I was hired by DICE to work as an environment artist on Mirror’s Edge which was build on the Unreal3 engine. Soon after I got hired I received the opportunity to work on the company’s internal demo level of the game to be shown at GPMM, e.g., The Edge, which later served as the first level of the game. I initially started as an environment artist, but soon after due to tight deadlines I also focused on level design and Illuminate Labs lighting system to speed up the progress. I ended up working on three of the games ten levels, e.g., The Edge, New Eden and Kate.

Prologue – The Edge

Chapter 5 – New Eden

Chapter 8 – Kate

After my work on Mirror’s Edge was completed I was moved to another one of DICE’s projects: Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I mainly worked on two multiplayer levels (White Pass and Nelson Bay) and partially on a single player level (No One Gets Left Behind). For this I had to learn FrostBite 1.0 the studios in-house engine. My job on this project was mainly to define the main outlines of the levels by sculpting the terrain and laying down the first art pass and make it work in favor of the strategic elements that the game has to offer.

White Pass

Nelson Bay

I started a Half-Life² modification called Off Limits together with Maarten de Meyer who did all of the programming. These were my first steps into full game development. For this I had to pick up on a great deal of skill sets e.g., modeling, texturing, level design, environment art, Half-Life²’s Source engine and it’s HAMMER editor. I designed and created both the menu’s and UI as well as maintain and run the entire project. I designed and created both our vehicular levels “Styx” and “Undersiege” from scratch and created the unique assets needed for them. I redesigned and updated Robert Briscoe‘s “Russia” level to meet with our game play. You can download Off Limits or gather more information from out our ModDB profile.

Undersiege

Russia

Styx

My favorite Quake 2 deathmatch level was “The Frag Pipe”. As there were no proper conversions available at the time I decided to take on the challenge myself and recreate it for Quake 3: Arena and it’s new visual style without changing the original layout and design. You can download the level here.

The Frag Pipe 2002