LeRoy Strauss

I was originally going to school to be an illustration but lost interest after a couple years. I knew the market was competitive and didn’t really enjoy the hustle of a freelance lifestyle that young. So I began to search for another way to make a living blending my passions for Art, RPGs, Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Video Games. 3D animation and software were starting to become mainstream and after seeing Jurassic Park in 1993 I decided to aim my career towards CGI for films or video games.

I liked the exploration of those games and attaining new abilities to traveling and finding new solutions to challenges. I enjoyed the feeling it gave me while I played it from the science fiction theme, to the sound, and the game play.

When starting room areas we are given what was called a “Blue Room” which was a blocky room of simple shapes that the game Designers made to generally inform us of the type of gameplay that needs to be preserved. I then looked to see if there are other connecting rooms being worked on or finished to ensure a cohesive style of the area.

We are usually only given 2-4 weeks to make rooms which includes building and texturing everything. We would have a pool of textures each artist would add to little by little. This helped for the initial inspiration along with checking out any drawings or concepts from other artists. Then I would look at some general internet references of ideas to see if It sparked ideas. Then I would quickly doodle on yellow lined note pads and photoshop sketches to hash out more ideas to help me solidify a direction in my imagination. Considering I didn’t have much time for ideation these drawings were just loose enough for me to decide if I should commit them to 3D and test out.

During a recent move while packing up our stuff I found a Note Pad that survived from my time working on Metroid Prime at Retro Studios. I will include pictures of these notes and doodles I used to help me figure out and use as my inspiration. Feel free to post any or crop you find interesting. Like I said they are very loose and rough so please don’t be too harsh a critic on these drawings! (LOL)

To be honest I don’t quite recall when it came to Metroid Prime regarding the timeline of the soundtrack. It often happens in parallel or the second half of the game’s development when the parts start to come together.

Thank you for the kind words. Those were fun, challenging rooms for sure. I recall I think I went a week over schedule on both of those. The Phendrana Shorelines I remember doing some trial and error on the rocks and snow attempting to create a natural snowy atmosphere yet still adhering to gameplay boundaries.I made a snow connecting room prior so this helped get me warmed up for the snow area. The Artifact Temple I believe was one of those times I had an environment concept to work from which was helpful yet challenging to try and achieve the vision of it in the poly budget of those days.

I was skeptical myself that this new company at the time with no proven track record was given a Metroid title and making it first person too. I was still early in my career and having enjoyed the previous Metroid titles I just wanted to work on it and hoped for the best! After I started working at Retro and getting to know the team more my scepticism turned to excitement because of the dedicated talent and vision. There was determination because early on it seemed like a solid idea internally when testing it out in its rough state. There was a hard push to get the demo out for E3 and I remember being nervous to see what people’s reactions would be. As a gamer myself I felt proud of the work achieved and just hoped the rest of the gaming community would feel the same as me. Lurking around for a bit at the E3 Nintendo booth seeing the reactions of people playing the demo I got even more excited that we had something special here and that most Metroid fans would enjoy. That first demo gameplay helped squash some of the backlash leading up to the game’s release.

I originally wanted to focus on character art but at the time Retro had no open character positions. Seeing as how I very much wanted to work on the game I decided to go for environment art since there was an opening. When Mike and Gene left after the first Prime game I was allowed to shift over to characters. It was not too large of a transition especially back in those days as the process was mostly the same. Some differences are to make sure the models are prepped properly for rigging & animation. In many ways I found it smoother because I also got to work off the amazing concept art from artists such as Android Jones. The challenges were I wanted to build characters that did the concept art justice, and to do my best to keep doing quality characters for the next Metroid game like the previous artists did for the first game.

Most of the team was well established by the start of Echoes development so there wasn’t too much guidance needed. There were several tips and techniques that I passed on. One example being I initiated some helpful maya scripts with the assistance of Marco Thrush that were used to help avoid pixel stretching in game environments along with Texel Density miss matching. I sometimes still see those issues even in today’s AAA games although it’s far more rare now.

Echoes felt like the game got more of a darker bio organic feel compared to the first Prime game especially on the character side. The concept art Andrew Jones was kicking out was amazing.

Yes I think the bio-organic visuals are reflected to a certain degree in the environment. Much like Metroid Prime 1 there often wasn’t a dedicated environment concept artist devoted to the levels. Android Jones did some parts but I believe it was up to the environment artists to capture the feel as they built out the areas. In hindsight though, I think the bio-organic visual could have matched up much better if the team was bigger and the artists had more time with some concept art laid out early on in the development of the game.

Regarding the communication between art departments would see each other’s work as the game developed and on occasion make some changes if needed. As for the character art I would mostly go off attempting to nail the visuals of the concept art within the tech constraints. If available I would put the character in game in default T pose for rigging but often I wouldn’t see the characters I built in game for a while until the animations were done and set up to function correctly. Oftentimes character art and environment art are compartmentalized slightly and work in parallel unless there is some direct function between them like some boss encounters for example. Although usually in the polishing stages of development it happens more so with the communication between environment and character art to polish or make tweaks. In the polish stages we often have lots of little tasks that pile up like fixing textures or making adjustments to lots of stuff to ensure the game as a whole is as cohesive as possible without too much re-work.

I don’t think it was quite known at the time that the new suit design would be used for subsequent games but I believe the changes were that the new game also has a new visual update, a slightly sleeker and crisp look with some harder angles. There were some interesting concepts designed for the Samus Suits; it was for sure the most scrutinized model in the game. For example I recall there was an Art Director from the Japan studios (forgot his name) that was in my office for a few days when I was finalizing the model guiding some adjustments and fine tuning. This was the only time that happened. There were a couple subtle design choices made by him like making the feet symmetrical rather than slightly asymmetrical amongst other small details which I can’t recall.

Editor’s note: the Art Director LeRoy refers to here was most likely Tomoyoshi Yamane, credited as Samus’s Model Supervisor in all three Metroid Prime games.

Ah yes the shoulder joints. Those were not realistic if an actual human was to try and fit inside that suit. That said the choices to make it work the best we can for game play function, animations and to keep the iconic look had precedence over other concerns we had. With those guidelines established there were some subtle visual sacrifices that needed to be made like occasional clipping of the model parts in extreme animation poses.

The space pirates did have a different visual look to them. Some of this is due in part to the darker visual direction of the characters along with having much more of the character concepts come from Andrew this time around (aka Android Jones). If you look at the concept art from Echoes compared to Prime 1 there is much more organic darker feel in the way the visuals were handled conceptually. This was back in the days before amazing art tools like Zbrush and using normal maps like most modern games are using now. It will be interesting to see how the Space Pirates and other enemies look if they remaster Metroid Prime Echoes with modern techniques.

I have not played Dread yet myself. I have been mostly PC gaming these several years but I recently got a Nintendo Switch to play Zelda Tears of the Kingdom and Couch Co-Op with my young Son so that opens the way for me to play Dread which I would like to do someday soon.

The game looks great. When I first saw some screenshots and video I was looking at it on my phone. I was thinking this looks the same but then when I watched it full screen and especially on my PC I really noticed the graphical modern treatment which looks great. I was happy to see how much of the game looks holistically the same yet so very different at the same time. It looks like a great upgrade for modern gamers and those coming fresh into the series now!

Thank you for reliving some old memories with me. I felt very fortunate for the opportunity to work on Metroid Prime 1 and 2. It was the first game I worked on where I felt extremely proud and very excited to be part of. There was a lot of hard work and dedication to making sure Prime turned out the best it could be and I am very happy the results contributed to a great game that was fun to play and lived up to the Metroid name! May the future keep bright for Metroid games and fans!