Steed landed his first job in the computer games industry in 1991 at Origin Systems. After doing storyboards for Privateer and all the polygonal models for Strike Commander, he went on to contribute models, textures, animations and/or art direction to Wings of Glory, Bioforge, Wing Commander Academy, Wing Commander III, and Wing Commander IV. At id Software, his work on Quake II, Quake III: Arena and the Quake III: Team Arena elevated Carmack’s code to a new level as he breathed digital life into the good guys and bad guys alike. Today, Steed works at WildTangent where he makes games designed episodically for the internet, featuring strong characters and plenty of action. He hopes to help founder and former Microsoft Direct X Evangelist, Alex St. John and his crew make "3D over the Web" a household occurrence.

His latest book, Modeling A Character in 3DS Max, a tutorial for making a gameworthy character, not only culminates ten years of making art for computer games, it his self-described "slight nudge" to help push every other self-taught artist "over the hump."

A: If you can master playing console or PC games you can master the tools it takes to make computer games. In other words, take the same dedication, perseverance, and passion that you apply to figuring out and beating Zelda or Max Payne and aim it at visual basic, C++, JAVA, HTML, 3DS Max, Maya, Photoshop or an online map editor for games like Quake. You too can be like Mike (or Steed in this case). Most developers in this industry are self-taught but you have occasional freaks with 2, 4 masters or even (gasp) PhDs! Most of the time, however, the importance of having a certificate and the ability to recite frat stories with educated aplomb is reserved for the Suits. I (like many peers) tried college and gave up because it was too easy/boring/frustratingbecauseitwasreallyaboutsomethingotherthaneducation.

A: My book is unique because I do this for a living and wrote the book in between 60-hour work-weeks. It’s practical knowledge. Most of my artist brethren just don’t have the time or the desire to write a book on what they do. Making art for games is taxing enough. Of all the books I have on my shelf I’ve noticed the ones I go through completely are the ones based on tutorials or exercises. I used the same approach with my book. I have difficulty getting into a book that just synopsizes and/or regurgitates the tutorials and manuals that come with 3DS Max. Those reference books are really well done and get better with each version of Max. They’re just intimidating because there’s so much information.

Everything I put into Modeling A Character In 3DS Max was done with people like me in mind. The format, the tabs on the side, the illustrations, the subject matter, the corner flipbook animation…even the cover was done with the artist or budding artist in mind. I want people like me to buy it, people like you to buy it for people like me, etc. Every year when I give a talk at GDC I have someone or someone(s) come to me and say they got a job because of my "Thinking Outside The Box" column on Loonygames.com. I wrote the book for those people and that’s what makes it unique. It isn’t perfect but, hey, it was a learning experience and if I could I’d change a couple things about it. I’ll put what I’ve learned and use the feedback people have given me into the next book (when I can find time to write it!)

A: Okay. Keep in mind this is strictly an artist/designer point of view. The first game I worked on was called Strike Commander. I took an in house, home-grown terrain/building editor created by a programmer named Paul Isaac and made planes, tanks and ships with it. I had a little over 100 triangles to make each one of these Gauraud-shaded, partially-textured objects that made everyone around me go ‘Oooh’ and ‘Ahhh’. It was 1992. I was amazed at their initial response when I made my first F-16! They were like giddy school girls all crowded around my paltry 15" monitor! I kept thinking, "This is crap! What are they so happy about? At least I get to keep my job…" I just wanted more to work with. Then I’d show them something. Why couldn’t I use more triangles, dammit? Why did the stupid program keep crashing? I look back now and it occurs to me that SC was one of the earliest polygonal games with cinematic cutscenes. I did everything on a brand spanking new 486.33 and we were still shipping Ultima VII (and SC) using 8 floppies. The idea to use these new things called CD-ROMs was being considered but the cost of goods was an issue.

I just put together an AMD 1.4ghz machine with a Gforce3, 1 gig of RAM and a 60 gig hard drive that didn’t cost as much as that 486.50 I got right after Strike Commander was done. So the things for me that have changed most in the industry is the hardware and the importance of real-time graphics. Back when I was doing low-poly art at Origin for sometimes three games at a time I was considered more "lowly" than "low poly". Everyone thought that it would be a fad. Hi-rez, multiple-angle sprites were the future! All those 3DS DOS studs at OSI when it was at the laser tag-scarred, atrium jungle Wild Basin location off Capital of Texas Highway would beam about their hi-rez, rendered cinematics and were pretty skeptical about the future of "low poly". Each year I watch the gap between rendered, heavily post-processed, procedurally-textured art and real-time game graphics shrink. Eventually, a lower consumer price point and the strength of technology will make the infinite possible and "low poly" really will become an antiquated term. When that day comes, and there’s no distinction between rendered and real-time, artistry and story-telling ability will emerge as the deciding factor much like the transition in the film industry when guys like Hitchcock and Billy Wilder took the public and shook them out of their simple amazement with the technical feat of making movies. Games are slowly going from technical coups to works of art. I really like being a part of that evolution and my future games will reflect that enjoyment.

A: Oh yeah. When I find ‘em I convert ‘em over to my side or I bag and drown them. Nah, I encourage all those whelps to try and kick my ass. I just had a contest (I still need to post the voting to get the final results BTW) and there are a few guys in there that inspire the hell out of me. To make it worse, they credit me with helping them be that good through my TOTB articles! To be fair, the only reason Steed is a name is because I was at id Software for four years and had this massive spotlight shining on me that I took full advantage of. My work is decent, but there are many, many, many other artists out there who are much better than I am, but didn’t have the good fortune to have access to the fan base the Quake community represents or work with the Kevin Cloud, Adrian Carmack and John Carmack triumvirate.

To any would-be challengers to the title I say, "bring it on!" I will always encourage an up-and-coming artist if he or she feels they need my help. By helping them I help myself stay motivated.

A: WildTangent is a web technology-based company out of Redmond, Washington that was founded by Alex St. John about 4 years ago. His and his tech team’s dream is to bring 3D to the Internet and make WebDriver a household name. I’ve been making dancing girl visualizers that play to your favorite MP3 desktop player. These dancing hotties have gotten more than 5,000,000 downloads worldwide and the demand is growing steadily for more. My main focus, however has been a game called Betty Bad. This is a very sweet story about a girl and her guns…very BIG guns. She makes new friends and grows emotionally throughout the game to make you relate to her character…NOT!

Betty Bad is a 3^rd person action game set in a sci-fi future where our buxom and badass heroine runs rampant through tunnels, Tempest-style happily destroying evil aliens bent on the decimation and gluttonous consumption of humanity (starting with a massive asteroid-mining space station). The game is designed to showcase WildTangent’s technology as it is applied to a character-based, somewhat story-driven game. It’s my first attempt at driving a project using our technology and employs many little design ideas I’ve been itching to try for a while, now. The game is in final beta testing now and will be available in about a month through our online distribution partners. The demo should be out sometime before that. Stay tuned for more info, but meanwhile, here are some screenshots…

I think the timing in our industry is right for more episodic, smaller games that are delivered over the web. Betty is my first experiment in that direction.

A: I’ve outlined a book about animating characters but I have to get a lull in a very busy schedule before I can get to it. I will hopefully write it within a year or so.

A: I’d be an English professor at my kids’ college while moonlighting as a Playboy photographer.

A: I don’t know about recruiters, but the greatest recruiting Goddess would have to be Melanie Cambron. She rocks!