I'm really happy that you,uh, were able to take the time
outta your day to do this.
I've had a great time talking to you.
Usually the last thing that we liketo do before we let you go is just
(32:51):
if you wanna plug your handles oranything like that, or any current
projects that you want people to focuson, um, or just shout outs in general.
We always just want to giveyou the opportunity to do that.
James Adkins (33:03):
Yeah, sure.
I'd like to give a shout out to thefine VFX artists at Santa Monica Studio.
They're all working really hard andthey're all incredible and very talented.
You can find me on Twitter andInstagram at James Atkins vfx.
And as far as what projects I'm working onright now, I would tell you to go and pick
(33:23):
up Gabor Ragner Rock on for PlayStation
Mazze Whiteley (33:26):
consoles.
I feel like if you haven'talready, you probably should.
It was a phenomenal game.
I'm sure it was a blast to work on it.
And you guys did it.
You guys did an amazing job.
I have to say.
James Adkins (33:38):
Thank you so much.
That means a lot tohear you say that Mave.
Mazze Whiteley (33:41):
All right, James.
Thank you so much.
That's gonna be our show for today.
All right.
That's gonna wrap up this week's episode.
We want to thank James again forbeing our guest, and we want to
give a huge thank you to Mud Stack.
To find out more about muds Stack,head on over to mud stack.com where
(34:04):
you can follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter,and join our community on Discord.
And of course, we want tothank you for listening.
We'll see you next time on Clear As Mud.
Hello everyone and welcome to our podcast, clear as Mud,
where we talk to game developers andartists from all walks of life about
their personal and professional journeys.
I'm your host Mazze.
As always, our show is presented bymudstack, the only asset management
and collaboration platform custom builtfor game studios and digital artists.
Mudsstack is now free for artists.
So for more information, headon over to mudstack.com.
(00:43):
Today's guest is James Adkins,senior VFX artist for Sony
PlayStation at Santa Monica Studio.
James is a brilliant and talentedartist who has worked on some amazing
games, and most recently, the criticallyacclaimed God of War Ragnarok.
We take a deep dive into his creativeprocess, exploring how he finds
inspiration across different mediaand deconstructing what it's like
(01:04):
to work on one of the most belovedfranchises in gaming history.
We're so happy to have had the chance totalk with James on Clear as Mud and are
excited to share this story with you.
So without any further ado, here's James.
One of the things that I saw James, thatreally stuck out to me was you talked a
little bit about your, um, experience as akid with Tsunami and how that's what drew
(01:27):
you into the world of V F X in some way.
Can you just expand on that a littlebit cuz I found it intriguing.
James Adkins (01:33):
Yeah.
And uh, growing up I would comehome and I'd watch t nami when I'd
get back from school and like I'dwatch, oh man, was it Robo Tech?
It was like Dragon Ball Z.
It was like all of the, like the showsthat the anime and Sail moon and all
the stuff that they would have on there.
And I would just be like,yeah, this stuff looks so cool.
I don't know if it's likewhat got me into wanting to.
Create those sorts of things, but itdefinitely plays a part in it now,
(01:57):
especially today, like me going backand looking for any kind of reference
materials I file through the library ofwhat have I seen before that I can use to
help me get where I need to be visually.
Are
Mazze Whiteley (02:09):
there any inspirations that you've taken,
like almost lifted directly, likeyou mentioned, like Sailor Moon?
I find that so intriguing.
I was a huge fan of Sailor Moon.
Personally.
James Adkins (02:19):
I.
I don't know if there's anythingthat I've directly lifted, but the
Marvel movies like the MCU have a tonof really incredible visual effects
since the games that we tend to makeat Santa Monica are photo real, and
not even just in Santa Monica, but theindustry as a whole, they tend to be
gravitating towards games that can.
(02:40):
Can reach photorealism to some extent.
Those Marvel movies have anincredible amount of VFX to pull from.
And coming from pre-render vfx, it'seasy for me to say, okay, I can maybe
see how they did this in the movie.
Can I possibly do something similarlike that on the video game standpoint?
Mazze Whiteley (03:01):
There's just, there's been so many incredible leaps and bounds
in the V F X industry over our lifetime.
And so another question that I had washow do you stay up to date with that?
It's such a rapidly growing and dynamicfield, so is there any research that
you do outside of tsunami influencesthat helps you keep relevant and
(03:24):
drives your advancement in the field?
James Adkins (03:27):
Yeah, so I.
Particularly enjoy watching moviesand continuing now even still watching
anime and sometimes re watching anime,sometimes TV shows and video games.
I, I still try to ingest as much of it asI can because it's where a lot of the sort
of, it's where a lot of the inspirationcan come from, from other mediums and.
(03:51):
I would find it hard to believe thatan artist would be in this field, and
not even just in video games, but inany sort of creative role and not.
Be ingesting everything thatthey can get their hands on.
Even if they travel and they go tomuseums and they go to art shows, or
they're at a band or other concertand they're watching a band play.
They're watching the lights and how theycreate the atmospheres the band is wanting
(04:13):
and you find it in almost everything.
I try to keep up to date with video games.
I think these last like few weeks I'vebeen playing Zelda in tears of the
Kingdom, and then Diablo came out on.
Tuesday.
So I've been trying to jump into that,but I still haven't beat Jedi survivor.
I'm just like, oh my gosh, my backlogis growing of, it's getting filled with
games that I've just half completed.
(04:34):
But I think staying up to date onthe games that are releasing, it's
very important if you're a director,you wanna see movies that you know
can inspire you towards what youwanna do in your next project.
Yeah,
Mazze Whiteley (04:49):
absolutely.
Is there anything that you'velike grabbed onto recently?
You can get as technical as you wantwith this answer or keep it as vague
as possible, but is there anythingspecifically that you've gravitated
towards lately that you're like, ohwow, this is a really cool tool that
I'm using, or this is a really cooleffect that I'm diving into right now.
(05:09):
Maybe you haven't even employedit yet, but that's getting
you excited to work with.
James Adkins (05:14):
So as far as tools go, all of our stuff at
Santa Monica is proprietary.
So there are some things that I'm like,oh, this would be a cool thing to try
to implement, or this would be a coolthing to see if we can't create our own
version of, but not so much in that realm.
But as far as visuals go, I do haveone that, like I recently, I was
playing games as I normally do.
I was watching videos of people playgames too, and I came across something
(05:37):
from the uh, ship in Ultimate Ninja four.
And I was specifically looking atthe fire that comes off of these
beings that they're just like,it looks like it's part of them.
And I was looking at that andI was like, oh, that's so cool.
I was gonna see if I could try toget that in the game eventually,
but we have to have the timeto work on that sort of thing.
But that's one that I remember seeingthat I was like, I should probably
(05:59):
file that away and see if I can't usethat in some manner of something soon.
I
Mazze Whiteley (06:06):
feel like I have seen what, like I can visualize it
in my head a little bit right now.
Exactly what you're talking about.
Those are the,
James Adkins (06:12):
they're the ones that the UJA people use whenever they have
their, I'm about to get really nerdy.
This is the one that the UJA peoplelike Que and Madara and Hitachi and
all the other O chiha people, they,when they achieve Mangan, part of their
kick, their bloodline sort of trait.
It allows them to, I guess not summonbut like create this skeletal being this
(06:38):
sort of ethereal skeletal being thatcomes up out of the ground and protects
them and then certain forms of it.
It's a huge thing and it'sreally cool is what it is.
That's what it is.
I would see that in the game, theultimate N entity for game, and I'd
be like, okay, I need to see if Ican't try something at some point.
Mazze Whiteley (06:56):
One of the things that really interests me, especially
about vfx, what is a process?
If you have these ideas,do you have sketchbooks?
Do you have, do you do thumbnails?
When you have an idea and you need tofile it in store, is it all just in your
head or do you have a cool doc file?
Yeah, just, um, yeah.
I'm really interested in the conceptualphase for when you're trying to
(07:17):
like, think about VFX and likehow you're going to implement it.
James Adkins (07:22):
So it's totally that.
Like I, I do have asketchbook of ideas of things.
It's usually whenever I have the idea,because it's next to my, next to my
bed, because sometimes it'll be inthe middle of the night and I'll have
this thing and I'm trying to draw it.
And I wake up in themorning and I look at it.
I'm like, what the heck is this?
And then they're like, I try to.
Build off of it.
But yeah, it's totally that.
I'll usually will draw it in thelittle sketchbook, or sometimes
(07:45):
I'll try to hold onto it.
If I'm out somewhere watching amovie, like we were talking about a
little while ago from Spider Burst.
If I'm out and I see something in SpiderBurst, when I went to go watch that movie,
I saw a few things that I was just like,I need to make sure that when I get home
or when I get in my car, I can write in anote or something so that I can remember
to make a version of what I had just seen.
(08:05):
To, to try to make a version ofwhat I just seen because sometimes
it, it doesn't always work out.
But yeah, I definitely keep track.
I try to keep track.
Cause if I don't, I knowI'll forget about it.
Mazze Whiteley (08:16):
Do you have any unique challenges when you're trying to adapt
your skills to your creative process?
Is there something where if you getfrustrated, like you're like, oh, I
have this idea and I'm really tryingto implement it and stuff, is there
a breakdown point that happens there?
James Adkins (08:35):
Yeah, there.
There definitely is.
I'm fortunate enough to work with someincredible people at Santa Monica.
Our Bfx team is incredibly talented andsmart, so if I ever have that sort of
block, like what you're talking about,I, first thing I do is I ask them
because they're incredibly talentedand have created some amazing and
beautiful for our game as far as whatthe process ends up being for that is,
(08:58):
okay, so here's where I wanna get to.
Is there anything that we'vealready made that is similar?
And then from there we try to fillin the missing pieces in order to
get it to where it needs to go.
So it's very much collaborativewhenever there's a block, so to speak.
Mazze Whiteley (09:19):
I love to hear that because one of the things
that I find really intriguing aboutthe game industry is there's so
many diverse perspectives in it.
There's, you have these people whoare really hyper technical or they
have a computer science background andstuff, and then you have these artists
who are working in kind of this otherweird liminal space, but then there's.
(09:39):
This meshing point wherethey all come together.
And so could you go a littlebit more into that process?
Do you literally just knock on eachother's doors and be like, Hey, I
have this, I'm having this issue.
What does that communicationprocess look like?
James Adkins (09:54):
Y.
Yeah, pretty much it is that exactly,except for the knocking on the doors part
because I'm remote, so I haven't been ableto knock on anyone's door for a while.
But yeah, it's pretty much that.
I'll ping one of the artists or I'll pingour Slack channel, just be like, Hey,
so I'm doing this, but's not working,so what do I, does anyone have any
ideas in order to get me here to whereit's like towards where I want to be?
(10:20):
That's literally the process.
Mazze Whiteley (10:22):
I love that.
So going back, was there a point whereyou were like considering different
potential career paths and what kindof drove you to find V F X and be
like, Hey, this is what I can do.
This is, I feel confident that I cando this and I wanna stick with that.
James Adkins (10:42):
So I actually wanted to be an animator for Pixar,
Disney, all that kind of stuff.
I was in college.
To be an animator.
I went to the University ofTexas at Dallas and I was trying
to, and I was building my reeland all that sort of stuff.
And in my last semester there they offereda VFX class, like a pre-render like class
that taught that you learned VFX withHoudini, which is a side effects, uh, of
(11:06):
software developed by side effects and.
It's the counterpart to other softwareslike Maya or Blender, anything like that.
But the the cool thing with Houdiniis that it's procedural and meaning
that if you have a chain of things,if you take one of those links out,
it just continues to work because of.
It doesn't break down because youjust removed one chain, or you don't
(11:28):
have to un hit, undo a bunch andthen rebuild everything from scratch.
It's a pretty intricate andvery sophisticated tool, and I
highly recommend it to everybody.
But what I was trying to do was be ananimator, and then they offered this class
that taught the effects from Houdini.
So that's what made me fall inlove with the FX was because.
(11:49):
While in that class I was able tosee, I was like, oh, BFX uses a lot
of the same things that animationdoes, the 12 principles we have to
understand lighting and rigging andcharacter modeling to a certain degree.
And it encompassed a lot of whatI loved about being an animator,
the creative aspect of it.
And it added the technicalities inthere that I thought were really cool.
(12:12):
And about halfway through thecourse, I was like, I'm making it.
When I come out of this class,my goal is to have a demo reel.
So it's actually really funny cuz myfinal project, to exit the course,
you had to submit one thing, likeone final render and I submitted
two, which was like showing exactlyhow much I really enjoyed the class.
(12:34):
It was like a wall of smoke that wasbased on the Mad Max Fury road storm
that happens in that dust storm.
And then the other onewas just a waterfall, but.
If you know anything about renderingwater, it's not easy and it's not, it's
very time intensive cause you have toget things just right and all that.
But once I was done with that and I,I, I was outta that class, I was like,
(12:57):
yeah, this is VFX is definitely what Iwanna do, which is great because being
an animator, Getting a job as an animatoris probably one of the harder things to
do in the industry, and that's in filmand television, video games, anything,
because it's called 3D animation.
It's literally in the job title ofthe studios, so it's pretty difficult.
(13:20):
Whereas vfx, there's,they're like, come on in.
We need tons of VFX artists.
Have at it, learn it and putit in here, and then we will
make it, we'll make it work.
I, I would like to saythat the door to VFX.
To being a VFX artist was an easier doorto open, but I always was just like,
maybe one day I can transition back toanimation, but it's been VFX ever since.
(13:42):
It's just been incredibly fun andvery challenging, but I feel that
it's worth the challenge and you.
It's been awesome so far.
Mazze Whiteley (13:52):
To me, V F X just feels like such an empowering art form.
You're literally creatingthese momentous occasions.
Like we mentioned Marvela little bit earlier.
Those movies would notbe what they are without.
The killer VFX peoplethat are working on them.
My buddy
James Adkins (14:10):
works at Disney now and I always, whenever we'd hang out, cause
he went to college together and wheneverwe'd hang out and tell people what we
do, he'd be like, oh, I'm an animator.
And I'd be like, oh, I'm a VFX artist.
And of course they know what he does,but they're like, what do you do?
I'm like, okay.
So you know how he's an animator.
I make what he does look cooler.
Gist.
Superman flies.
(14:30):
He doesn't just.
What the end is, it's some dude posingSuperman with one fist out in the
air and the other one clutch like,like he's holding a football and
then there's nothing and that's it.
It's all he does.
But with VFX artists come in there,we add the streak lines and we add the
smoke that's trailing behind him or thewhatever, and we, if he buss through a
cloud, we have to make sure that he buststhrough the cloud and it looks cool.
(14:52):
It's always been my go-to introductionor people's introduction to vfx.
Mazze Whiteley (14:57):
I think that's a really good introduction.
To me when I think about it,it's momentum, it's movement.
It's being dynamic, explosive.
That's when, I don't know VFXartists, to me, they just seem
like they're having so much fun.
It's a lot
James Adkins (15:11):
of what you just said, but honestly, in my opinion, what
a lot of VFX end up being, yes,of course, they're bombastic and
they're spectacle, and they're loud.
But the quintessential sort of thing thatI look for whenever I look at people's
reels, whenever I see somebody play agame or whatever, my thing is that VFX
should be invisible in the project.
(15:32):
You should not tell that a VFX was everimparted into this thing because it
should feel like one cohesive thing.
Yes, it is bombastic, but it's also
Mazze Whiteley (15:43):
invisible.
There's so many potentials in thewhole premise, I guess, of watching.
Anything that's animated or somethingthat has a lot of VFX is like a
suspension of disbelief, right?
You have to suspend your disbeliefand it, if it's obvious that those
things are being rendered right inthe moment of experiencing it, that
(16:04):
takes you out of it right away.
I can imagine.
I feel like exactly what you just said,you want to have the lightest touch
possible even in the most dynamic moment.
Were there any mentors that reallystood out to you when you were, you
said you primarily went to schoolfor animation, so then in your last
course you're like, vfx, is it man?
It's where it's at.
(16:24):
Was there anybody like particularlythat you wanna give a shout out to
you that was just super helpful whenyou were developing your career?
Oh
James Adkins (16:31):
yeah, absolutely.
So one of the cool things aboutworking at my first job, my first
official VFX artist job, I was a jo.
I was a artist at a small VFX house inAustin, Texas called Mighty Coconut.
And one of the artists, one ofthe VFX artists that was there.
His name is Sean Cunninghamand he had worked at Digital
(16:52):
Domain Rhythm and Hughes.
He'd had a stint out in LA ofdoing movies and stuff like that.
I think he worked on, I don't knowif this is his oldest thing, but
he worked on True Lies, the ArnoldSchwarzenegger movie from a long time ago.
And he worked on that.
He worked on the original, I think itwas the original Spider-Man, or the
Spider-Man two, I can't remember which,but he worked on one of those, the, the
(17:14):
Sam Ramey directed Spider-Man movies.
He worked on one of thoseand he taught me an.
Invaluable amount of informationabout Houdini, about visual effects,
about the industry in general, andI still talk to it every so often.
I'll hit him up and they'll justbe like, Hey man, how's it going?
Whatcha working on sortof stuff like that.
(17:34):
We'll chat and swap war stories.
It's just like, He's one of thosepeople who you meet and you're
never gonna get rid of that contact.
No matter how good of a VFX artistI become, no matter or how good I
think I become, I will always, if Ihave a block on anything, I can go to
this guy and he'll be like, do this.
(17:56):
But yeah, he's been great.
Austin Heiser is another great one.
He was the composite VFX artist,so he, not too much on the
simulation side of things in the.
Pre-rendered VFX world, he does a,it's like a Photoshop where it's
the bunch of moving, like with justthe raw source sequences, and he
just takes them and he layers them.
And so when we created simulations forthe project that we did at my coconut,
(18:20):
Like, I would give him like a layerof smoke and my alpha pass and like a
distortion and a noise pass or whatever.
And I would give him thesethree things with different,
with different lights on them.
And he would blend them all togetherfor the shot that we were working
on, learning things from him, justabout the industry in general as well.
And what studios, what's whatstudio life is like in in la.
(18:41):
Cause he worked at Luma.
He has worked at a lotof places as well too.
Those two definitely have been reallygreat, great mentors to have for sure.
And there're there are a tonmore man, like any of my leads
that I've ever worked with.
Chris Chapman most recentlyat another realm, Armando Veda
from when I was at BioWare.
Yeah, Elliot as well toofrom when I was at BioWare.
(19:03):
There's a slew of people and.
As an artist, you have tobe as a new artist too.
Cause I was still fresh at that point.
I was like still trying to just understandwhat world I had gotten myself into.
You have to be willing to acceptcritique and advice from everybody.
Your leads, your peers, especiallyyour directors, your producers.
(19:27):
You have to be willing to takein all of that advice and use
it to the best of your ability.
So that's.
When it comes down to like having amentor, yes, I absolutely did and I had
so many and they are all like they are.
I was so undeserving of their fantasticinformation and just everything
that they have so incredible.
Mazze Whiteley (19:49):
Oh man.
Don't say you're undeserving.
I think clearly your work shows foritself that you were very deserving of
their attention and their mentorship.
James Adkins (19:58):
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Sometimes it's hard to get outof the, get out of and accept
the praise, but I'm working
Mazze Whiteley (20:04):
on that.
We've had a lot of people talk to usabout, specifically junior artist,
about feelings of imposter syndrome.
Can you speak to that at all?
You've worked on so manyiconic, huge projects and stuff.
With that comes.
Uh, pretty realistic dose of who am I?
What am I doing?
(20:25):
Am I good enough?
James Adkins (20:26):
Oh, no, absolutely.
So I've had the very rare opportunity towork on projects and games and franchises
that I've grew up playing and loved.
My first real time V effects in the videogame ministry was working on Star Wars.
The Old Republic SW tour isits acronym name, but that
(20:46):
was at BioWare and I remember.
Playing that game like four yearsbefore I had ever worked at BioWare.
So whenever I saw that they had a openingon the team and I'd be working on that
game, I was like, are you kidding me?
Yeah, I'm gonna try to work in this game.
This is actually pretty bad.
But I had, I had already accepted the joboffer at another studio and like, this
(21:09):
was when I was like transitioning betweendoing free render work and I was trying
to get into games and I already acceptedanother position at another studio.
I got an email from BioWaresaying, Hey, we wanted to talk to
you about coming onto the staff.
And I was like, oh, I've already, I'vealready accepted the job offer in the
studio, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And they emailed meback and they said, we.
(21:34):
We hear you, but whatwould it take to get you?
And then I was kinda justhave to make a choice here.
I went with BioWare with that particularone and that was really incredible and
I learned so much from the people there.
And being on that project of a game,I had spent a lot of hours running
and getting to see how it was madewas really cool and getting to meet
(21:54):
the people who had made it as well.
It was really awe-inspiring.
That is what I always advise if youcan do it, is work on a project that
you know you're gonna love, like.
When I went to work at Net Elm, Iplayed Mortal Combat, like NK nine.
Yeah, it was NK nine allthe way through college.
Like me and my buddies would like,we would stay up, we would talk
all this trash, and then we'd goback and, and go back to work in
(22:17):
the labs and stuff, and then, and.
Yeah, it was really cool to be able tojoin that team and work on MK 11 after
having spent so much time with MortalKommt nine, and it was again, a rare
thing that not a lot of people get to
Mazze Whiteley (22:31):
do.
I'm personally blown away by your career.
I'm super inspired, workedon so many cool things.
We gotta talk about God of war.
I have a few questions.
That I think we can talk about.
The first one I wanted to start with isjust, are there any other departments
that you're really just closely workingtogether with when you're trying
(22:52):
to make something happen in vfx?
This could be anyone.
What are the departments thatyou collaborate with the most?
James Adkins (23:02):
So we collaborate with pretty much every department,
audio, ui, accessibility, tech, art,lighting, design, breakables, animation.
We've got a hand in.
We all work together very closelybecause VFX is in so much of the game.
Global systems and Cinematicsboss fights enemies.
(23:22):
Things like that cuz so much of whatthe game is needs that extra coat of
paint to be as great a game as it is.
I think if we work with anybodymore closely, I think it's probably
designed because especially for bossfights and enemies we're hand in hand.
We're right in there.
We with them.
So that's a big one.
And animation for cinematics aswell, like in lighting I think we
(23:44):
touched on with a whole lot of stuff.
And Breakables and a rendering department.
We touch everything.
Mazze Whiteley (23:50):
Can you talk a little bit about what is that process like?
Is it a lot of back and forth?
We mentioned earlier a lot of backand forth on Slack channels and
things like that, or do you guyshave the really good workflow?
Can you talk a little bit about theprocess of working between departments?
James Adkins (24:11):
Especially for VFX coming in at the end of a pipeline, and this applies
towards most other studios as well.
What'll happen is when VFX comes inor is ready, or when VFX comes in, A
lot of the other stuff is sort done.
Animation is pretty locked in.
The lighting in the area ispretty locked in environment
Areas are locked in as well too.
(24:32):
So when we come in and we have thingsto go or have things to put in there,
we'll have a kickoff meeting thattalks about the area or talks about
the boss fight or the cinematic, andwe'll go over what the VFX requests
are and we'll talk about anything that.
Can potentially be a problem or somethingthat we'll need to work with or something
that, oh, this isn't a VFX thing.
This actually belongsto another department.
(24:54):
But things like that, of that nature,we'll surface in those meetings.
And then from there we'll go in andwe'll start to do our first pass and.
We'll usually sync with, for shotsthat are a little bit more, a little
heavier, we'll usually sync with thecinematic designer or the lighter or
whatever that shot main purpose like.
(25:15):
We'll usually communicate withthat person more so than we would.
We prefer something else with thatshot, but, The anime animation director
has a lot to say in those meetings.
The art director has a lot to say inthose meetings as well, and it really
comes down to here's what we want.
How can we get there?
And if when that happens, I cansneak in some little fun things that
(25:39):
I thought would be cool as well.
Usually I try to add themin an early iteration.
That way if no one likes themor if not, no one likes them.
Or if they don't work for the shot,they'll usually say, oh, what's this?
And they're like, oh, I'd put it inthere cuz I thought it would be cool.
And then people will be like,oh yeah, that totally works.
Or, nah, that's not thedirection that we're wanting.
So you get it outta the wayearly so that you can focus on
(26:01):
what the shot is supposed to be.
Mazze Whiteley (26:04):
So I guess the last question I have for you is just what
was one of the most challenging V F Xparts of the game that you worked on,
and is there anything that you feellike you just really absolutely like.
Home run.
James Adkins (26:19):
So there's actually a few things that were pretty challenging.
One of the things that was reallychallenging for me actually was
the, the combat indicator rings.
So if you played the game, you know thatthere's certain, when enemies attack
with a certain ability, you can, a yellowring will pop up, a default yellow ring
will pop up as they way to tell you thatyou, this attack can be paired or a red
(26:39):
one will pop up that says, You can'tpair this, you can't block this or this.
Or in God war Ragner Rock will havethe double blue ring that pops up
that letting you know to use the,use the shield bash ability on it.
Those are V effects and that was probablyone of the hardest things to just nail
down and get right, because the waythat lighting had worked in our game.
(27:03):
Those rings from the previous game fromthe 2018, God of War had to change because
the lighting was redone and it was allnew and crisp and great, but the rings
were no longer working, so we had togo back to the drawing board on those.
And there were so many different thingsthat people wanted to do with these
rings that we were just like, Have tokeep them as simple as possible, so,
(27:25):
and as cheap as possible too, becausethey're gonna be literally everywhere.
So that was a really hardone to get a nail right.
But we got it.
I feel, and I actually really liked them.
We were also able to incorporateaccessibility into those too, so that way
the colorblind people can pick the colorsthat they would want to have those rings
represented so that they can understandthe game to the best of their ability.
(27:48):
And that worked.
That ended up working out really great.
The Odin boss fight was aparticularly hard thing to work on.
Just because there was somuch going on in that fight.
There's so many different elements.
There's environmental hazardsthat you have to jump off of a
platform in order to get away from.
(28:10):
Like Odin has this Galindo bubbleat some point that he takes off
and flies into the sky with that.
We had a problem with for awhile cuz it wasn't rendering
correctly and then we had to.
Change it up, how itworked, and then it worked.
But then we had to have more stuff with,oh, he's flying in the air, but he has
this base that keeps following him.
So it was a whole lot and getting thatright was something pretty hard to do.
(28:33):
Cause all of those effects are expensive.
All of his effects are expensive.
And we had to get it in a way towhere that it worked on a base ps4,
and that was probably one of theharder things that I did in the game.
As far as anything that I thinkthat we just nailed from a
collaborative standpoint, I think.
That skull and hotty sky tear shot,that shot will forever like ring in
(28:56):
my heart as something that was just asprinkle on top, just cherry chef's kiss.
Just, it's so cool to see and it's like,I'll still go back and watch reaction
trailers of that moment in particularbecause it's just, it's such an.
Awe inspiring moment cuz that wassuch a huge thing that where so many
(29:17):
people were working on like lighting,tech, art, worked on that thing, the
animation for the wolves, the res, andit was, and it was so incredible and.
It's a beautiful moment because it'sa collaborative thing and it was
really just, we nailed that shot andI think it looked it like when we saw
it in the game for the first time, Ithink I cried because it was so cool.
(29:40):
And I think one that hit home with mepersonally, and this is gonna be one of
the smaller effects, was really cool.
So, In the game.
This is a spoiler for peoplewho haven't played it.
Kratos gets a new weapon called thedrop Near Spear, and I got to do the
effects for that spear and that weapon.
It was really fun, but the one that Iwanted to make sure I understood, the
one I wanted to make sure that I justnailed with that was how it gets summoned
(30:04):
because he just like punches down withhis hand and the spear pops outta it.
Outta the ring, right?
So, Whenever I first saw that andthe effect that it was that, that
I wanted to do with it was one thatkind of was a carryover from an
artist who had already worked on it.
I wanted to make it feel like it wasthe Assassins Blade from the original
(30:26):
Assassins CRE game, cuz you remember thatthing You would just hit up and it would
just flick that blade out and retractit back in and it, I would do that while
walking up and down in the game, likewalking up and down the streets for.
The entire time I played.
So after I got that spear and Iknew I was gonna be working on
it, I was like, I think I need totry to get it to feel like that.
So I worked with the animator and workingwith the designer for that as well too,
(30:49):
just to make sure that we understood thatwas the feeling that we wanted to have.
I think that the way that it cameout, I love that thing so much.
It's one of the coolest effects becauseit's so small and it's so minimal.
I'll just sit here and test and justbe like, flick and it's so cool.
It's, yeah, it's, it's fun.
That was, that's one that I'mactually pretty proud of as well too.
Mazze Whiteley (31:10):
I'm so excited to hear that you worked on that.
Honestly, like the drop your spear.
I wish that I had it from the beginningof the game because you get it a
little bit later and when I finally gotit, I was like, I'm just using this.
There's so much versatility and it's so.
I can't remember if you've had a spearin a God of war game before and I feel
(31:31):
like you've had to have had one at some,cuz it's such an iconic Greek weapon.
I wanna say
James Adkins (31:36):
that he had it in one of the P S P games, I wanna say.
Ghost of Sparta.
It's either it's, it was Ghost ofSparta or chains of Olympus, but I
wanna say it was Ghost of Sparta.
I could be wrong, but hegets something like it there.
But I feel for Ragnarok, we didthat thing way more justice.
Not to say that the original onewas bad, but we overhauled the
(31:59):
mess outta that thing and it's.
Drop near Spear and got go rag rock.
It was a great addition to itand I think it was such a cool
weapon to have for credos to
Mazze Whiteley (32:07):
have.
It had a lot of synergy too, with,they were introducing a lot of these
different long range mechanics andstuff, which you'd always had like
a mid-range to long range ish with,with the chains and everything.
But then they throw in atreus with thebow and it just made so much sense.
For that game, for Kratos to just beable to throw that at, I don't know.
(32:29):
It was very satisfying and it had thissynergy with kind of the way that I'd
seen how the combat system had evolved.
That's great.
I'm glad to hear you say that.
Those are all my questions.
I'm really happy that you,uh, were able to take the time
outta your day to do this.
I've had a great time talking to you.
Usually the last thing that we liketo do before we let you go is just
(32:51):
if you wanna plug your handles oranything like that, or any current
projects that you want people to focuson, um, or just shout outs in general.
We always just want to giveyou the opportunity to do that.
James Adkins (33:03):
Yeah, sure.
I'd like to give a shout out to thefine VFX artists at Santa Monica Studio.
They're all working really hard andthey're all incredible and very talented.
You can find me on Twitter andInstagram at James Atkins vfx.
And as far as what projects I'm working onright now, I would tell you to go and pick
(33:23):
up Gabor Ragner Rock on for PlayStation
Mazze Whiteley (33:26):
consoles.
I feel like if you haven'talready, you probably should.
It was a phenomenal game.
I'm sure it was a blast to work on it.
And you guys did it.
You guys did an amazing job.
I have to say.
James Adkins (33:38):
Thank you so much.
That means a lot tohear you say that Mave.
Mazze Whiteley (33:41):
All right, James.
Thank you so much.
That's gonna be our show for today.
All right.
That's gonna wrap up this week's episode.
We want to thank James again forbeing our guest, and we want to
give a huge thank you to Mud Stack.
To find out more about muds Stack,head on over to mud stack.com where
(34:04):
you can follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter,and join our community on Discord.
And of course, we want tothank you for listening.
We'll see you next time on Clear As Mud.
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