Hey all, it’s time to learn more about who we are at Blueshift Interactive – starting with Luna. Let’s find out!

Who are you, and what do you do?

I’m Luna, the CEO and Technical Art Director here over at Blueshift Interactive, and I go by she/they pronouns. My job is to be the wearer of many hats – I keep things moving, solve problems daily, and also get my hands dirty in

How did you get started in game development?

A lot of people are often surprised to learn I got started when I was 9 years old with Game Maker! I was equally interested in film & animation, starting with stop-motion, and visual effects, but game development won out.

I remember the first moment the bulb lit up in my brain, holding a Nintendo DS for the first time, and wondering.. how did someone make this – how did they make these games? It sparked a life-long curiosity that I’m still digging into, and have no intention of letting up.

This curiosity let me down many paths, like moving onto learning Lua with the Love2D game engine to make small 2D games reminiscent of flash games we’d play in class when we were supposed to be studying.
I was given a book on game development in my early teens which gave me a lot of insight into the process, and sparked me to translate my interests in 2D art and apply them to 3D modelling; starting with Wings3D, and quickly moving to Maya.

I continued teaching myself from various books and making hobby projects.

What was your path into technical art?

Okay so this is a long one as it continues from my background.

This really continues on from my background – I had always loved art and programming equally. I started teaching myself Lua with the Love2D engine when I was 15, and I went to college to learn traditional art, mathematics, and software development.

In college I went onto study mathematics, fine art, and software development – but I continued to teach myself 3D modelling and Lua.
I needed more however, so I convinced my tutor to allow me teach myself hardcore C++, instead of Pascal, and use Lua for my assignments.
I was obsessed with applying everything I was learning to game development in my own time, leading myself to learn OpenGL, forming the foundation of my rendering knowledge.

I had to pick my bachelor’s degree @ Teesside University, leaving me with a hard decision; Computer Games Programming or Computer Games Art.
Computer Games Art ended up being the more fun option – I’d had enough of being in boring learning environments my entire life, and I could still teach myself.

I got lucky and landed an internship at Coatsink, ending my 1st year. This environment led me to realise my assumption that all 3D artists needed to be technical wasn’t true, this is when I learnt what a Technical Artist is!

Over my tenure at Teesside, I’d continued to learn programming alongside modern industry pipelines, transitioned to Unreal Engine, and landed my first contract gigs at the start of my 3rd year which required me to finish my assignments within the first few weeks. From there I landed a job at Sumo Digital in Sheffield – the rest is history!

What project shaped you the most?

Okay I probably can’t say X-GRAVITY as that’d be biased..

In that case it’d be Sackboy: A Big Adventure, for a myriad of reasons, some of which I’ll omit, but ultimately it was the most visually distinct game I’d worked on, with the most unique problems needing to be solved due to the scale and distinct crafted art style.

I wasn’t trying to solve common problems like writing a shader that flashes, or setup a weather system for an FPS. No – I was (working in a team) solving really creative problems like writing shading features which weren’t supported by default (thin-film interference, cloth, multi-layered materials etc), helping to create tools which can procedurally draw islands for level designers, maintaining and reworking Houdini tools to mass generate cardboard cutouts with stickers composited from concept art, and so many more problems.

I should have really kept a list at the time, but we’d created so much as a team which was distinct to this game, and the challenges we had to solve were so interesting. I specifically enjoyed creating interactive effects which needed to be optimized for 4-player fully-costumed local co-op on a base PS4 at 900p 60 FPS – this was a real challenge and let my stretch my muscles with shaders.

What is your favourite tool right now?

Ask me this again in a year and I might have a different answer, ha! Right now I do so much in Unreal Engine, and it’s becoming a lot more capable every update. I’ve been looking at Control Rig lately and am in love with the tools there.

Why make a skateboarding game?

This has a lot of answers to it, but in short – both myself and George love skating! I got into it late, but I was always a fan of movement based games like Mirror’s Edge, and I grew up learning martial arts and gymnastics, so it felt like a natural progression to skate.

We also love those PS2-era games and the magic they had over us, and we wanted to bring this magic to a modern era, but also make something new that stands on its own.. so X-GRAVITY was born!

It’s also an interesting intersection between different cultures and creative mediums coming together like illustration, music, movement, and we wanted to create something that is a celebration of those things. I warn you – expect lots of psychedelic-skater artwork, and funky beats!

That’ll wrap it up for now – there’s certainly more to dive into in the future!