PK 033: Bioware Artist Tyler Lee on Dragon Age and Determination

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Some of the work Tyler Lee created for Dragon Age Inquisition

“Art is all about putting in the time.”

~ Tyler Lee

Tyler Lee is one of a growing number of artists who’ve made the transition from being a graphic designer to working as UI (User Interface) designers. In this podcast, he explains how he went from growing up in a small village in Canada to working on Dragon Age Inquisition – one of the world’s biggest roleplaying games.

Growing up, Tyler always wanted to work in the games industry. He took every art course he could to perfect his skills, but found the opportunities for an artist growing up in a small town weren’t always there.

From Graphic Design to Dragon Age

He learned Photoshop and went into graphic design before moving to Shanghai and working with Pencil Kings founder, Mitch Bowler, as part of his video games design team.

Then, after a brief spell of freelancing, he moved back to Canada where the opportunity with Bioware came up. Although he didn’t have a huge list of qualifications, Tyler spotted a gap in the market, and used his existing skills (and plenty of hard graft) to get a foot in the door.

He was the guy who did the jobs no-one else wanted to do, such as designing intricate maps and creating the thousands of icons you see in most video games. His hard work paid off, and he’s now been a senior designer at Bioware for the past two years.

Listen to this week’s show and learn:

  • How to find your niche and own it
  • How important UI design is to a game
  • All about the design process involved
  • Some great advice for getting into the games industry

People on this Episode:

Mitch
Tyler

Mentioned in the episode:

Bioware Website
Tyler on Twitter

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Thanks for listening to our show! We’ll be back next Wednesday morning 8AM EST.

Cheers,

Mitch

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