Andrzej Sapkowski is a Polish fantasy novelist best known for creating the Witcher book series, which inspired a popular video game and TV series. He came in third place in a writing competition in the 1970s with a short story that was a precursor to the Witcher series. Sapkowski went on to write several successful fantasy novels and win numerous awards for his work. He is seen as an inspiration for his ability to craft detailed fictional worlds and characters.

1. As a start I wanted to start with a writer who helped to form the world of the
Witcher book series because this is a sort of deep and dark version of fantasy, to
me his writing allowed for the growth of the video games to then become a video
game and even further into the future have made a season of a new TV series and
all of this had started with Andrzej Sapkowski a Polish fantasy novelist and his
books have been translated into twenty different languages meaning it had a
massively great reception and the same goes for all of the games. He was born on
21st June 1948 and then he studied economics at the university of Łódź and
before trying his hand at being a novelist he was a senior sales representative.
The first time he wrote a short story was for a competition where he wrote a
part of the Witcher series can be roughly retranslated in to the hexer or spell
maker. The competition was in a magazine called Fantastyka in which he came in
3rd place, as he knew how to sell his short stories. Andrzej Sapkowski is also well
known for another book series called the Hussite Trilogy. He has won an array of
awards ranging from. World fantasy award- life achievement, which he won for
the Witcher Saga through to European Science Fiction Society he entered the hall
of fame as an author. The only thing that I found quite negative about Andrzej
Sapkowdki is that he sold all the rights to cd projekt red and got mad because he
wasn’t paid that much even though he came up with the original idea, but I do
Think that the issue has been healed by now.

2. Andrzej Sapkowski, is a great inspiration to me because of his creation of the
fantastic series called the Witcher, which is a fantastic fantasy novel, which has
all sorts of different characters with tonnes of detail poured into each character
and location which is something I want to be able to do with my designs and
writing to go a long with the designs I make to give them an extra level of
comprehension which I haven’t tried to add to my previous projects which I
believe would take my designs to a new level. Where I would be able to further
distinguish what my designs were depicting and trying to convey to the viewer
whether it be desolate or lush and green scenery, or scarred war heroes, to
kindly engineers. With a skill set like Andrzej Sapkowski I would be able to do
this easily, but I will need to put some work into it as my writing is not to firbose
when it comes down to details that you could miss or are missing from the image
such as temperament of a character and how they would think.

3. I believe though that Andrzej Sapkowski paved the way for this series as both a
game series and a hopeful tv series for the video games it was Konrad
Tomaszkiewicz who was the director of the Witcher 3 Wild hunt and all of its
DLC (CD Projekt Red, 2016 - 2018) and he was also part of the crew for the
original Witcher game there is very little written about him except for all of the
games that he has worked which in all honesty just involves Witcher projects
meaning he only has a lot of experience with in the fantasy genre. So with his
next job I don’t think it will be as easy for him as the Witcher was because him
and his team are now working on cyber punk 2077(CD Projekt Red, 2020) which
has been set back a few times already.

4. In an Interview witch CR Gamers Club, Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, where he
directly said that the hardest bit about creating the game was the nerves of
whether he had made the right decision as a director and he also found it difficult
to handle the pressure this tells us quite a bit about him though he is a good
leader of the group and he can also be quite anxious when it comes down to his
work being up to scratch for both fans and CD Projekt Red offices.
Like Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, I would like to be able to do a wide variety of jobs
like this guy has; he has been a successful writer, designer and director but the
main ideas I would like to take the designer part of his job success because I
believe that I need to improve my designs to also convey more information just
through the imagery because at the moment I can barely convey anything apart
from that the character is a character and the place is a place. I want to get more
out of my designs however also the other reason for having him as an inspiration

5. is because he was a part of Witcher games which are incredibly similar to what I
want to make it has the fantasy that I want in my game the monsters and it is set
in the medieval era, this is a game series that I will be looking at in the research
further.
I believe that when I look at inspiration for video games I believe that people like
Mick Gordon (Composers), are important to look at because even though I will
be looking at what Mick Gordons music compliments the designs of Doom and
also some other games he has worked on as well. To start though Mick Gordon
was born in 1985 and he has done work on games such as DOOM, Wolfenstein,
Prey and Killer Instinct. His first job was a sound designer job for Pandemic
Studios, where he did work on DESTROY ALL HUMANS 2. According to his
website he uses a broad variety of techniques as to not be constrained from
doing any specific genre and he makes the music to translate what the world is
like rather than what composers usually do which is to create an accompaniment
to the world.

6. Mick Gordon has had a fantastic career where he has won 6 awards for his
composition and sound design three of these awards were awarded for the
DOOM soundtrack and he had also been nominated for yet another six different
awards, these awards range from Best Audio, Best Original Song, Best Music/
Sound Design, Excellence in Musical Score and Outstanding Achievement in
Original Music Composition. When it comes down to his works I am going to pick
DOOM because it is the only one I have played that he has composed, his music

7. fits perfectly with in the game as he had said in an interview on how he made the
music he said that DOOM is a game that gets close up to your face and doesn’t
leave which he tried to replicate with the music which worked out for the game
and the fans with in my research I might go into more detail and actually use
some music from the game or from the most recent soundtrack.
Mick Gordon is a great inspiration in the way at how his music has somehow
integrated itself into the game rather than just being an accompaniment to the
game it is almost like its entirely own entity somehow making both a fantastic
soundtrack and it also makes the game run smother somehow as someone said
to me it is like the music and the footsteps are synched with in the game because
both the music and the gameplay itself is very fast paced, also in his interview he
had a great piece of advice which I plan on using, which was if you “change the
process you change the outcome” which is some great advice for me as I usually
just sick to one thing and stay with it for as long as possible. Also the game Doom
which he made his music for has some fantasy genre tones and also there are
monsters/ demons involved in the game which partially what I am going to try
and create a game which is like that.
Cory Barlog is yet another director who is a great inspiration he was born in
1975 and has worked on games such as X-Men, God of War and Tomb Raider. His
father is J.M. Barlog who is a fantasy novelist and Cory’ father was the writer who
wrote the novelization of god of war in 2018 and Cory wrote the foreword. Cory
Barlog’ first job in the industry was lead animator for Paradox Development and
he worked on the titles Backyard Wrestling: Don’t Try This at Home and X-Men:
Next Dimension. He went onto other jobs such as game director and storywriter
and as for awards he has won best game direction and overall game of the year
both in 2018 for the game God of War.

8. Cory Barlog in an interview with PlayStation Access talked about his recreation
of Kratos from God of War and put most of his development to the character was
due to personal experience and also that the character needed to move beyond
his revenge story with the Greek Gods. His personal experience that changed
Kratos was a child, with Kratos having a child he now has something to protect
and this would give him a new set of priorities. Which is fascinating because Cory
says that he put himself in the mind of the God of War machine and tried to
change it and somehow this was the most effective way for him to do that and
also tell a compelling story at the same time.

9. Cory Barlog during the same interview talked about some of the more technical
side of God of War as a start he talked about the camera and how it always used
to be a 3rd person view however they changed it so that the player feels closer to
Kratos to see everything he sees even if he wants to keep it a secret and then the
other technical side he changed was the control scheme because when the
camera changed they had to change everything including the control scheme for
the game to still make sense and also makes the user interface more friendly
because if they had kept the same control scheme as all of the other games it
would be very unfriendly for the user interface as it would be difficult to see with

10. the camera angle.
Cory Barlog is a great inspiration as a director but he has also done a lot of work
as a writer and as a lead animator, yet again though for Cory Barlog there is no
one specific area I want to really look at for him because it is his ideas that I am
more interested in. With his decisions when it came down to control schemes
camera angles and the story and character progressions it was all to make it feel
as if you were there as if you were Kratos to give you a feeling of immersion as if
you were a part of that story and you could change the stories outcome at will.
Everything Cory Barlog did though for the game was to make it way more
immersive than any of the past God of War games in the franchise and he also
made it feel much more inclusive and he gave it a different story to the rest of the
franchise and it somehow bought the game closer to home to a majority of the
fans of the series. However from the games I wish to take the fantasy setting and
the monsters and demons aspect because that is effectively more or less what I
want to involve mainly with in my game.

11. Todd Howard was born in either 1969 or 1970 his job roles have included video game
designer, director and producer. He works with Bethesda Studios, his inspirations include
role-playing games called Wizardry and Ultima III: Exodus. He tried to get into Bethesda
3 times on the first two times he was rejected and then was accepted in 1994 as a
producer. The first video game he worked on with Bethesda was called The Terminator:
Future Shock in 1995. He has also worked on all the Elder scrolls games ranging from
Daggerfall to Skyrim, and he has also worked on all the Fallout games from 3 to fallout
76 in 2018, which was one of the worst games Bethesda has released in years. Some of
his more popular video game beliefs was that Bethesda wanted to make Oblivion feel
welcoming but it lost some of what made the previous games fun to play such as the
exploration and discovery of new areas.
In an interview with GameSpot, Todd Howard talked about one of the better titles he has
worked on called Elder Scrolls V Skyrim. He said that Bethesda had changed their view
when it came down to different classes and different ways of playing the game because

12. in previous games they said that you had to select a race and a class as well, where-as
in Skyrim they made it so that you can pick your race at the beginning however your
combat skills will only go up as you use them so you can use whatever type of weapon
you want and same goes for magic and thuum shouts. So he had developed how fantasy
genre used classes and same goes for combat even though now it is quite a base idea
but Todd Howard was one of the people to make it very popular for video games at the
time.
Todd Howard is an inspiration to me but for a game he did quite a long time ago about 9
years ago I am of course talking about Skyrim, he was also involved in many jobs inside
of Bethesda he was a lead writer, lead designer and he was also a producer. What I want
to take from Todd though is his skill with the designing aspect and when it comes down
to the design I think that some of the best designs I have seen from Todd’ games are
from the elder scrolls games from Oblivion to Online Elsweyer which are all fantastic
games because the monsters designs were very individual in concept and I would love to
be able to create very new designs that had never been created before or in some
games they had created before and they were recycles. Even though when I talk about
these games Skyrim is the main game I am taking ideas from with its medieval roots,
Demons and monsters and it is an amazing fantasy game which I will probably talk more
about in my research.

13. Gilles Beloeil is a concept artist who works with Ubisoft in Montreal at the moment before
he has worked at Meteor Studios which is a lighting and VFX company for movies same
goes for Animal Logic where he has also worked and for the rest of his career he has
worked with Ubisoft. He has worked on movies such as Happy Feet and Fantastic Four
as for games he has worked on both the assassin’s Creed series and the For Honour
Game and DLC’. Gilles Beloeil started working with Ubisoft in 2007 and he teaches at
CGMA, which stands for CG master academy, and he has taught there since 2015. Gilles
Beloeil has also helped with a bunch of publications such as The Ultimate Concept Art
Career Guide and Digital Art Masters: Volume 7.

14. Gilles Beloeil officially started his career in 2002 with 4-elements studios in Montreal
Canada. From there he started to work on advertisements and then films and then video
games in the end. Gilles Beloeil uses multiple methods of concept art the most unique
one he uses is probably as a painting even though to an extent he sometimes does use
computer software such as Photoshop, Z-brush, Autodesk Softimage XSI, Digital Fusion,
Maya, Shake and Renderman. As well as this he had also somehow revolutionized the
3D piping effect of background images with innovative designs and he did this all with the
help of Alexandre Amancio when they were both working on the game FarCry 2.
Gilles Beloeil is yet another inspiration with his amazing concept art he is one of the more
interesting concept artists as he has an interesting way of creating concept art being that
he uses a lot of paint which is quite abnormal now as concept artists mainly use
computers and certain design software’. His main works are in the Assassin’s Creed
franchise, the main games I would like to take some inspiration from would be the Ezio
collection which Assassin’s Creed II, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood and Assassin’s
Creed Revelations. All of which were pretty much at the beginning of the franchise and it
was still an incredible revolutionary set of games for the times they were released, Gilles
Beloeil also uses some interesting painting techniques that I don’t understand but from
the Assassin’s Creed Games I would like to know his thought process in creating new
designs and also if he does work on software I would like to know his different design
processes. As for the games though I would like to take the designs for clothing and take
some of the more uncommon ideas such as a switchblade being attached to your
forearm.
In summary I plan on researching further into writing gripping stories, also I will be
researching production techniques and also design and art that are where I have been
letting myself down in previous projects. When I talk about gripping stories first of all I
need to come up with some form of moderation when it comes down to description and
tell the story instead and I will be researching on how to write like that properly. When I
talk about production techniques I want to research into one cut movies and video games
as they are almost impossible to do and I also want to research how music like Mick
Gordon’ worked so well with the video games as if it were synced up perfectly. When I
talk about design and art I would like to be able to research some sort of contrast
techniques and also some shading techniques because I feel as if I am missing that
aspect in my current projects. At this point in the course I am just trying to make
something that looks cool and can be classed as a comprehensive design for all of my
designs. The main reason why I want to create games though are because of games that

15. have already been made and I just want to be able to leave some sort of idea or product
that makes people enjoy the game and that they think about what the games meaning
was. As for the video game medium it is fantastic because instead of just telling you a
story you become a part of the story and if the game allows it you change the way the
story works, this works incredibly well because the games are almost like movies that
you actually have a say in what actually happens giving the viewer/ player more options
as to what they do how they do it and what ending they achieve The Witcher 3 is a great
example of this there are four or five small side stories in the main campaign which have
2 or three different endings each and then there is the arching story line which has three
different endings and the DLC also have about two or three different endings each.