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Realtime Roots
Realtime Roots episodes
- 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 Hill
Studio: https://www.bonsai-collective.com/
X: https://x.com/Benni_Hill
About Peter Bottomley
Studio: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley1 hr 7 min - 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&D
Ian 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 to what Ian is saying about media view the current landscape and how potential advances in these industries could be supported by real-time tools and technology.
About Ian Forrester
Studio: https://cubicgarden.com/
X: x.com/cubicgarden
About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley1 hr 4 min - 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 RIDGE, a 10-minute long sports-slash-war drama created in Unreal Engine using cutting-edge virtual production techniques.
About Martin Bell
Studio: http://www.yescommissioner.com/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/yescommissioner
About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley59 min - 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 Dulull
Website: https://hazimation.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hazfilm/
About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley1 hr 5 min - 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 Guardians of the Galaxy: Black vortex Series.
Mo's extensive realtime experience has also been on other titles such as Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, Mortal Kombat 11, Skylanders, Disney’s’ Infinity 3, Ultimate Spiderman series, Ratchet & Clank, Lego Star Wars, Game of Thrones, Gears of War, Lord of The Rings, Borderlands 3, Disney’s Doorables and Marvel’s Heroes United animated films.
About Mo Davoudian
Studio: https://www.brainzoostudios.com/
About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley1 hr 4 min - 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 Room
The 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's gone from a handful of developers releasing walking sims, to a 120 person team working on 2 unannounced AAA projects.
About Dan Pinchbeck
Studio: www.thechineseroom.co.uk
X: https://x.com/danpinchbeck
About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley1 hr 2 min - 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 pipelines
Lina 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. She was also the tech lead for MetaHuman Creator and was also involved in many GDC special events which we chat about in this episode.
About Lina Halper
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linasong/
X: https://x.com/nikolobin
About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley59 min - 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 projects
Years 5-7 - Creating a strategy
Years 8-10 - Preparing for investment and long term projects
About Tim Repa-Davies
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/dontfeartherepa
X: https://x.com/dontfeartherepa
About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley
For more updates, you can subscribe to the Realtime Roots newsletter here.1 hr 22 min - 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 overmanaging and letting the developers guide their work fosters the strongest collaborations and then later in the discussion, we talk about the tools Haz uses on a daily basis.
About Haz Dulull
Website: https://hazimation.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hazfilm/
About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley1 hr 14 min - 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 & Magic
His 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.
Later in the discussion, we chat about lighting principles and the mentoring he does both as a senior and teacher.
About Adam O'donnell
Website: https://www.artstation.com/adamocg
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-o-donnell
About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley59 min
About Realtime Roots
From the publisher's feed
I'm fascinated by how teams do what they do in the real time space.
Whether it be small independent video game teams going it alone or large animation houses hand crafting every frame, each…
one of these creators has an interesting story to tell and a different approach to production through their tools and processes.
Realtime Roots is an excuse to pick their brains and tease out best practices so that we can all use them in our own work to become better creators. Whichever real time medium you might be in I hope you find something you can take away and use in your own creative endeavours.
Realtime Roots is an excuse to pick their brains and tease out best practices so that we can all use them in our own work to become better creators. Whichever real time medium you might be in I hope you find something you can take away and use in your own creative endeavours.