WHO WORKS HERE

People Staff Interview

• Childhood in a home with an atelier of my parents

  I grew up in a family where my parents are both involved in art, my grandmother on my father's side was a seamstress, and my grandfather on my mother's side was a car designer. In our house there was an atelier of my parents where there was paint for drawing, and there was a workshop of my grandmother with a sewing machine. Probably because of that environment I grew up in, without my parents especially suggesting for me to get into art, drawing was something that was built into my daily life. Of course in elementary school I played video games like any other kid, but my father frowned on kids getting into games, so there was a rule in my house to only play 1 hour a day. Though of course secretly I broke that rule.

  In Jr. high school I joined the track team rather than the art club, but regardless of my athletic activities I had continued to draw. During this time was when I really got into drawing realistic robots and mecha as real as possible with pencils. It was really influenced by video games. I started to think that I want to go down a career path of art in the future, and by the time I entered high school I intended to get into an art university.

• Meeting Polyphony during my busy University days

  In the University my major was Japanese art. I was into drawing the beauties of nature, such as plants, animals, and scenery. On the other hand I took classes relating to movies, participated in art projects in different localities, and I had not limited myself to Japanese art but was interested in various forms of expression and mediums.
  While keeping busy with my school life like this, during my second year in the University, I had an opportunity to talk to an older student in the University who was working part time in Polyphony Digital (PDI). While I had taken Japanese art as my major, I thought it might be interesting to pursue expressions that are unique to video games. And with the PlayStation® that provided beautiful image quality, I thought I would be able to fully utilize my knowledge and experience. So I went and knocked on their doors, and succeeded in getting a part time job there. Because I liked to draw machines, I requested for a position in the car modeling team. Thinking back on the fact that my grandfather was a car designer in Nissan, I think there was some connection there.

• Experience during my part time days led to the Livery Editor

  When I was hired part time, PDI had just released Gran Turismo 6 and was just starting to move on to the development of the next title. I was not experienced with computer graphics, but I started with modeling of wheels and gradually started to get used to creating computer graphics. At that point I was made responsible for the modeling of a pickup truck called the Ford Raptor. But this car took a long time to actually be included in game (lol). When I first started working part time, I had been told to help participate in debug work (work involving finding issues in the game and resolving them), and because I had extra time on my hands I got involved in it very actively. I would find bugs and report them to the engineers, sometimes propose a solution for them; this gave me a great opportunity to communicate with engineers more than other artists, and I was able to understand more on the overall specifications of the game. Thereafter when the artist who was responsible for the Livery Editor in Gran Turismo Sport left the company, they chose me to take on his role as someone that has experience in working with engineers.

• Bridging together Artists and Engineers

  The livery editor has an important role in Gran Turismo 7. Gran Turismo 7 is a game where you can not only enjoy pure racing, but enjoy car life in a broader respect, so GT's livery editor that allows more freedom of using decals as compared to other games is a powerful tool where users can express their creativity. My job is to organize and prepare the environment in which users can enjoy being creative more easily and freely. Not just preparing a bunch of decals, but also to actually try drawing and seeing if there are any issues with the controllability of the layers, whether its user friendly to use and so on. And if there are any issues or points of improvement I give the feedback to the engineers to try improve the feature further. What I do might actually go beyond the range of a typical CG artist, but I hope to further my understanding of the system even more, and become the bridge between artists and engineers.

• Characteristic of PDI and the employees that are desired

  

  In addition to CG artists like myself, there are a large variety of staff in the company, such as engineers that work on building the system, groups responsible for the video images, audio, negotiating with manufacturers and working with PR, and so on. As these people cross their boundaries and share and exchange information on a daily basis, new ideas are born, and that is where things that will form the new 'Gran Turismo' starts to take shape.

  It's the same when we're off work. I'm into bouldering right now, and I go to a local facility maybe once or twice a week, but the other PDI colleagues that comes with me are all from very different departments. PDI has many other gatherings like this, and people naturally come together for them.

  I think if it's someone that thinks this environment 'looks fun' they are probably suited for PDI.

• CG Artist Job Description