We recently had a conversation with Daniel Strom and Louise Meijer from
Guru Games,
a Swedish based game development company that is currently in the
process of releasing their first game, Magnetic: Cage Closed. The game
is getting comparisons to Portal, the popular puzzle platform video game
from 2007.
Daniel is the CEO and Louise is a 2D artists for Guru Games. We began
working with Louise, and asked her to try Painter X3 and eventually
Painter 2015. It wasn’t long before she was creating official artwork
for Painter Essentials 5. She then introduced us to Daniel and Guru
Games and we have been working with them to get Corel and
Painter more involved in the gaming community.
How did Guru Games start as a company?
Daniel: We started out as a group of
friends in school about two years ago. It all started a class project,
which was Magnetic. In the summer, some other friends who were ambitious
and hardworking joined us to work on Medusa. We wanted something as a
portfolio project or maybe for commercial use later on, but we mainly
just wanted something to do during the summer. By fall, Magnetic had
actually got a lot of interest. We were even nominated for Swedish game
awards… So our teacher said that we really need to do something with
this project; to either sell the demo or get it up on Steam somehow. As a
result we got together and discussed starting a company, to finish
Magnetic, with the thought that it would take 1 or 2 months. Now we are
here, about 1 ½ years later and Magnetic is finally about to be released
in a couple of months.
Do you have plans for the future of Guru? Where do you envision this company in the next couple years?
Daniel: The goal with Guru has always been
to keep it to a small, family sized company. We started out as a group
of friends and hope to stay that way. We don’t want to be too big, as
far as team size goes. We are 11 right now, and with one intern. In the
next couple of years, we plan to grow to around 20 people but I think we
will stay there. That is probably the right size for us. It allows
everyone to feel like they have a big part in what we do and it’s enough
for the scope of games that we want to make.
What is your plan after finishing and releasing Magnetic?
Daniel: We have so many plans, but we try
and keep them on the drawing table for now. We are actually going to
discuss a sequel to Magnetic, mainly because there has been so much
positive feedback and interest in the game. Then of course there is
always Medusa, which is the game we started the company wanting to make
. It’s our little baby.
We love the idea of the game and we love horror games in general. It’s
always fun to work on something that terrifies people. So in short, we
are set for a couple of years to come. I don’t think we will run out of
ideas for the next couple years.
We could always make a horse game, that’s something Louise has been nagging us about. It gets mentioned during the meetings about once a week.
You used Painter to make the Magnetic Poster. Can you tell me why you chose Painter for that poster?
Louise: Well I really like, as I have
mentioned to you in the past, how Painter truly resembles traditional
art compared to Photoshop. When you paint in Photoshop you can feel that
it is a digital program because colors don’t mix. For example if you
use water colors and paint a blue sky and then add yellow, the color
won’t become green, as it should. In Painter, you actually get that
effect. It adds to the flow when you are working and trying to mix
colors to make the picture look more real.
Also of course the Perspective tool. I talk too many of my friends
about this tool because it is amazing. I don’t understand why other
programs don’t include something like that. I don’t have to spend time
mapping out and drawing straight lines so I can add perspective. It is a
huge time-saver.
The mirror mode is also great, especially for characters. When you
make the turnarounds or the blueprints for characters that I design
before sending them to the 3D artists, having the mirror tool is so
smart because I don’t have to concentrate on making both sides the same
and mirror it myself. In other programs, you can paint half and then cut
it out and duplicate it, but it’s quite a process. It doesn’t work so
fluently as when you use a tool like the mirror tool.
How do you plan on using Painter in your future work at Guru Games?
Louise: I have decided that I am really
going to give it a try to understand most of it. I still have the short
keys from Photoshop ingrained into my muscle memory, so I tend to press
the wrong buttons which can be quite annoying. But I think that will
wear out as I use Painter more in and outside of work. My plan is to use
it for conceptual artwork, like for environments with the perspective
tool and characters. I’d also like to try out texturing because I think
that would be interesting using Painter.
Daniel: I think as a company, we want to
investigate how well it will work for texturing, because with Medusa we
have a lot of new textures that need to be made. So it will be good to
see how Painter can handle that kind of work and how we can set up a
workflow around that.
Watch how
Painter helps video game designers bring their ideas to life!
