Howard Lyon, art director on Stargate Worlds, joins us to share his story and nearly 150 pieces of art created by his team in the development of the MMO!

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Timecodes
0:00 – Opening Credits
0:39 – Guest Introductions
3:48 – Howard’s Career Retrospective
7:54 – Howard’s Beginnings with Stargate Worlds
11:48 – Work and Life Balance in Video Game Industry
13:22 – Stargate Worlds Team
15:42 – Creating Big, Establishing Shots
17:38 – Artwork: Tollana #1
18:56 – How long do landscapes take?
20:33 – Artwork: Tollana #2
22:04 – Video Game vs. Television Budget Constraints
22:52 – Artwork: The Castle
24:14 – Who owns Stargate Worlds assets?
25:14 – Artwork: Agnos
26:53 – Importance of Realistic Foundations in Artwork
30:52 – Artwork: Anima Vitrus
33:58 – Artwork: Akhet
37:08 – Asgard Designs
39:41 – Scorpions in Arizona
41:13 – Howard’s Tortoise
42:01 – Asgard Armor
43:16 – Asgard Drones
45:04 – Armor Sets
48:55 – Progression of Armor Sets
51:54 – More Armor Sets
54:28 – Howard’s Retrospective View on the Project
57:58 – IRS Interviewed Howard About the Project
59:47 – Financing Stargate Worlds
1:00:52 – Stargate Worlds at E3
1:02:50 – Stargate Worlds at San Diego Comic-Con
1:05:20 – Art Can Drive the Story
1:07:22 – Support from Engineering Team
1:09:00 – Designing Ra
1:13:31 – Stargate and Mythology
1:16:32 – Ra’s Cross Section
1:17:11 – Developing the Straegis
1:21:51 – Straegis Could Have Been the Titans
1:23:25 – Queen Anat
1:24:23 – Conveying the Details
1:25:28 – An Android Artwork
1:26:53 – More Character Designs
1:28:01 – Creating Different Textures
1:29:32 – Different Jaffa Concepts
1:33:33 – How would the game be designed today?
1:34:28 – Thoughts on SG4
1:36:52 – USS Midway Screening
1:38:02 – Thank You, Howard
1:38:48 – Howard Lyon the Artist
1:40:27 – Thank You, Katie
1:40:40 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:42:06 – End Credits
1:43:10 – Howard Lyon Stargate Worlds Featurette

***
“Stargate,” “Stargate SG-1,” “Stargate Atlantis,” “Stargate Universe,” and all related materials are owned by Amazon MGM Studios.

#Stargate
#DialtheGate
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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
We have been doing a series covering Stargate Worlds, the ill-fated MMO that was in development in the late aughts. And we’re gonna do another one today that we’ve been really excited about. I’m privileged to see Katie Postma once again, lead community manager at Stargate Worlds, whom I replaced, and then she came back later after I left. But Howard Lyon, art director for Stargate Worlds. Hello, sir.

Howard Lyon:
Hello. It’s great to be here. Thank you for having me.

David Read:
So good to see you. Your beard is beautiful, Howard. Where was this 20 years ago?

Howard Lyon:
I know. I had a little bit of hair 20 years ago, and so now I’m compensating for no hair, so I grow the beard out.

Katie Postma:
It’s glorious. It’s absolutely glorious.

Howard Lyon:
Thank you. Nature didn’t give me much. This is about it.

David Read:
Nature gave you what?

Howard Lyon:
I have to grow it.

David Read:
I can’t grow that.

Katie Postma:
It’s giving me David Letterman, which is the dream. That’s what you wanna be.

Howard Lyon:
Yeah, well I like it. I think Zach Galifanakis referred to David Letterman as Matt Santa with his big beard.

Katie Postma:
That’s right. That’s perfect. Perfect.

David Read:
How are you, Howard?

Howard Lyon:
I’m doing really well.

David Read:
Busy as usual?

Howard Lyon:
I am busy. Today is my anniversary.

David Read:
Oh my gosh!

Howard Lyon:
So excited about that. Shari and I have been together since we were 15. We met in high school and started dating then, and it’s been-

Katie Postma:
20 years later, here you are.

Howard Lyon:
That’s right. 20 small short – 20, maybe not even that much, right? Here we are. I’m a grandpa now.

David Read:
You already are.

Howard Lyon:
Yep, have a little grandbaby. My daughter Belle, she had a baby last year in June, and so we’re coming up on the one-year birthday of my granddaughter, so thrilled.

Katie Postma:
Isn’t that the greatest? It’s the greatest thing-

Howard Lyon:
It’s the best thing ever.

Katie Postma:
… in the whole world.

Howard Lyon:
I can’t believe it. It is so wonderful. They say that grandkids make you live longer. I get that. I wanna experience all of life again now with my grandbaby. It’s a wonderful thing.

Katie Postma:
Absolutely. I lived in with mine, so I get it.

Howard Lyon:
Amazing.

David Read:
I am thrilled to go through this with you, as is Katie. This is by no means gonna be an exhaustive examination of Stargate Worlds art, though it may feel that way to the viewer. I spent the last two hours picking and choosing. I decided not to really get into the human stuff. We’re gonna look at the alien stuff and everything else. Where were you before Stargate, and how familiar were you with the franchise, and how did you get into Stargate Worlds?

Howard Lyon:
I was very familiar with Stargate, and I loved the movie. I really loved the TV series as well. I went to school and studied illustration, and I thought I was gonna come out of school and follow in the footsteps of some of my heroes, Thomas Blackshear, Scott Gustafson, James Christiansen, and go right into doing limited-edition prints and gallery work. But while I was at school, one of my teachers was the art director at a local video game company called Sapphire. And it looked like a good way to earn money while I was going to school, and I applied for the job, and I managed to get it. And my first job was taking little black-and-white scans from the NFL Players’ Handbook, which had pictures of every NFL player in the league, and converting them to color. So, basically tinting them and repainting them so they were nice little pixel portraits of NFL football players. And I did that for a few months, and then rolled into other video games. And I ended up doing that for 12 years total in the video game industry. But I started at that company in ’93, I believe. And then, when my first child was born, Belle — who made me a grandpa — we wanted to move back to Arizona. We picked up everything and moved back to Arizona, where all of our family was. Shari and I were going to school in Utah. Moved back to Arizona, and I started as an art director for a company called Cinematics. I worked for them for a while. And then I quit, and I started my own video game company, and we were making kids games, educational games.

David Read:
I did not know that.

Howard Lyon:
And our goal was to make them the most beautiful games for kids that we could, to take that Pixar mentality of, just because these are kids’ games doesn’t mean they should be simple visually, and really tried to make something beautiful for them. And then 9/11 happened, and all the funding dried up. We released four titles in pretty quick succession, and one of them was named Game of the Year by Disney’s Family Fun Magazine, so that was a cool accolade for our little company.

Katie Postma:
Which one was that?

Howard Lyon:
It’s called Professor Fog’s Workshop, and the game that we made was called WizMo’s Workshop, and it was—

Katie Postma:
I think my kids played that.

Howard Lyon:
That’s cool. That’s really cool.

Katie Postma:
I think so. Wow.

Howard Lyon:
It was a lot of fun. We had a blast. And it was at Cinematics that I met Carl Coss, who was the lead animator on Stargate Worlds, and he came with me to Professor Fog’s Workshop. So, he was one of the principal people at Professor Fog’s Workshop. Then, like I said, 9/11 happened, and we decided… At that point, we were in the black, and we decided to close our doors and not struggle along, trying to find funding. And one of the reasons that we felt we could do that is there was another company in town that wanted us, the members of the team, to come work for them, and that was a company called Realm Interactive. And they were making a game called Exarch, and Joe Mad, the comic book artist, was the creative lead on that project. And we got the attention of NCSoft, and NCSoft ended up buying the company and moving them to Austin, Texas. And I decided I am done with video games. Decided it was time for me to move on in my career and do freelance illustration. Made that career move, and was very happy doing so. And one of the reasons that I did is because I was working 80 hours a week in the video game industry. And I was missing my three young kids growing up. I would leave for work and kiss them goodbye, but by the time I got home, they were often in bed. And we realized it wasn’t sustainable. That’s not what I wanted out of life. Switched over to freelance illustration and had been doing that for several years, doing work for Dungeons & Dragons and various magazines and book covers, and started doing work for Magic: The Gathering. And then I heard about this startup in town, Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, and I had some friends that were interested and were telling me about it. And someone reached out to me, and I can’t remember who it was—

David Read:
I think it was Dan.

Howard Lyon:
It might have been Dan initially, but I’m not sure if it was. Certainly, I met with Dan. If it wasn’t Dan right away, it was very shortly after. And they wanted me to do some concept art for the game. And I was very familiar with Stargate, and they had me illustrate this scene of this interior of a temple. Dan was like, “We would like to hire you.” And I said, “I don’t want to. I will never do crunch time again.” I said, “The video game industry’s taken too much of a toll on me and my family, as much as I love it.” And I said, “I’ll work as a freelance artist if you are interested in having me do that.” And then they commissioned me to do this establishing shot for the world, and it was this vertical poster that was in the background of Dan’s video. And it had the Jaffa in the corner and a view of this sprawling city. And then Dan said, “We’re going to hire you.” I met with him. I talked with him for a while, and I said, “Dan, I know how these projects go.” I said, “The only way I would do it is if I will work 40 hours a week doing the job.” And he said, “OK. Let’s bring you in.” I talked with my wife, and we talked about the pros and cons of jumping back into this industry again and decided to go for it. One of the conditions was that I needed Carl to come on as animator as well. At least, I hope I’m remembering that right. I know that’s what I was thinking: “I don’t want do this if Carl isn’t there heading up animation.”

Katie Postma:
That was a good get too. Thank you for that.

David Read:
Did not know that. Cool as hell. Thank you.

Howard Lyon:
I know. Carl’s amazing. I knew that animation was gonna be a big and difficult part of the whole project. And I knew that if Carl was involved, I, as art director, really wouldn’t have to think about it.

David Read:
Didn’t have to worry about him. Did they keep their promise all the way through the run, keeping it 40 hours a week?

Howard Lyon:
Dan kept his side of it, but I didn’t keep my side of it. There were definitely—

Katie Postma:
I knew it

Howard Lyon:
…some times—

Katie Postma:
I knew it

Howard Lyon:
…where I would work longer hours. But it’s hard when you come to love your team and you love the people that are working, and they’re working really hard, to say, “Good night.”

Katie Postma:
Good night. You can’t do it

Howard Lyon:
I’m going home. But I did my best ’cause I promised Shari that that was gonna be the case. Anyone who’s worked in the video game industry for very long has been through crunch times, and they’ve probably even been through times where you’re asked to go without a paycheck. And we had been through that at two different companies. Maybe this’ll come into the story a little bit later as we talk about this, but it was something that I told my wife I wouldn’t do anymore. Because I had established this career working as an illustrator and artist, and it was a source of too much stress in our life to try and do that anymore.

Katie Postma:
Especially, when your kids are young, right?

Howard Lyon:
Just babies. My youngest was born in March of 2001.

Katie Postma:
So, they were really young.

Howard Lyon:
Just really, really just babies.

Katie Postma:
Just starting schoolish.

Howard Lyon:
So, I needed to be there.

David Read:
I am thrilled to jump into some of this with you here. Is there anything that we should set up before we start looking at the art? Is there anything that you want to…

Howard Lyon:
You know what?

David Read:
… say?

Howard Lyon:
The Cheyenne Mountain art team was this really beautiful mix of people who this was their first job in the industry, and of veterans that had some real experience. And I think one of the things that amazed me was how skilled our newbies were, how skilled this crew that came in right out of school and blew me away. I expected people like Nick and Carl, and people who had worked in the industry to know what they were doing and do their work and do a great job. Because Arizona really wasn’t a hub for the video game industry, it was always a challenge to recruit and get people in, and we recruited heavily from schools. And boy, did we get lucky with the people that we got. I think of Chi and RC and all–

David Read:
Let’s get some last names in here. So, Nick–

Howard Lyon:
Chi Fong and RC Torres and Nick Heitzman.

Katie Postma:
LaMartina.

Katie Postma:
Nick is LaMa–

David Read:
Nick Heitz–

Katie Postma:
Heitzman.

David Read:
… Nick Heitzman.

Howard Lyon:
Nick Heitzman.

Katie Postma:
Heitzman. That’s right.

Howard Lyon:
And Nick was a veteran of the industry, and worked, if I’m remembering right, as the lead on the project, lead artist. And man, he was such a strong foundation for the team as well. But people like Chi Fong and RC Torres and… I hate that I’m not gonna remember everybody. It’s been a little while.

David Read:
We’re not gonna remember everyone.

Howard Lyon:
But they worked so hard and did such great work for the project. I love that team. We did some amazing things with it.

Katie Postma:
We have a list. So, if there’s anyone you can’t remember, we can find them for you.

Howard Lyon:
Excellent. Thank you.

David Read:
We’re working to build it all back together on our end here.

Katie Postma:
We’ve been working on it.

Howard Lyon:
Love it.

David Read:
I’d like to start off with landscapes if that’s OK with you.

Howard Lyon:
That’s great, ’cause that’s really where… That was my first job on the game, was to create these establishing shots. That’s what I did with that temple shot in the poster. One of the challenges, as you know, working on these games where they’re a really big game, where we’re gonna have outsourcing, we’re gonna have a large team of artists, is you don’t want it to look like you have a large team of artists. You don’t want it to look like you are outsourcing to a lot of people to create the assets for the game. You wanna make it look like one person did everything so that it’s uniform, it has harmony, and that was our goal. And one of the ways that I knew we could try and achieve that was to create these big establishing shots where maybe it’s the shot of Agnos, and it has all of the architecture and it has the style of the computer display. It has the doors. It has the walls. It has what the sky looks like. It shows you the ambient light and all of those sorts of things. I would go through before we would start developing an area and do these big paintings that were establishing shots, and then we would break them out. We could examine the image for all of these different assets. And I felt like that was critical to having a visual harmony in the game, is having these big establishing shots. I loved it. I loved doing these paintings. They were really a blast to do.

David Read:
You’re establishing the world. It’s not necessarily what you’d see coming through the Stargate, like your first image of it. In some cases, perhaps. But it’s sweeping. From memory, I’ve organized them chronologically based on how I remember you creating them. I’d like to start off with Tollana. So, this is Tollana. Obviously, the fans are gonna be like, “Why isn’t it destroyed?” The Goa’uld built it back up.

Howard Lyon:
You remember. Of course you do. You remember a lot more lore than I do, for sure. At this point, I would have my head down trying to create these shots as fast as I could, going through the game. But I do think we have… Don’t we have a destroyed version as well?

David Read:
We do indeed.

Howard Lyon:
Not to get ahead. There we go. These were a blast to do. I can’t remember what software I was using, but I was building out these base models and then going in and painting on top of them to create our assets. Such a fun project.

David Read:
Little bombs. So pretty. Your use of color is extraordinary.

Howard Lyon:
Thank you.

David Read:
And your highlights and shadows, the light and the dark. Look, we’ve got action happening here, the debris. We’re catching it mid-collision, whatever this is.

Howard Lyon:
We were trying definitely, in these shots, to even show maybe some of the effects that we would need to generate for the levels. That’s why I was trying to put some of that in there.

David Read:
How long would a composition like this take, soup to nuts?

Howard Lyon:
If I’m remembering right, we would work with Chris, Chris Klug in creative, and they would give us a brief as to what the world needed to be and contain. And we’d have those meetings. Then I would do some little sketches for them, very similar to how I would start an illustration for a book cover. And we would talk those over and then really hit the ground running. And I think most of them took around 10 to 14 days to produce. Not super-fast, not super long. In that mid-range. Of course, I was doing that while we were creating textures and models and building up assets for it as well. So, I think if I were sitting down to do it, they’d be about a week’s worth of full-time work on the project. But that’s about-

David Read:
Do you feel as an artist you’ve evolved from this? Do you look at this and see, “Oh my God?” Are you pulling it apart on the inside? I’m curious.

Howard Lyon:
No, those landscape shots, most of them I still feel really proud about the work. There is a lot of work from those years of my life, a decade and a half ago, that I look at and go, “Ugh.” I really could do better work now, which is where you wanna be. You wanna feel like you’re moving forward and progressing. For instance, in these, the big crystals make me laugh a little bit. They feel a little cliché. And I think that was the response actually from creative. We didn’t actually end up putting them in like that. And it needed a lore justification in the game as well. And we were throwing noodles at the wall, so to speak, and seeing what would stick. Not everything made it, even from these shots.

David Read:
I remember this gal had a name. I can’t remember what it is, though. It’s not Travell, folks. It’s someone else from Tollan history. But the lore was so thoughtful and built out. It’s amazing how Simon Fraser University becomes this whole alien planet. It’s been everything from Caprica to Tollan to all kinds of places. But this is one of my favorite pieces that you did.

Howard Lyon:
Thank you.

David Read:
And I remember having the conversation with Chris. I don’t recall seeing crystals on Tollana. And it was like, “Look, we’ve gotta take this in new directions. And you’re gonna see things that you’ve not seen before.” And that was modulating the expectations for fandom, and Katie can agree with me on this till the cows come home. It didn’t XYZ, and the answer is always, “How do you know? Did you see the whole planet?” We start here on the TV show, and then we work our way out.

Katie Postma:
You get to pull back.

Howard Lyon:
This new media, new format for the intellectual property affords you that opportunity. The budget constraints of a video game impact the development differently than budget constraints of a television show. And I can make a thousand-story building for a video game. That’s a lot harder to do on a practical set.

Katie Postma:
We can travel to planets that don’t look like Vancouver-land.

Howard Lyon:
Yes, that’s right. Everything can be full of flowing magma and explosions and big effects. And it costs us very little on the video game.

David Read:
I remember creating your featurette, which I will put at the end of this video, the one-on-one that I did with you. And-

Howard Lyon:
Amazing.

David Read:
… at that time, you were creating the castle.

Howard Lyon:
Ah. This is one of my favorite pieces.

Katie Postma:
Love this.

Howard Lyon:
… that I did for it. Maybe there’s a few too many little jagged points in there, noise-wise, but I still really love this piece. To me, this embodied what makes Stargate very special for me, to come to these extraordinary views. I can imagine myself stepping through that gate and seeing the castle and seeing this terribly hostile landscape where it looks like fangs and teeth are growing out of the ground. One of the things that I loved with this illustration is the subtle temperature shift from the very cool blues to the slightly more green-yellow blues around the castle. And then to get that punch of the complementary color of the oranges and peaches coming out of the sky. It hit a lot of marks for me. I’m still really proud of this piece.

David Read:
Absolutely beautiful.

Katie Postma:
It’s awesome.

Howard Lyon:
Thank you. I have a question for you.

David Read:
Agnos again.

Howard Lyon:
… and maybe this is too wonky. But who owns these assets now?

Katie Postma:
David.

David Read:
Technically MGM would. I think it would revert to the rights holder, for sure. ‘Cause it’s got Stargates in it, so good luck. I’ve got a few of them, for sure.

Katie Postma:
It’s way more fun to say David, though. Way more fun. He’s the keeper of all things.

David Read:
The guys-

Howard Lyon:
I know.

David Read:
… in the black pajamas are gonna jump me at night, so don’t, please.

Howard Lyon:
One of the reasons I asked is every once in a while, I have someone reach out about Stargate. It’s not frequent, but every once in a while, there is. And I’ve had people ask me if I could send them the assets from the game, which is an odd request, and I haven’t because I’ve said I don’t own them. These aren’t mine.

David Read:
That’s right.

Katie Postma:
They wanna resurrect it somehow.

Howard Lyon:
Yep, probably.

David Read:
They do. It’s so easy to turn around and sell. And you don’t know where this stuff is going once it’s out the door, so you gotta be careful.

Howard Lyon:
That’s right.

David Read:
I love Agnos. I loved the concept that Christopher had for the AI that was there. We’ll talk a little bit about that with Sean and Steve soon. It’s Sean Dugan and Steve Garvin. Anything more about this piece? I love this landscape, man. There are puddle jumpers in there. Not in this shot, but they’re there.

Howard Lyon:
Nice. It was so fun to… I think they call it the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland, those big, basalt crisp-

Katie Postma:
The pillars.

Howard Lyon:
That formed like that. And that was definitely something that we were obviously looking at. And then looking at bismuth, that mineral, and imagining a landscape that was very hostile, again, but very beautiful. I remember there was a lot of discussion over that and the formation in the sky. Was it a galaxy? Because that doesn’t make sense for what we were doing in Stargate. Was it a nebula? Could they be that close and have it be visible? And I remember there was quite a bit of discussion around that. Every time I was sitting in the chair thinking, “Yeah, but it’s really pretty.”

David Read:
That’s the thing.

Howard Lyon:
That’s not my job. You guys can figure out whether it works or not. But I thought, “This is really beautiful in the sky.” And ultimately, I think they found some good rationale for including that and having that in there, because it was an asset that we added to the sky box.

David Read:
It’s beautiful.

Katie Postma:
That’s a very Star Trek question. Is this technically sound? Is it scientifically valid? And I think one of the things I love about Stargate is that they do try whenever possible to find the science behind it or find the reality behind it to give it that justification.

David Read:
Hang it on something.

Katie Postma:
It makes it more relevant. Star Wars is an escape, but there’s nothing that’s scientifically accurate-

David Read:
That’s on it. That’s right

Katie Postma:
… anywhere in it.

David Read:
It’s space wizards.

Katie Postma:
It’s a Western, but I love that Stargate leaned into that more than going the other direction. I really do.

Howard Lyon:
I agree. It’s easy to be like, “Yeah, but this isn’t real, so we can do whatever we want.” But I think that it is owed to the intelligence of the fans to not just dismiss reality completely. Because it makes it relatable when you have some of that foundation in there. So, that is important.

Katie Postma:
It’s far more satisfactory.

David Read:
I’ve got something I’ve been meaning to ask you for a long time, and it’s perfectly fine for you to crush my-

Katie Postma:
Crush your soul

David Read:
… my spirit here. This was obviously after 9/11. The holes in the New York skyline were still very prominent for us. And at this point, before they figured out the migratory problems that it would cause, the beams of light were shooting out of the sky in New York certain nights. And I remember thinking to myself, Atlantis was described as the crown jewel of the ancient domain. And the only time that we really see it is during the end of its 100-year war, when they’ve lost, and now when we’re trying to hide from them. But when the Wraith weren’t a problem, I always imagined the city lighting up like a beacon in the dark. I remembered bringing that note to one of the art meetings and saying, “The towers should have these streams of light shooting out of them.” And this is in this shot here. Is that my note, Howard, or were you gonna do that anyway?

Howard Lyon:
That is… Ooh, I wanted to immediately say that’s absolutely you, David. It may be. I do not remember. I wish I remembered that specific note. But I will say, your input was absolutely highly regarded. Your expertise in Stargate, in the universe. We did not take your input lightly at all. So, if that was something that you had brought to the table, to me, is not unlikely that’s where that came from.

David Read:
It’s the one note that I remember giving.

Katie Postma:
I told you not to tell him, Howard. There’ll be no living with him now. No, Chris said the same thing. That’s why he established that weekly with you, because it was important. You were their check-in for the fans of the show, for the lore. That’s very cool. The lighting’s beautiful in that. Good note, David.

Howard Lyon:
Love it.

David Read:
Thank you. Now check this one out. You wanna talk about some lighting. Anima Vitris.

Howard Lyon:
I love painting trees. I love painting nature. This piece was such a delight. Now this painting was three weeks. This was not a fast painting to do. But I did have some of the benefit of by the time we did this, we had some of these assets built out, the buildings that were there. And so, I remember I utilized that to help me do it a little bit faster.

Katie Postma:
So, you’d take it and fill in with the stuff that had been established?

Howard Lyon:
So, I’d take that-

Katie Postma:
That’s really cool

Howard Lyon:
… building and render it out, and then drop it in post.

Katie Postma:
It’s the opposite of what you assume concept art is. But what a great marriage between what’s going in that you can put into it.

Howard Lyon:
We had some of those buildings built, so I took them in and-

Katie Postma:
That’s great

Howard Lyon:
… helped me speed up the process.

David Read:
The rainbow. That is insane. How do you achieve that?

Katie Postma:
He can’t tell you. That’s job insurance.

Howard Lyon:
That’s right. Man, some of these things are good digital tools that help things go quite fast.

David Read:
There you go.

Katie Postma:
You said you couldn’t remember. I remember, ’cause I’m the community manager, I don’t do art and I don’t do tech at all, but I remember Maya being a big word thrown around in the halls. Was that what the animators were using?

Howard Lyon:
No, we were using 3D Studio Max to do a lot of the work in. That’s what Carl and I were really familiar with and had worked with a lot, and that’s what we pushed onto the team. Maya’s a wonderful program as well. We didn’t have as much familiarity with it.

David Read:
The human really puts things into perspective, so to speak.

Howard Lyon:
The tiny little figures in there. These giant plants. This is the world I wanna live in. I wanna live in the world with these massive plants and trees and other things.

Katie Postma:
But I love how you can look at the earlier one with the castle that’s so cold and so remote, and you can really feel—and then this one, you’re like, “I feel warm again and cozy,” and it’s just as inviting despite the soldiers in the forest coming for you. But it’s quite the juxtaposition going from world to world and never knowing what you’re gonna get.

Howard Lyon:
I have all my pencil sketches for these somewhere. I need to dig them out, see where-

David Read:
Yes, please.

Katie Postma:
It’s on onion skin? The onion-skin sketches?

Howard Lyon:
Yeah, yeah. See where all the traditional work is for this. ‘Cause we did a lot of digital.

David Read:
On vellum.

Howard Lyon:
But we did a lot of traditional work for it, too.

Katie Postma:
That’s so cool. If you ever find it, you have to scan and send to David or-

Howard Lyon:
Absolutely.

Katie Postma:
… pick it all up and mail it to him.

David Read:
We’ll have you back on. This is not gonna be the only time. Let’s look at Akhet. I don’t know if this was gonna be the final world, but it was gonna be pretty close because you wanna talk about the backstory behind this design and how you guys grew out of that with the trailer and how you guys incorporated it into… Do you remember those details?

Howard Lyon:
You know what, this is a funny thing. I can’t remember if this came after the logo design or before it. But we had-

David Read:
I’m pretty sure you guys integrated it into this.

Howard Lyon:
I think, if I’m remembering right, we had been working on the logo for the game, and we ended up tying that design into this one for the level. But I’m trying to remember the exact timeframe. This was one of the last establishing shots that I did, if I’m remembering it right. And this one was-

Katie Postma:
Was it because of the timing of the story that was being revealed, do you think, or?

Howard Lyon:
Yeah, I think so. And we were-

David Read:
It’s definitely later in the story.

Howard Lyon:
And this was a very quick illustration. I remember we banged this out pretty fast. Part of the reason it went fairly fast is because it’s mostly symmetrical. And then introduced some asymmetry to it. But to do a little bit different palette. If I’m remembering right, the shapes in the sky are because it was under this protective pyramid force field that was around the whole area. That’s what that shape in the sky is for. Certainly, a very foreboding and ominous place to come.

David Read:
For sure. You’ve got a star system that has orbital bodies that are locked in place. That’s some pretty raw power. Always intimidated looking at this thing, for sure. But a beautiful piece, man.

Katie Postma:
It’s cool to see the familiar logo in a different way, and yet it’s really familiar. When you see it, you’re like, “Oh, that’s so…”

Howard Lyon:
See where that came from and how that was in.

Katie Postma:
That’s really cool.

David Read:
I don’t know where this one fits.

Howard Lyon:
So, this one, I think this might be by Emma. I don’t know.

David Read:
Emma Huang?

Howard Lyon:
Who did this piece. Yeah.

Howard Lyon:
So, this one isn’t my piece. And there was a planet. I also did one for this world. And it was the very last establishing shot that I did, the one for that world. It’s a volcanic scene. But I don’t remember the name of the world. I don’t remember the-

David Read:
I remember. It’s Tartarus. I think you did Tartarus. There is so much art that there is to go through. We’re obviously not gonna be able to see everything. I do wanna start off with something that’s really close to the hearts of fans, and that is the Asgard.

Katie Postma:
Hi, buddy.

David Read:
Our buddies. That’s right.

David Read:
We didn’t get to have a lot of content for them realized in the game beyond the art. There wasn’t that much created. They were left off further down the line. Is that right?

Howard Lyon:
Yeah. We had started to work on and develop how they would function in the world. They were gonna have these little drones that were with them that you could as you upgraded your character. And the physicality of them was obviously gonna be different than the Jaffa and the humans, and how they’d be integrated. So, I think this was by Emma as well–this illustration.

Katie Postma:
That’s so good. That’s so cool.

Howard Lyon:
As a fan, to see these characters get developed in the game, but also tying into our own world history lore of Grays and that was very appealing. Emma did a lot of work on the Asgard, and Eric did, too, of course, ’cause Eric did a lot of work on everything ’cause he produced-

David Read:
Eric Belisle.

Howard Lyon:
… so much work. Holy cow.

David Read:
Huge body of work that these guys did.

Howard Lyon:
One of the things that I did when I got hired is, Dan had an office for me, and I knew that that didn’t sound like very much fun to sit in an office while I had this great team of great creative people working on the floor.

Katie Postma:
You have that bullpen of all the artists outside your office.

Howard Lyon:
Right. So, I think the first week I moved out of the office onto the floor so that I could be right there with all of the artists. And I’m so glad that I did because it allowed me to build those relationships. Not just to be present on the floor, but also build relationships with the team.

David Read:
Absolutely. No, I couldn’t imagine you not being in the thick of it.

Howard Lyon:
That sounds boring.

Katie Postma:
Your office, or what was supposed to be your office, was the very first place I ever saw a scorpion. It was before your time. I went in there, and whoever was in there said, “Do you wanna see something cool?” And lifted up the garbage can in the corner, and there were a couple. You know those little teeny-tiny ones?

Howard Lyon:
Yeah.

David Read:
The babies. They’re the most venomous.

Katie Postma:
That’s right. The scary ones.

David Read:
Did you guys ever get bit? Stung?

Howard Lyon:
Never did get stung.

David Read:
Me either.

Howard Lyon:
Had a cousin and a nephew that both got stung multiple times. My mom got stung by a scorpion.

Katie Postma:
The little ones?

Howard Lyon:
It was a little one.

David Read:
The babies can’t control how much venom they release, so they’re the worst.

Katie Postma:
They’re so scary. That’s right. I heard the smaller things are, the more deadly they are.

David Read:
That’s right, ’cause they don’t have the ability to control… And they look pure evil.

Howard Lyon:
Scorpions are nasty. The house that I lived in while I was working on this game, the backyard had hundreds and hundreds of scorpions. We’d go out at night with a blacklight, and the scorpions glow green under UV light. You can see them from 30 feet away, and we’d go out and clean them up, put them out.

David Read:
Did the tortoise ever eat them?

Howard Lyon:
Tortoise didn’t, but our chickens did. So, we’d collect the scorpions and toss them in with the chickens, and they would snap ’em up.

David Read:
What was the name of your tortoise?

Howard Lyon:
Quicky.

David Read:
Quicky, that’s right.

Katie Postma:
Of course it was.

Howard Lyon:
Quicky was an African spur thigh, and when we bought him, he was about the size of a walnut. We had to sell him because he was destroying our block fence, ’cause he would dig underneath the fence. It was almost a challenge. Anything that was fixed to the ground, he wanted to bulldoze and dig through. But by the time we sold him, he was over 150 pounds.

David Read:
And he’ll outlive us.

Howard Lyon:
He was such a cool beast.

David Read:
Isn’t that wild?

Howard Lyon:
He got sold off to, in the words of the buyer, to be a stud on a turtle farm. Outliving us.

David Read:
Joy for him. That’s great. This poor Asgard, though.

Katie Postma:
Speaking of studs is what you’re supposed to say, David.

David Read:
That’s it.

Howard Lyon:
That’s right. I did not recall that until you brought it up. That’s wild. I don’t remember the rationale behind that concept, what we were doing there.

David Read:
Something radically different.

Howard Lyon:
That looks like Eric’s work, Eric Belisle.

Katie Postma:
Evil.

David Read:
And then this is, this said magazine cover, I think.

Howard Lyon:
This isn’t the final, this is one of the concepts that we did. I can’t remember what magazine it was, but we were asked to do some work that would go on the cover. There was a finished version of this illustration out there. But Eric did the initial conceptual work for it, and then I think Eric and I both worked on the final. I know I worked on the final, but I think that Eric was right there working on it, too.

Howard Lyon:
When I went to Tokyo for a Magic: The Gathering event-

Katie Postma:
You saw him?

Howard Lyon:
I saw Eric. We got lunch and spent some time together.

David Read:
He’s over there.

David Read:
His stuff is extraordinary. We’ll be looking at some of it here, for sure.

Katie Postma:
Such as sleeping.

David Read:
The drones.

Howard Lyon:
One of the things that Eric brought to the table that was so powerful is he thought about motion so much. He thought about the animation and how the mechanics of how they would function. And he had some real ability in After Effects, and Eric would take these illustrations and turn them into little animations. It was such a powerful way to show these concepts. A lot of these, he ended up dropping in over lunch and turning them into this beautiful little animation that blew my mind. After Effects always felt a little like witchcraft to me, a program that I never had the requirement to learn. Watching Eric take these and do what he did was really exciting. But he has such a great mind for mechanical things like this. And these progressions of the leveling up of the drones, I absolutely love. I think this would’ve been such a fun aspect of the game to upgrade, as an Asgard, to upgrade these little drones, have them flying around you. And I can’t remember for sure, but there was one that had a science focus, one that was a little more aggressive.

David Read:
This is the science focus. The one before it was offensive. And then this one is defensive. So, they each had their own color scheme and purpose.

Howard Lyon:
So cool. I think these are really brilliant designs that he came up with.

David Read:
Now you’re working with portals. Seeing a little GLaDOS influence in there.

Howard Lyon:
Eric was someone who came into the project a little bit later on.

David Read:
Yeah

Howard Lyon:
He wasn’t there when I got there, came in a little bit later on, and man, we were lucky to get him. I think he came from Ubisoft up in Canada. And he quickly had a huge impact on the project.

David Read:
One of the things that Christopher Klug talked about when he came on was this French artist mindset that worked its way into the art design that he admits that he and his team had nothing to do with. All of a sudden there it was, and it was like, “That’s it. That’s the direction that we’re gonna take the New Mind Goa’uld.” Do you remember anything about that?

Howard Lyon:
Eric was such a powerhouse with his ideas, and he presented them in such a compelling way. Like I said, not only with these static concepts, but he would put together little animations for some of them to drive home, “This is what it is gonna look like in the game.” And they were so compelling. Even if you wanted to say no, it was very hard to do so because it’s like, “That is extremely cool.” His impact on the game grew and grew to the point where it went from me art directing, to me collaborating, to me saying, “Do your thing, Eric.” Look at that emblem incorporated there. And yes, Chris talking about how Jean Paul Gaultier and some of that kind of fashion design, and Eric was pretty keyed in on that and very good at taking that and applying it to video game characters, where he’s bringing this sci-fi couture that I don’t think anyone else on the team was capable of doing. He was perfect for it. Look at those character designs. And then you can see how he’s pulling out the assets so that those could be handed off to the team. That articulated armor on the arm and leg and boots, I love that. That’s amazing.

David Read:
It reminds me of Borg combined with Minas Tirith.

Howard Lyon:
And look at the faces on the shoulder plates on that left.

Katie Postma:
But you can imagine it… them closing and opening it, and it coming out like do, do, do, do.

David Read:
Carl and-

Katie Postma:
Retractable

David Read:
… and Shad Bradbury and Irene Matar.

Howard Lyon:
Irene.

David Read:
… and Eric Johnson would’ve gone nuts with some of this stuff.

Howard Lyon:
The animation crew was wonderful. Irene was talented.

Katie Postma:
She still is

Howard Lyon:
But on Dan’s segment, showed that sculpture that Irene created. I believe that is what she’s doing primarily now, is doing sculptures. I could be wrong there.

David Read:
She was with Pixar, I think. Almost all of them went to Pixar sooner or later. And then not all of them are there anymore.

Katie Postma:
She was with Pixar.

David Read:
They figured out what they wanted.

Howard Lyon:
Phenomenally skilled artists that were working in the animation group.

David Read:
What we’re seeing here is different armor sets for the male and female of each race at different tier levels. So, for the lay in the audience who’s never touched an MMO, what’s going on for progression?

Howard Lyon:
Clarify that a little bit, David. Do you mean why the increase of complexity?

David Read:
Why are things increasing in complexity?

Howard Lyon:
When you start the game, and this is common to a lot of MMOs or common to a lot of video games, you don’t get to hold Excalibur right out of the gate. You usually start with a little wooden sword or something like that. And you slowly progress. And one of the challenges with Goa’uld was they’re already advanced. They’re already… It’s not like you’re starting out as a peasant who eventually saves the world. But we wanted some sophistication to their fashion and to their look and design, and then go from there and amplify it and add to it to make it more and more complex. It was a real challenge. If you start out of the gate — no pun with Stargate there — if you start out of the gate with very high fashion, and then you need to take it even further, but Eric was capable of doing that.

David Read:
It’s nuts. Absolutely. Now, story-wise, it’s the end of Season Eight. The Goa’uld that we know have been defeated, and so they had to, from a story perspective, create a new branch of them that had not been discovered. That’s why they had the excuse and the blessing from Brad to, “Hey, go in this direction here.” This reminds me so much of Mystique.

Howard Lyon:
What cool silhouettes were created with these concepts. I love that. Look at the boots. Very different lines that are created, and then the bulkiness of the jacket, the blazer that character is wearing. Often throughout military history, that silhouette is very important. Get the broad shoulders and the epaulets, and you think of Napoleon’s hat and that sweeping shape. And I know that, at least if I’m remembering right, Eric was looking at military uniforms and that, and then taking them and adding this fashion sense to them. I really love that.

David Read:
They’re gonna clean up with style. Oh, man. Look at that. Really beautiful designs. There’s a couple of these I’ve never seen. Man.

Howard Lyon:
Look at that. What a cool… See, this would’ve been an amazing cosplay for someone to put together.

Katie Postma:
They all would have been.

Howard Lyon:
They all would’ve been really fantastic. Like on any video game, time is money, and Eric was producing these so fast. Sometimes these would be one to two days of work to put out some of these concepts. There’s file after file after file of these, breaking them out. So, he was working at a breakneck pace.

David Read:
Some people might have probably felt like they were standing still next to him. It would be a little bit intimidating if you’re not really all that sure of yourself. Did you have people who felt like they had this imposter syndrome that you had to assure, “Hey, you’re here for a reason.”

Howard Lyon:
You know what? I do feel like-

David Read:
How much of your position was as a teacher and as a bit of a counselor?

Howard Lyon:
Like I said before, we had a lot of people right out of school. But I feel like those that were veterans were grateful for people like Eric that were producing so quickly. And those that were new were also grateful because they were learning. They were able to see someone that was doing this incredible body of work, contributing to the game. That’s a killer design.

David Read:
Man, neck armor.

Howard Lyon:
That’s very cool. I love that. Often you get to games where the man is in the full plate armor, and the woman has-

Katie Postma:
A bikini.

Howard Lyon:
A bikini and very exposed. And Eric created-

David Read:
It’s the same rating, though.

Howard Lyon:
The armor somehow functions the same. But Eric was very good about creating these armor sets that were applied regardless of gender in the same way, but making them-

Katie Postma:
And that were real

Howard Lyon:
… so that they felt very feminine, very masculine at the same time. Or androgynous. That, I think, was beautifully done. Look at that. That’s cool.

Katie Postma:
Very.

Howard Lyon:
What a fun trip down memory lane.

David Read:
When you look back on this project, is it equal parts satisfaction and sadness? Because I can tell you right now, Howard, I never would have thought 20 years ago that all of this work that you guys created was essentially being created for my channel.

Katie Postma:
For Amazing.

David Read:
In some respects, to archive it, that’s really bizarre: that our group were really the ones who got to appreciate it, the creators, and Katie, and myself, and the others in the marketing team. How does that make you feel?

Howard Lyon:
I have such mixed feelings over the game, overwhelmingly of joy and great memories because of the people that I worked with on it, and I’m very proud of the work that was done for it. I think the part that makes me sad is that it didn’t have to happen that way. The game should have been released. The pieces were in place. The hard work was done. Everything was there.

Katie Postma:
We were right there

Howard Lyon:
Yeah, we were right on the edge of being able to do this and make this project happen. And seeing how hard people worked. Seeing how hard the team worked on it, as I said at the very beginning, I told Dan I would not do crunch time, and I wasn’t gonna work 80 hours a week on the game. And for the most part, I held to that. But a lot of the team made a lot of sacrifices and worked very long hours, and I admire the team so much and the work that they did on this. Scott, our technical artist, did so much heavy lifting on the game.

Katie Postma:
Oh my gosh, Scott Hill.

Howard Lyon:
Jacob, who did so much work-

David Read:
Jake Johnson.

Howard Lyon:
… so much on the project. And think about the work that everyone did. And Ron Bravo, who was working hard, feet in both the technical area and then on the art side as well. I don’t use the word “deserved”; that’s not the right word, but man, I wish that this would’ve been released for everyone and the hard work that they did on the-

David Read:
That’s right

Howard Lyon:
… game. And it didn’t need to… It should’ve happened. I don’t know how much… I know you’ve talked a little bit about it in the previous interviews, but there was-

David Read:
We’re talking about what everyone is willing to talk about.

Howard Lyon:
That mismanagement of the hard-earned resources, the money and the financing. And I wasn’t in the meetings where decisions were made, and honestly, from what I understand, our good friends that did their best to make this project happen, they weren’t necessarily in those meetings either where the decisions were made, where money that was supposed to go to this game went other places. And I don’t know if this should be in this video or not, but about a year after I left, the IRS knocked on my door.

Katie Postma:
No.

Howard Lyon:
And they showed their badges. They were from the criminal division of the IRS. And I open the door, and there’s two agents on my doorstep, and they showed their badges, and they said, “Are you Howard Lyon?” And I, “I am.” And they said, “We’d like to talk to you. As far as we know, you’ve done nothing wrong.” And I’m like, “Oh my goodness.”

Howard Lyon:
I think they quickly could tell that I was this—

Katie Postma:
That you’re not a criminal mastermind

Howard Lyon:
… dumb artist working on the game. But they did. They interviewed me and asked me about the project and the people that I worked with, and that was quite the experience I had.

Katie Postma:
That’s so unfortunate.

Howard Lyon:
I honestly don’t know what that means for people involved with securing financing for the game and that sort of thing.

David Read:
It’s disappointing.

Katie Postma:
It feels like for the timing, that was at the stage where there was some recoup happening, like desks and chairs—

David Read:
Itemizing.

Katie Postma:
So, it could have been part of that, “Let’s see what he’s got maybe,” ’cause they were trying any way they could to claw back whatever to try to give some satisfaction to anybody who felt the pain of that mismanagement that was outside the team—is the best way to say it.

Howard Lyon:
They recruited money heavily from the local community there.

Katie Postma:
Friends and family and associates.

Howard Lyon:
So, I had a few people that approached me and said, “Whoa, this looks like it’s gonna make a lot of money.” My response to them was, “Don’t do it,” even though—

David Read:
Really?

Howard Lyon:
… I was working on the game. Yeah, I said, “Don’t do it.” Not because I didn’t believe in Stargate Worlds, but because I had worked in the video game industry for quite a while, and I knew how difficult it was to make a successful game that paid money out.

Katie Postma:
And you care about your relationships with those people. If it’s a stranger, it’s very different than if it’s your Aunt Linda, who’s gonna be able to now never talk to you again at Thanksgiving.

Howard Lyon:
They still put money in. So, I’d have them come to me every once in a while, and they’re like, “How’s it going on the game?” And wanna give updates and wanna do my best to make it good.

Katie Postma:
It breaks my heart because I know you said deserving’s not a good word, but it would’ve been so gratifying to see them get the credit and recognition they deserve.

David Read:
They deserved.

Katie Postma:
Wasn’t there something at E3, some piece of art that we won an award at E3? I thought it was a concept piece. In the hall when you’re coming out of E3, there’s that big long hall, and they have all these pieces of art. I thought there was something that we submitted that won.

Howard Lyon:
I don’t remember. I do remember what a fun experience that was. And I do remember showing up at E3, and we were standing there, a group of the artists, and I was with some of my friends that I had worked with at previous companies. And a bus drove by with Stargate Worlds art on it.

Howard Lyon:
And it was like, whoa, that’s crazy. And then one of the buildings had the Stargate art on the whole side of it.

Katie Postma:
On Figueroa.

David Read:
Was that E3 or San Diego Comic-Con?

Howard Lyon:
Yes.

Katie Postma:
No, at E-

Howard Lyon:
That was at Comic-Con. You’re right.

Katie Postma:
Comic-Con.

Howard Lyon:
Not E3.

Katie Postma:
But at E3-

Howard Lyon:
At Comic-Con.

Katie Postma:
… there was at E3, when you’re walking up Figueroa from the Staples Center, I don’t know what it’s called now, there was a banner on one of the buildings as well.

Howard Lyon:
Very cool.

Katie Postma:
I’m pretty sure.

Howard Lyon:
That was a great experience.

Katie Postma:
It was surreal.

David Read:
Wild to have that.

Howard Lyon:
Getting to have lunch with Richard Dean Anderson and then doing that panel was a blast.

Katie Postma:
That was Comic-Con.

Howard Lyon:
At Comic-Con.

Katie Postma:
What year did we decide that was, David? Was that ’08 or ’09? Eight.

David Read:
It’s ’08.

Howard Lyon:
’08.

David Read:
That’s for sure. No, ’cause Universe come out at ’09. But what do you remember about being on stage in Ballroom 20 in front of 4,500 people?

Katie Postma:
Sitting with Brad.

Howard Lyon:
That was nuts sitting there and feeling like the least qualified person to be on the stage with everybody as they were talking about the lore and everything.

Katie Postma:
It’s funny ’cause Chris and Dan say the same thing. Everybody that’s up there says the same thing. But you were all there for a really good reason.

Howard Lyon:
I remember one thing, and I had a good line at Comic-Con that made me happy. When it came to the question-and-answer point, someone asked the question, “Are you worried about being compared to World of Warcraft?” That then had 12 million concurrent players. And I said, “World of Warcraft can have their 12 million players because we will take the 40 million Stargate fans any day.”

Katie Postma:
Beautiful.

Howard Lyon:
And the crowd was like, “Oh,” ’cause there was-

Katie Postma:
It was beautiful.

Howard Lyon:
… a lot of Stargate people in there. And I was like, oh my gosh, I hope I didn’t embarrass myself or say something like that.

Katie Postma:
Fantastic.

Howard Lyon:
But that felt good.

David Read:
That’s a great response.

Howard Lyon:
It felt good in the group of people-

Katie Postma:
Perfect. Because-

Howard Lyon:
… because it was true, because we-

Katie Postma:
And that’s where we were drawing all our fans. We weren’t taking them from WoW. We weren’t going into heroes versus villains or anything. We were taking them from anywhere, I mean, that’s how I met David, was finding the fandom in every corner of the planet. And David was the glue… that was one of the glues that was holding them all together then and still obviously now. ‘Cause I knew that we didn’t need all the Stargate fans to be gamers, but we wanted to find gamers who were already Stargate fans.

Howard Lyon:
Already Stargate fans. That’s right.

Katie Postma:
That was really important to me, too. Because otherwise, you have fans coming in saying, “You should do this,” or, “There should be more of this.” Chris was so-

Howard Lyon:
Bullish

Katie Postma:
… so amazing with the story, being-

Howard Lyon:
He wanted it to be correct

Katie Postma:
… the driving force. ‘Cause I can go into WoW all day and kill 10 cats and get some pretty gear, and then kill 20 cats and get more pretty gear… There is excellent lore in Warcraft. I’m not saying there isn’t. But the story in Stargate Worlds was gonna drive everything. It’s what made the art so incredible to see when you knew the backstory and when you knew why things were the way they were, all the character art, everything. And I love when Chris talked about the art driving the story and driving the characteristics of the races as well, when he’d see it, and he’d be like, “This is their raison d’être” sometimes from having seen what was coming out of the art department.

Howard Lyon:
There was such wonderful collaboration on that project. Speaking about Chris, Chris appreciated that I recognized that creative needed to drive the development of the game. Because it was story. That’s what was going to make the game great, was the story. And that it was our job in the art department to honor what was being done by the creative team. And we had the good fortune of working with someone like Chris and with Steve and Sean and that whole team, where they were so responsive to what the art department was doing. And sometimes the art would sculpt what creative was doing. But more often than not, it was creative that was directing what we were doing. And making sure that in turn was gonna be right for the fans of Stargate, that it was gonna add to the story, that it was gonna add to the development of the world in a cohesive and satisfying way. But I never felt like I was taking the backseat to creative. I always felt like it was such a good partnership. And I would say the same thing with engineering. Demetrius was always wanting to do what he could to support the efforts of the art department. And when I first got to Stargate, this is one instance, and I went to then the technical lead, and I don’t remember who it was — and I won’t say — and I said, “I would like to have access to vertex colors on the project.” A very rudimentary aspect of 3D environments is you can use vertex colors. And I wanted it so that in the skybox we could create these very smooth and beautiful gradients in the sky without having massive textures on them, and we don’t need to get too far into the weeds on it. But he said, “No.” Said, “We’re not doing that.” And I was like… “Oh.”

Katie Postma:
The mind shutting. You can hear the mind going…

Howard Lyon:
It was like, chunk, closed. And there was nothing I could really do about it. And then Demetrius came and I thought, “I’m gonna ask about it again.” And go over to Demetrius’ office and he’s working away, sip of Starbucks. “Demetrius, can we do vertex colors?” “Yeah.” And that was it. He’s like… “Yeah,” worked that in, and then we had access to it. And I always felt that great support from the engineering team as well. Once he took the reins.

Katie Postma:
Every team-

David Read:
That’s so cool

Katie Postma:
… all feathered in so nicely.

Howard Lyon:
It really did.

David Read:
I’ve been really looking forward to talking with you about this guy.

Howard Lyon:
Ah, yeah.

Katie Postma:
There he is.

David Read:
Tell me about Ra.

Howard Lyon:
There were a lot of characters where, as the art director, I knew that I wanted to do everything. That’s my nature on these projects. I get excited about it and I’m like, “Ooh, I wanna do that. I wanna do this.” But obviously that isn’t practical. And the project would’ve suffered for it as well if I had hogged all of the things to do. But Ra, I was like, “OK, I need to work on Ra.” And I had a blast working on this character. Imagine, design a god. Design this incredible, important, one of the oldest Earth deities from mythology. Powerful influence among other mythologies, and come in and do this character. One of the important things was to define what the silhouette was gonna look like, and that’s what we’re looking at here. And we would design these external silhouettes, and this came from Eric’s influence on the project of working out these silhouettes. And I would work on what is the shape of Ra gonna look like, because we wanted to know that we could recognize him even if he wasn’t, even if we couldn’t see the color and texture, that the character would recognize Ra immediately in the game once they knew what he looked like. So, we would do all of these silhouette studies. And then we would take him among the art department and talk about him, and then we would take them to creative and get that input from him. And then once we had discerned what the appropriate silhouette was, then we would flesh it out. So, this was the first step in the process of developing that character.

Katie Postma:
That’s a great start.

David Read:
He’s magnificent.

Katie Postma:
Everybody would bring their own experience with Ra-

David Read:
Their personality

Katie Postma:
… to it.

Howard Lyon:
It’s so fun. Do you have the finished rendering of him?

David Read:
We’re getting to him.

Howard Lyon:
OK. Nice. Don’t wanna jump ahead too much.

Katie Postma:
Spoilers.

Howard Lyon:
That’s cool. This being the Sun God-

David Read:
Might be dark. Look at that.

Howard Lyon:
… that was always important to have the illuminated background behind him that evoked that. And not turning him into a half-animal, half-man deity, which you see with Jaffa, which you see a lot of Egyptian mythology, but conveying that through the silhouette. Having that sense of the snake heads, the tentacles, having those forms so that it confused his human form, that made him feel more than human, which was appropriate for a deity. Important for Ra. A lot of those considerations came into play, the scaly nature of some of his costuming as well.

Katie Postma:
Anybody who had come from the film into the series and not seen him since would be immediately sucked right back into that moment where he’s the whole second half of the film, and he’s—man, oh, man. It pulls you right back into any feeling you had when you saw Stargate for the first time. If it was the film, this would evoke all of that.

Howard Lyon:
And trying to create something that is both intimidating and terrifying, but beautiful, that you couldn’t look away, but also do so with some real humility out of fear.

David Read:
It’s like sunshine. It’s like the sun is God. It’s a metaphor for God. It is both beautiful and completely destructive.

Katie Postma:
I loved that about the show, and I was gonna love this about the game. I loved how it explained and yet somehow also honored every god that we can have, not just on our planet, but any planet where there’s anybody being worshiped that could have originated from a Stargate. Whether it was for good or bad or whatever. You could still get into all of these. And the ancient Egyptians obviously was amazing, but we also had Loki and Odin. And you had every religion that you could investigate and revel in it a little bit. I don’t know if that’s the right word. But really sink your teeth into what makes us fear them, what makes us love them, what makes us reverential. All those things.

David Read:
Kill for them.

Katie Postma:
I love that.

Howard Lyon:
That is one of my-

David Read:
As a species

Howard Lyon:
… favorite things about the Stargate universe is it provides this explanation of our mythologies. And does so in a very satisfying way. I really love that. It’s one of the things that captured my imagination from the very first movie. And I love how that got developed out in SG-1 and where we were going with it in Stargate Worlds. Because the mythologies are powerful, and they come from somewhere. They come from human experience and imagination.

Katie Postma:
It could be more true than we even know. It could be so accurate.

Howard Lyon:
They are rooted in both the desire of humanity to explain natural phenomena. If you like, read Ovid’s Metamorphoses and all of the great stories that are there. There’s roots that are identifiable, but then there’s these aspects of this pantheon of gods from Norse mythology and Babylonian and Egyptian and Greek that have these similar ties that come together, that you can’t help but let your mind, your imagination leap forward. And Stargate does that in such a satisfying way.

Katie Postma:
But it also would explain any technological leaps in advancement from the time. But also the disappearances of some of these ancient civilizations that we’ve supposedly had. That just vanished. Where did they go? Walking through a Stargate would make a lot of sense.

Howard Lyon:
Yes.

David Read:
Deep inside of the Earth or at the bottom of the ocean or under it. There’s so much history that is lost.

Katie Postma:
Antarctica.

David Read:
It’s a jungle.

Howard Lyon:
I’m on board.

David Read:
It’s just having a cold spell.

Katie Postma:
That’s interesting.

David Read:
I have to call out the cross-section here.

David Read:
Because-

Howard Lyon:
I was hoping you would.

David Read:
So, whose idea was it to have some fun here, honestly?

Howard Lyon:
Just like a little slab of meat with the bone and bone marrow exposed and-

David Read:
As if he was literally cut open.

Howard Lyon:
Dissect Ra to produce that. I think I have to give credit to Eric on that. I think he did it on one of the concepts or something like that.

David Read:
That’s clever

Howard Lyon:
“Ah, that’s too fun, so I’m gonna put it in there.” I think that’s where that came from, was Eric.

Katie Postma:
That’s funny.

Howard Lyon:
I don’t remember doing that myself. Maybe it was, but I’ll give Eric credit for that.

David Read:
The Straegis was our big bad. The other one. The big reveal — 99% certain — was that we were gonna hold off that they were Furling until the game was released and people had a chance to play it and find out for themselves.

Katie Postma:
That’s what you were saying in-

David Read:
Tell me about-

Katie Postma:
That was-

David Read:
Pretty sure, because that was… I remember it being-

Katie Postma:
Gonna be one of those things that was locked down.

David Read:
… there was no word spoken about that.

Katie Postma:
That was in the vault.

David Read:
But tell me about creating these guys. I wanna insert before we really get into it that crystal technology is very much a part of the Stargate lore. And these things are crystal-based, and crystals are grown. Tell me about what you remember about the Straegis.

Howard Lyon:
Some of the things that we were tasked with is that while they would have some elements of a humanoid figure, you can see a head, torso, and arms. But they weren’t going to animate in a human way. And they could do things like turn 180 degrees by flipping their elements. They didn’t have to remain intact.

David Read:
Each piece would turn around.

Howard Lyon:
… as a body. The pieces could turn around, and they could separate and come back together. And the hope was that when they animated, there would be these little pieces orbiting each other that were coalesced around this central torso and head and feel like the most alien of any of the creatures that we were gonna have in the game because you couldn’t really even tell how they were held together. What are these forces that are allowing them to levitate and have all of these chunks that were held together by these forces? And Eric did some beautiful concepts on it. I did a little bit of work on this race as well, and then the animation team really did some beautiful work on bringing that vision to life. So, this was our most alien of all of the creatures, for sure. They go, “Oh.” Great work by Eric on this. Love it. It looks like Deadpool down there in the foreground or something. I love that palette.

David Read:
The menace in that thing. All different kinds of energy fields, and God knows what’s going on.

Howard Lyon:
They look like they’re this, like you said, this crystal biology that they were based on, and then held together by these forces. But then they were spewing out these colorful clouds of smoke that were emanating from them.

David Read:
Like an exhaust.

Katie Postma:
But they also had help with tech, like with plating. It seems to evoke magnetism and-

David Read:
This is their backside.

Howard Lyon:
And they were floating at the same time in the space that they were in, spewing out whatever this force was that was keeping them alive and together.

Katie Postma:
That’s very cool.

Howard Lyon:
Some very cool designs in there. As they were being developed, I was imagining, you pull out your P90 and you’re facing a Straegis and you shoot at it-

Katie Postma:
Nothing happens.

Howard Lyon:
… and most of the bullets go right through it.

Howard Lyon:
Because there’s all of that empty space between its parts and the rest.

David Read:
It’s true.

Katie Postma:
And they don’t even blink.

Howard Lyon:
Don’t even blink.

David Read:
You’d have to load a lot of ammunition into it to even get any kind of a hit count. And even if you hit it, you didn’t hurt it.

Howard Lyon:
Very cool characters. Very menacing.

Katie Postma:
I see they’re passing through or bouncing off.

Katie Postma:
How do you shoot at smoke?

Howard Lyon:
That last one, I love how colorful they are, but at the same time, dark and menacing.

Katie Postma:
This is where Lost got-

David Read:
You wanna talk about dark and menacing. This smoke monster?

Katie Postma:
… its idea for the smoke monster from this.

David Read:
That’s it. I’m pretty sure Christopher came up with the name Straegis. And one of the things that I remember distinctly, I wanna go on record here, is when he went up to Vancouver-

Katie Postma:
With Brad.

David Read:
… Brad and Rob were trying to figure out how committed he was to the word Straegis. It’s one of the things, Katie, you and I didn’t ask him about specifically in terms of the origins of that name. Hopefully we’ll have him back and ask that. But Brad and Rob were very much like, “We’ve never done the Titans. How about you call them the Titan? Maybe these are the Titans.” And I remember him considering it. I wasn’t long for Stargate Worlds after that, but they could easily have been the Titans.

Howard Lyon:
Interesting. I think if we had gone with the Titans, thinking of the Titans from Greek mythology, I would’ve wanted to push them into a very different visual realm because there’s some great descriptions of the Titans from Greek mythology. Whereas with a new word like that, with this new race and new look, it did allow us to explore things without any baggage. We didn’t have any-

Katie Postma:
It didn’t force you into an aesthetic.

Howard Lyon:
And it’s not that these couldn’t have been the Titans. I think I would’ve pushed back from “Well, that’s not what the Titans would be like.” But they certainly could’ve been the Titans.

David Read:
One of the few characters that is mentioned by name in the beats, the story beats, is Queen Anat. This is her here. I always remember… what an intimidating face. Look at that.

Howard Lyon:
Look at those crazy eyes. It looks almost like tears, black tears running out from-

David Read:
She’s ugly crying.

Katie Postma:
But it’s so very-

David Read:
Or enraged

Katie Postma:
… it’s so very reminiscent of Stargate lore. All of it. Wow.

David Read:
It fits in.

Howard Lyon:
And look at the motion that Eric had in this static concept. Even her hair has a flip to it. We caught her mid-stride with the wind blowing.

Katie Postma:
Don’t mess with her.

David Read:
She’s literally levitating. No, I wouldn’t-

Katie Postma:
You wouldn’t get out of her way.

Howard Lyon:
When you zoom in on this, I think one of the strengths that Eric had as a concept artist on this game was he never did more work than was needed to convey the information that was gonna be needed to create the textures and the models.

Katie Postma:
It’s very Chanel of him.

Howard Lyon:
And then would just move right on. My comparison would be to John Singer Sargent, the incredible portrait artist. One of the aspects that made Sargent so brilliant was how he simplified information. He would paint hair of someone, and maybe it’s done with two values and very large brushwork on it, but it was enough. You knew it was hair, you knew it was the shape. And Eric has that great ability too of condensing the detail where it needed to be, and then creating big, beautiful shapes, and that’s enough for the concept.

David Read:
Is the information being conveyed? If it’s conveyed, you move on.

Howard Lyon:
A lot of great brushwork in there.

David Read:
And man, look at that guy.

Howard Lyon:
Very-

Katie Postma:
OK, wait

Howard Lyon:
… cool characters.

David Read:
Experimental android.

Katie Postma:
I was gonna say, this is an android, but it’s meant to be… He’s not a helper.

David Read:
Oh no. He’s helping himself to some weaponry.

Katie Postma:
He’s not a Goa’uld, right?

Howard Lyon:
Was this-

David Read:
For sure

Howard Lyon:
… like Goa’uld tech? I don’t remember for sure.

David Read:
I believe so.

Howard Lyon:
Because the reason that I’m inclined to think that it could be related to the Asgard as well. Because look at the head of that sort of-

David Read:
Not this one

Howard Lyon:
… drone.

David Read:
Yes. But it’s very menacing.

Katie Postma:
Stolen tech maybe.

Howard Lyon:
Maybe so.

David Read:
It’s possibly, and messed with. Anubis had taken the Asgard technology too. It’s very possible that it has an Asgard root. But this is definitely sinister.

Howard Lyon:
You look at some of those-

David Read:
And look at that gun for crying out loud, geez.

Howard Lyon:
I know, the gun’s amazing. You look at some of the articulated armor there, and it calls back to that earlier concept we saw, one of the Goa’uld that we were talking about on the arm pieces. Has a similar visual vocabulary. Given that Eric did it, that wasn’t an accident. So, now I’m trying to remember how those two tied together.

David Read:
A felties. This is cool. Got a couple of kids in here, Blix and a felties. I don’t remember Blix’s story.

Howard Lyon:
Creepy little character. What great design. Look at that belt. That’s cool. It has the little square cartouches on there. For those out there, if you’re in game design and you’re looking at this, we were throwing so many ideas at the wall under the direction of the creative department in getting all of this out there. But I think that there can be a tendency to overwork concepts. One of the things that we did that I felt sped things up a lot is we created these base templates of each of the races, the male and female of each of the races. And then as we’d do concepts, everyone worked over the top of the same template, rather than reinvent the base figure every time in every concept, which I see done too often in video game development. And we did the same thing with the textures. For Tollana, we would create a set of base textures. Here’s the concrete for the world. Here’s the stone for the world. Here’s the grass for the world. And then whenever an artist was tasked to do something, create a new building asset or whatever, they had this pool of textures that they could take and apply to it. And it did a couple things. It sped up the process, but it also created a harmony in the color and the look of the world. To have everyone using foundation assets to build from to do the rest of the game. That’s not particularly groundbreaking. There are other development places that do that, but I’m always surprised how many development houses don’t do that. And then you get 20 different kinds of concrete in a game. You get tree bark that is a different color temperature from one tree to the next that doesn’t really make sense with the color harmony of the world and the ambient light in the world. And that’s something that the team bought into early on, and it helped us immensely as we got down the road of making things look cohesive. So, it was a very valuable thing to do. If I ever did get back into games, it would be something that I would make sure that I did from day one.

David Read:
Absolutely. I want to take a quick pass at the Jaffa. One of the things that was definitely gonna be different about this game was the look of the Jaffa compared to a typical human. They were gonna be almost three times the size. Like a person would come up to about, I don’t know, his pinky here.

Howard Lyon:
These are four, five hundred pound-

David Read:
It was a design distinction. It didn’t take long for me to buy into that because it’s like, “OK, that’s clearly a Jaffa.” And then we move on. Because we can do stuff with the game that the show could not do, and I really embrace that as a fan. I thought that that was gonna be a really cool direction to go.

Howard Lyon:
The Jaffa were so fun because to me, I think back to the movie and seeing the headdresses.

David Read:
There are no Jaffa in the movie specifically, but yes.

Howard Lyon:
But basing it on that kind of design, seeing the headdress peel back, go forward. And when I first came into working on Stargate Worlds, that was from day one: “Oh, I can’t wait to see this. I can’t wait to see the articulated armor form and develop.” Getting to work on these characters tied me back into the original movie.

David Read:
Mr. T fan.

Katie Postma:
The Mr. T chain.

Howard Lyon:
That’s hilarious. That obviously had to have been a fun joke.

Katie Postma:
This one is so… This is one of the earliest character concepts that he showed.

David Read:
So beautiful.

Howard Lyon:
Beautiful design by Eric, and this is what Irene took and did the 3D sculpture of. What a great design that is. Again, very early on in the development. Such an intimidating… You look at the pictographs, the hieroglyphs, the Egyptian art, and you see the gods that are half creature and half human, and they exist in their space and are almost quaint when they’re drawn in that Egyptian style that we’re used to. But then when you stand in the game and they put on that headdress and they become nine feet tall, extremely intimidating and terrifying in the game. And then, in this concept, seeing other cultures. What if we add Mayan roots, what if we add Aztec roots and Nordic roots behind some of the creatures? I love seeing the designs, the variations here.

David Read:
Tier one, you gotta start off somewhere. And something very recognizable.

Howard Lyon:
And again, like we said, keeping the same amount of exposure between the male and female armor sets. And not falling into that trap.

Katie Postma:
That’s really good.

Howard Lyon:
Very cool designs. Stargate offered such a rich opportunity for artists to explore. And in the game, having that latitude with Brad’s blessing to expand the vocabulary that we were pulling from.

David Read:
He was all on board for it. He trusted Chris. He trusted you.

Katie Postma:
Deservedly so.

Howard Lyon:
A very nice man.

David Read:
It goes on and on, man.

Katie Postma:
We’re looking at things that are 20 years old, and think of the textures. Think of how far we’ve come in that amount of time to be doing this quality and caliber. It holds up. It’s incredible. It’s really incredible.

Howard Lyon:
The idea of being able to develop this world with tools like Unreal 5. With Nanite technology in the Unreal Engine and essentially unlimited polygons in the environment. Someone needs to do this. Someone needs to-

Katie Postma:
We’ve been saying it all along.

Howard Lyon:
… develop this game.

Katie Postma:
Let’s go.

Howard Lyon:
It’s the ultimate-

David Read:
Give ’em ideas

Howard Lyon:
… foundation for an MMO.

Katie Postma:
Let’s go.

David Read:
That’s true. That’s right.

Howard Lyon:
I love it.

Katie Postma:
Love it.

David Read:
Are you looking forward to the next Stargate series?

Howard Lyon:
So much. So much.

Katie Postma:
We need to have a watch party.

Howard Lyon:
I’d love that. I became a big fan, obviously, I was a fan of SG-1 before I worked on the game, and then was a fan of Atlantis, and then I felt Universe lost a little bit of it for me. There was a joy and an optimism in the other series that I felt it didn’t have in Universe. I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with the new series. I hope that it captures that again, where even with all the wars and challenges and destruction and intrigue and politics of the Stargate world, there was always this sense of humanity is moving forward and is gonna do wonderful things.

Katie Postma:
Hope. There was always hope.

Howard Lyon:
That’s right.

David Read:
That’s right. Even in the darkness at the edge of the universe, eventually.

Katie Postma:
I feel like you do, that SGU got a little bit away from that. I’ve talked to David about it before, that it didn’t resonate nearly the same way that SG-1 and Atlantis did, or that the game would’ve. So, I’m really keen to see what they’re gonna do with the next one.

Howard Lyon:
I love it. Is there a timeframe?

David Read:
They’re beginning filming in the fall. They’re still in production now. I’m hopeful maybe December 27– January 28, somewhere around there.

Howard Lyon:
Has there been casting? Sorry, Katie.

Katie Postma:
No.

David Read:
Nothing yet.

Katie Postma:
We were just gonna see if we know the title.

David Read:
Nothing yet. But I suspect we’ll be hearing… I’m not positive. I wouldn’t be surprised if they just go with Stargate, but it’s the fourth iteration. You want to… expand the tent as much as you can.

Katie Postma:
We’re all here for it.

David Read:
Don’t make it seem like you have to pick up the old ones. Make it seem like the old ones that came before are not required reading, but are now like, “Oh, now I wanna check this out because this interests me. What have I missed?”

Howard Lyon:
Katie, were you on Midway for that?

Katie Postma:
Yes.

Howard Lyon:
For the screening and the party?

Katie Postma:
Yes.

Howard Lyon:
My goodness. What a cool experience that was. And David I’m so happy that you were there as well.

David Read:
It was good to see you. That was a good night.

Howard Lyon:
That was a really fun night.

Katie Postma:
That was a great night.

Howard Lyon:
Seeing it projected up on the screen, seeing Christopher Judge looking up at it and being like… this is incredible, ’cause it opened a lot of people’s eyes to hear the music, hear Nick’s music, to see the visuals and realize the potential that that had.

Katie Postma:
That was the problem, to get everyone into their seats, and you had two-thirds of the people in their seats, and then there was still a third trickling in. And then you heard the boop-boop-boop. Everybody who wasn’t already ready to get seated, it made them all turn and look and move.

David Read:
Great way to start.

Katie Postma:
That was such a proud moment.

Katie Postma:
We were all so-

David Read:
That was great.

Katie Postma:
… incredibly proud. That really made us all feel, as a team, that we were part of the Stargate family.

Howard Lyon:
100%. They-

Katie Postma:
That crossover was-

David Read:
… really were great.

Katie Postma:
… really fun.

David Read:
Howard-

Katie Postma:
Really exciting.

David Read:
… this has been great to see you. We see each other at cons every now and then, but to finally sit down and say, “OK, now we’re going to catch up.” “Now we’re going to hear that story,” this was a blessing. Thank you.

Howard Lyon:
Wonderful. Loved it. Thank you for having me. Loved chatting with you both. I consider you both great friends and after all this time to b e able to pull some things out of the recesses of my brain and remember all these beautiful positive things, the people that I got to work with… really wonderful. So, thank you very much.

Katie Postma:
I love him so much.

David Read:
Howard’s amazing! A wealth of resources, this guy.

Katie Postma:
He has more talent in the fingernail on his pinky than everyone I think I’ve ever met in my entire life. But so humble and so lovely and generous and giving.

David Read:
That’s right. He’s so natural.

Katie Postma:
But so talented.

David Read:
It comes forth out of him. It’s so instinctual. I would sit… His fine art… I’m gonna do a brief montage of his art here, because it’s nuts!

Katie Postma:
Blows your mind.

David Read:
We didn’t talk at all about his fine art. There’s no time. The classes that he’s taught and… Man.

Katie Postma:
Do you remember when you realized who he was? He was the art director and he came on to be on the team, and he was doing all this incredible stuff. But then do you remember the moment somebody whispered to you, “You know who Howard Lyon actually is?” And we had the internet at that time, so we could look it up.

David Read:
Started poking around.

Katie Postma:
And suddenly you’re like, “Oh, holy Diana.”

David Read:
I would go to bookstores in the area and see his art for sale. And I was like, “Oh, wow. I get it.” This guy. He’s painted in churches and everything else. And he’s created stuff for Magic: The Gathering. This juxtaposition is…

Katie Postma:
His Magic: The Gathering stuff.

David Read:
He does anything! He’s crazy. So, absolutely, we’re so lucky.

Katie Postma:
That’s how I got my kids to be impressed, is I whipped out a couple of his cards and went, “I know the guy that drew these.” They were like, “You do?” “Yeah, he works down the hall.”

David Read:
Katie.

Katie Postma:
Yeah.

David Read:
These are gonna be a treat.

Katie Postma:
That was fun. That was really fun.

David Read:
I am so thankful to have you on this journey.

Katie Postma:
I love you.

David Read:
I love you. Let’s do more.

Katie Postma:
OK. Let’s do it.

David Read:
Those folks were awesome. I’m so thrilled to be able to bring this content to you guys week after week. My name is David Read. You’re watching the Stargate Oral History Project. If you like Stargate and you wanna see more, click that Like button. It does help with the show’s growth. Please also consider sharing the video with a Stargate friend. And if you wanna get notified about future episodes, click subscribe. My Patreons, you guys are amazing. I am the best example of hubris, and then deciding that, “You know what? I’m gonna go and ask for help,” and then being affirmed in that help to the point where, “You knucklehead, let us help lift you up,” is basically the message that I have gotten. So, thanks to all of you who have provided that to me. It means so much to have every single one of you on board so that I can bring this project to you week after week. We’ve got a number of shows continuing to head your way while I am AFK. And hopefully I’ll have some recorded content for you when I come back. There’s a lot in the hopper right now. DialTheGate.com has the complete schedule while I’m gone, so be sure to check it out. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. I appreciate you tuning in, and I’ll see you on the other side.

Howard Lyon:
Hi, I’m Howard Lyon. I’m the art director on Stargate Worlds. Dan Elggren contacted me about… I guess it was about a year ago, and asked me to do some background concepts for the game. And at that time, I was working as a freelance illustrator.

Carl Coss:
I have known Howard for 10 years, and we’ve worked together at a bunch of different studios. We even had a studio of our own for a little while there. That was good times.

Howard Lyon:
And I painted the poster for Stargate Worlds for some marketing stuff, and then I painted an interior. And then they asked me to do a 3D object. And at that point, Dan Elggren asked me to come in and asked me if I would be interested in taking a position at Cheyenne Mountain.

Carl Coss:
His sense of color is spot on. It’s amazing. And that’s what I love about his stuff the most, how the colors play off each other and how the saturation is really intense and all that kind of stuff.

Nick Heitzman:
He’s a native to Arizona, and I’m not. So, I moved here. And they have scorpions here, and my kids love to hunt scorpions. But we hadn’t really figured out a good way to do so. And Howard recommended this cool flashlight that you can get that has three different settings of basically blacklight. So, now that we have that, we’re able to mimic what Howard does regularly, which is he can go out with the blacklight and watch these scorpions glow and then smash them with sticks. If it wasn’t for Howard, we’d probably still be banging around in the dark.

Carl Coss:
He loves babies and brushes his teeth regularly. And in the time that I’ve known him, he’s never once killed a man… No, never. Never.

Howard Lyon:
One of my favorite things about Stargate is that each gate that you go through is a completely different world. It may be that you go through a gate and it’s very high-tech, sci-fi, out there, thousand years from our own technology. Or it could be that you go into a very medieval village where they have a cathedral and half-timber homes. Or a completely different, completely alien world from anything that we’re used to. So, artistically, really there are no limits as to what you can do and what you can introduce into the Stargate world. Most of the time that I spend here, I try and spend it painting and concepting. I find that, as an art director, the easiest way to direct is to actually provide an example. I don’t always get the chance to do that for meetings and scheduling and organization. But most of the time, that’s what I try and do. When I’m not doing that, where I can, I’ll offer input and help to members of the team. Fortunately, we have a very talented team, and I don’t often have to leave my desk to give feedback because things go pretty smooth from the get-go. Is it frozen? It’s frozen and covered in snow, so he’s gonna be half-buried in the snow and all that kind of stuff. We’ll need something with high contrast. I guess with any group of artists, a lot of times you’re gonna have visions that differ. And it’s my job to try and make it look like the game was done by one artist. And I think that’s the most challenging part of the job, trying to figure out how to let individuals grow in their artistic development and to really encourage that. But at the same time, trying to apply a singular vision to the game for the visuals. You wonder a little bit, am I imposing my personal opinion or am I doing what’s best for the game? And I always try and do what’s best for the game. These are more like eagle wings, but I would think more like dragonfly wings. They’d be really delicate and light.

Artist:
You can see right through them. And this is like man-made wings instead of dragonfly wings.

Howard Lyon:
A game-development cycle is a lot like working on a painting, where you start out with, a lot of times, a written description of what you want for the illustration, and then you do a concept for it. In games, you have the game-design document, and then you have a concepting round. And there’s a lot of energy and a lot of excitement right at that first stage. And then you’re deciding the colors and the look and the feel. And the whole middle part of the process, both on a painting and game development, is the meticulous part of game development and the meticulous and sometimes tedious part of doing a painting. Where you’ve painted the first few bricks, and that was fun deciding what they were gonna look like, but now you have a thousand more to paint to finish up the painting. What I’m looking forward to most after we exit that part of the process is where you get to tweak and you get to polish. That last 10% really brings up the quality of the game and the look of the game. And I always look forward to anticipate that part of development, whether it be in a painting or whether it be in game development.

Carl Coss:
He brings experience and efficiency, but also an amazing look and sort of that potential for a really, really classic-looking game.

Howard Lyon:
I always find myself growing because I get to know people a little bit better. I really enjoy working with people. I find the people that I work with here fascinating and fun. I’ve always found that when I come out of an experience or an opportunity like this, that’s where I have a lot of growth. In other areas, artistically, because of the variety of worlds that Stargate provides, it provides a lot of opportunity for artistic growth where I am given the opportunity to really push myself and do things that I might not normally have painted, I might not normally have thought of to work on.