Patience is a virtue Nina Straccialini knows well. As a lead technical artist for Turbine Games, she’s worked her way up the ranks on no fewer than three major online titles – the last of which, Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach, is set to finally be released after three intense years of production.
“I’ve been at Turbine a little over five years, and so far my only shipped project has been AC2 [Asheron’s Call 2], so I’m ecstatic. There are a few of us that have been here almost since the beginning of the DDO project and it’s been a long road to get here. We’re all really excited to finally get it out to everybody.”
Several months back, D & D Online began garnering attention in the press, creating a wave of good vibes back at the Turbine base camp. “When we saw the excitement that the game was generating with our fan base, that was the most rewarding time,” explains Straccialini. “Now we’ve come to this moment where we’re finished and the fans will soon have it in their hands. It’s a great feeling.”
Stepping back five years or so, Straccialini remembers first coming to Turbine after graduating from the Computer Animation program. Turbine is exclusively a Maya (a software animation program) house for its current games, but she was prepared. “Going into Turbine and having such in depth knowledge of Maya was very helpful for me. It allowed me to be useful from the moment I came through the door and become a valuable resource for my fellow artists. I feel like that knowledge was the most valuable thing I took away from Full Sail.”
Game production isn’t without its trials, however, and as Straccialini transitioned from her role as junior tech artist on Asheron’s Call 2 to senior tech artist on The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar and finally to a lead role on Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach,, she learned new ways to take on the challenges she faced. “My biggest challenge was transitioning into a role where I had a lot more visibility into the decision-making and initial architecture design side of game development. Getting a handle on the flow of production through things like planning, milestones, approvals, and finally shipping has been an interesting experience. It was a drastic change going from just doing production work to being involved in the planning process that precedes it.”
Planning for the art team, coordinating between departments, and determining deliverables are just a few of her to-do list items as a lead tech artist – and that’s not including her art creation responsibilities. She does still manage to spend a good deal of her time character rigging, something that first grabbed her interest at Full Sail. “Whereas some of the other students weren’t terribly interested in it, I found that I was fascinated by the whole thing. That’s when I started to specialize and figure out where I was going,” she explains.
At the moment, she’s trying to go further within her field of choice by kicking her skills up a notch and once again, she finds herself exercising patience. “I really enjoy what I’m doing,” she explains, “But I’m waiting for that next step when I can make my rigs more elaborate. Really, there are a lot of limitations in both the hardware and in online games. I’ll just have to wait for the technology to catch up with my aspirations.”
