Senior Environment Artist at Embark Studios
Graduated 2008
Hi! My name is Darko Pracic, and I am a Senior Environment Artist at Embark Studios in Stockholm.
* What I do at Embark
At Embark, I have a few different areas of responsibility. What I spend my days most with is improving our working methods for creating environment art. This includes processing of photo-scanned objects, tools for creating and manipulating landscapes, tools for export and import between software, etc. Basically everything that has to do with nature and simplification of workflows for the creation of nature content.
* The road to here
During my last year at gscept I decided to specialize in game graphics, rather than film. The gaming industry was much larger in Sweden, and in the beginning I was, above all, looking for a job and work experience. I had no preferences for type of project or studio. The important thing was to start clicking.
The first workplace was Avalanche Studios. Then on to Funcom in Oslo, and after 9 months at Funcom, I tried out film and advertising at Gimpville, and then Filmkameratene. In 2010 I chose to go home to Sweden again, came back to Avalanche Studios, and was there for three years before I then got a job at DICE. During this time, I moved from 3D Artist to Environment Artist, which I really enjoyed. I enjoyed being involved in shaping the gaming experience in a different way than I felt I could by creating individual 3D assets and props.
In 2019, I chose to leave DICE and spent 6 months at Goodbye Kansas as Realtime Supervisor where I tried film and advertising again, but unfortunately I felt that gaming was what tickled me the most. Embark was a newly started studio with old colleagues and their main goal was to fix the way we make games. And it sounded great. Create better tools, make things procedural and as user-friendly as possible. I have always been interested in improving working methods so it was a perfect fit.
* My background
I've loved computers, computer games and graphics since I was very young. I created games in Click n Create, made websites with html and Photoshop, and around the age of 16 I tested 3D Studio Max and discovered modeling and animation.
In high school I studied Technical IT, and after that I applied directly to gscept in Skellefteå. What attracted me to gscept compared to other educations was the location. Skellefteå, and Norrland in general, is very beautiful. Another factor was that Gscept was a three-year programme.
* Advice for students
Much of it is about using your time well. Spending 160 hours on something does not mean that it will be good. Stop, look and think. Talk to others about what you are doing, ask for feedback and listen to it - then act on it. It is a lesson that is constantly nagged about, but it is also the most important - and most ignored - lesson.