Let there be light! Interview with effects artist Valentine Kozin

Author: Steve Flores - Director, Dragon Divide Date: 11/21/2010 "Valentine is the second longest running developer on the project and it is safe to say that without his help, Alpha Squad would have turned out significantly different."

Towards the middle stage of the project, I had established a rudimentary game engine and began searching for an established effects artist that could do justice to the incredible artists brought on the project. Valentine was not only able to do this, but also greatly enhance the visual presentation of the project and gave us the extra polish to stand out among over a thousand games on the Indie channel.

Unfortunately not long after bringing Valentine on board, I had suffered a series of set backs on the project with contractors not able to fulfill their obligations. As a result I made an agreement with Valentine which expanded his responsibilities on the project beyond just his effects work.

Steve: As an indie developer yourself who was already in the middle of developing an engine for your own game, what made you decide to take on this project?

Because my programming is very much self-taught, one of the things that motivated me was that it would be a learning opportunity and it has been great in terms of seeing how other people develop and structure their projects. Getting to work with other peoples coding habits, both good and bad, has been an invaluable lesson. And of course, I think few people would pass up on a chance to work on a commercial game project - I didn't think my involvement with Alpha Squad would stretch as far as it has, but I'm glad that it did. Having a commercial title under the belt is a great confidence boost.

You have a very powerful and unique blend of skills, being both a traditional artist and a programmer. How were you able to be so successful in both?

I tend to think it's the fault of my parents - on the one hand my mother comes from a very strong background in traditional art, while my father is a scientist, a physicist no less and a very skilled programmer too. I've spent a large part of my life cultivating my artistic talents, there's never really been much of an outlet for my more analytical side, but I think my background with math and studying logic has helped a lot when I started learning programming, so it came very easily. That was a pleasant surprise, I'd spent most of my life rather scared by it.

I think it has to the be the Singularity Cannon. I spent a day drawing the distortion field for the shader and balancing out the look of the particle effects really paid off, but most of all I like the gun's muzzle when it fires. It turned out just the way I wanted it to. Though my second favorite is one of the AI's spit attacks, because you can go around painting the whole level in green snot.