From Super Mario Bros. to Halo, the foundation of any well-made video game starts with great level design – and Computer Animation graduate James Farrand is helping create the stages on which some of today's best games are set.

James is a Lead World Builder at Florida-based game studio N-Space, and has contributed his sharp eye for level creation to such titles as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for the Nintendo DS.

His latest project has been challenging his design skills on another Nintendo platform, with the upcoming Wii title, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. Working with the Wii hardware for the first time has been a big learning experience for James and the design team, and they’ve enjoyed the challenge of testing the limits of the console with this sequel to the 2006 hit.

“I’ve been here for three years and Marvel is probably the game I’m most proud of so far – we’ve really pushed [the system] to a higher level,” he offers.

James’s role as Lead World Builder has him allocating tasks and managing the schedules of the environment department, the team of level artists responsible for everything from landscape foliage to industrial structures. And although he’s in a leadership role, he still pushes himself as an artist every day – creating many of the textures you’ll see throughout the game.

“When I took this position I made sure I’d still be able to get my hands on the artistic side, because my personal philosophy is that if you’re not doing the work, you lose skills,” he shares. “I’m really big on texture painting, and there’s a few techniques that I developed here that we used on Marvel that made a big impact on what we were doing. I really love being a part of that process.”

That approach has allowed James to develop both his professional and artistic career since joining N-Space in 2005. And with Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 being prepped for retail, looking back on his time in the industry has reminded him of why he decided to get into gaming in the first place.

“I had a lot of jobs before I went to Full Sail, and this is the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done,” he says. “When I was just a gamer, I used to stay up three days straight playing Battlefield 1942 and Counter-Strike. And my brother and I used to be like ‘Why don’t we try to get on the other side of this?’ Looking back on that now, I can say that going after this was probably one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.”