A Common Thread: Dom2D
My name is Dominique Ferland, and I’m a 29 years old game designer - I make games and art under the pseudonym Dom2D. At the age of 6, I was drawing dozens of Mario Bros. levels on loose sheets of paper. Through high school, I came up with card games and forced my friends to test them out. In college, I moved into advertising and graphic design but kept playing video games and board games.
Weird thing is, it never occured to me that I could make games for a living - not until I got a random contract job to do the mock-up screen of a Price is Right game for local start-up company called Ludia, here in Montreal. I started as a 2D and UI artist in the industry, but quickly realized game design was my calling.
As an artist, user interface designer and game designer, I like putting together mock screens of the game I have in mind as early as possible. These fake screens make me ask myself a few questions. Does this look like a game I would play? Would a player understand the game right away? Is there a major design problem that couldn’t be seen in a design document, maybe with space, clutter, or colors?
Dominique Ferland speaking about the early stages of videogame design. [September 2nd, 2011] (via Mochiblog).
