Things You Were Too Afraid to Ask: Laurens 'Xoliul' C.

(badman) #1

A new blog post has been added:

Things You Were Too Afraid to Ask: Laurens ‘Xoliul’ C.

Jubilations! We’ve got a brand-new staff interview for you today, shining our very inquisitive spotlight on Laurens, the only certified Belgian in the office. You may remember Laurens as the man behind the awesomely fantastic Brink Nerf Gun from a few months ago - turns out he works on video games, too. As one of our Technical Artists, Laurens is the vital glue between artists and programmers, ensuring there’s nothing standing in the way of awesome art for our games. Here’s a slice from Laurens’s interview:

Why did you want to work in the games industry and how did you get started?
I guess I never really grew up and still prefer to play with and build guns, tanks and little soldiers, things just got a bit more advanced as I got older. I used to build a lot of little models and gradually moved on to doing this in 3D on the computer, being shown basic 3DS Max when I tried Architecture in university helped a lot. I also fiddled with game config files when I was younger, it was fun to tweak numbers and experience the results ingame. I ended up studying “games” in Belgium. I was one of the first people to ever graduate from that course.

To find out more about Laurens’s work here at Splash Damage, his tips for breaking into the industry, his Dopefish nightmares, and much more, read the full interview.

(Miki) #2

First of all: it’s awesome to see someone from Belgium!

Second: your Nerf gun is really amazing. You should try to make some more of those and post them. (Hell, I’m sure you could even sell them)

Third: you said you studied “games” in Belgium. There is only one (bachelor) education I know. Is it that one you did (DAE)? When I was looking for a Masters degree that had to do with games, I had to look abroad.

Fourth: keep the nickname. It looks cool, has a modern sound to it. However, I don’t really see how you could end up with that when smashing the keyboard. Why is it that the ‘smashing the keyboard’ way is the way half of my friends ended up with a nickname?

Fifth: you said that you wanted to see more then Belgium (logic, we aren’t that big!). How is Londen doing for you so far?

Good luck in your future career!

(light_sh4v0r) #3

Cool, a game developer with proper hobbies :wink:

(Xoliul) #4

Hi!
Miki, Sh4vor thanks! So many questions, allow me to answer:
-I will probably do some more Nerf Guns, I worked a lot more on them in winter though (not much else to do).
-I studied DAE, yes. I don’t have a Masters degree, but I don’t think that matters anything when looking for a job in games.
-Well, if you look closely you’ll see the X sits on the keyboard somewhere around the left hand, and the O, U, I and L are quite near to each other for the right hand.
-The Uk is nice, there’s a lot more to do and see here then Belgium. London itself is a bit busy and expensive for me though :wink:
Laurens

(Paul) #5

Since when are you at SD?

Btw, you should change your avatar, put the Nerf Gun in the background and paint over the SD logo! :smiley:

Welcome aboard!

(Xoliul) #6

It’s been almost a year now, Paul. Went really quickly…