The use of external development partners is becoming industry standard for specialist areas including art, audio, motion capture, just to name a few. As games and films have become more complex, the number of specialist teams required to make them has grown in parallel.

“Our role as a visual development studio is to help the realisation of what it is they are trying to create. “Publishers and developers are typically the vision holders for projects so it’s only right that they are front and centre for their products,” he says. Yet Yeomans doesn’t mind this status quo - in fact, he welcomes it. “That’s why you see professionals who specialize in characters, environments, and then later branch out.”Ĭompanies like Atomhawk are often kept in the shadows, offering essential work to support major studios as they piece together games of unimaginable scale, but rarely celebrated or even acknowledged when awards and accolades roll around.

“Often people trying to get into the industry think they need to be skilled with everything, and while that’s valuable, people will generally sit up and take notice if you are great at the one thing they need,” Whitmore explains. It seldom produces its own unique IP, instead choosing to leverage its growing pool of talent to make itself known across the wider industry.Īs for newcomers eyeing the field from afar, Whitmore encourages young artists and designers to “lean into what you’re good at,” and focus on offering something that nobody else can. Guardians of the Galaxy, Minecraft, The Elder Scrolls, Injustice 2, and The Walking Dead are just a few of the games it has helped bring to life in recent years, whether it be through mainline entries or smaller projects and spinoffs. I recently caught up with Atomhawk, a visual development and design company from the mighty Gateshead in the North East of England, that has spent the last decade working on some of the biggest properties around. Support studios and visual effects companies are always working on your favourite games, whether it be through subtle environmental additions or character designs that stand front and centre of the entire experience. Big names like Naughty Dog, Insomniac Games, Arkane Studios, and other major developers will be plastered on marketing materials and declared the primary creator, but there’s often a lot of supplemental work that goes unseen. Few triple-A blockbusters are ever made by a single studio.

Xcom 2 demo and repay character pool