Episode 5: Yaz

 [music]

[00:00:18] Ashley Wade: Welcome to All Inclusive, a podcast about game development and the diverse people who make it. My name is Ash, and I'm an environment artist in North Carolina, USA.

[00:00:28] Jasmin Habezai-Fekri: My name is Jasmin. I'm a 3D environment artist from Cologne, Germany.

[00:00:33] Ashley: Today's special guest is Yas. They work at C77 Entertainment, but they have previously worked at Oculus and Epic Games. Thanks for coming along today.

[00:00:42] Yasiman Ahsani: Hello. I don't know what else to say.

[00:00:47] Ashley: That's fine. It's cool. Everything's fine.

[00:00:51] Jasmin: We're super-hyped to have you here, especially as a first guest of 2021. That's super-excited.

[00:00:56] Ashley: Wow, we made it. We all made it to 2021.

[00:01:00] Jasmin: Yes.

[00:01:02] Yasiman: I didn't even think about that, oh.

[00:01:04] Jasmin: Yes, it just feels like an endless loop. I don't know, I guess we need a new number for these past years with the pandemic.

[laughter]

[00:01:13] Yasiman: It's 2020 extended edition is what it is.

[00:01:16] Jasmin: Exactly.

[00:01:18] Yasiman: Yes, it's all one big year, and we all get two birthdays after the pandemic.

[00:01:25] Ashley: Oh, that'd be so good.

[00:01:27] Jasmin: We deserve that, for sure. For our listeners who don't know Yas yet, and we are super keen to hear more about that, we really want to know what actually got you into the industry. Is there a moment where you were like, "Okay, now I've found my true calling, this is what I want to do"? What was the entire path from back when you started to now where you are, basically?

[00:01:54] Yasiman: Yes, obviously, I think like most children, I grew up playing video games. I loved them. I was very lucky that I had a stepdad, who was the first person who's like, "Here's your Game Boy." I'd never had one before. Yes, I was super into games as a kid and then as I got a little older, I upgraded to PlayStation 3. Then the moment that I was like-- Oh, there are two moments.

One was I was obviously super into Guitar Hero. This is PlayStation 2. I bought the Super Mega Special Edition because, at the time, I also played guitar in my free time, so this was the perfect mesh of stuff. They had this documentary on games in there and how they made Guitar Hero, and I loved it so much watching it. I was like, "I want to be a game artist" because I also made stupid comics and stuff as a kid.

I really liked the whole art thing. My mom was like, "They don't make a lot of money." I'm like, "Okay, that kind of sucks, whatever," but then the PS3 came out, and then I was playing Uncharted and Nathan Drake falls in the water, and then he gets out of the water, and his pants are wet, and that was it. I was like, "Whoa, wait. I've never seen that."

[00:03:22] Jasmin: Oh, awesome. That's so iconic.

[00:03:25] Yasiman: [crosstalk] because before that, I think a lot of that moment was for people when they played Shenmue when you could interact with so many things, I had that moment maybe because I'm younger or something with the Uncharted series. That's when I super went into like, "How do I get into games? I want to know why that happened."

I started messing around in Unity as a teenager, and I was like, "This is sick." Then I got into college and I went to-- It wasn't a great school or anything, but I knew I wanted to do game art. I didn't know that they were such specialized things, so I was a generalist going into college. In an ideal world, I'd be like, "Oh, yes, I'll just make cool ideas and have other people expand on that" like concept art type-stuff, but that's not realistic.

It's very difficult to get in, and my parents were very pushing me not to pursue something creative, classic Persian parents, but I was like, "No, I'm doing this. Games can allow me to work in boring stuff, like simulation," which I found out actually isn't boring, because then in college, I just got super-involved in the community. I was the president of our game dev club, just a complete dork, and then I got an internship with a simulation company that I won't go into specifics of what they did.

I did tech art stuff, and I did 3D generalist stuff. It was super-fun and I was like, "Okay, I think tech arts are a good middle ground for someone because it's the least risky, and it's very wanted. I'm going to try to specialize in this." I was applying in other places. I actually almost went to Crystal Dynamics, but that was a whole thing. I guess what happened is I found out that someone who worked at the simulation company I was an intern at was looking for a production assistant at Epic.

My dream was to work at Epic Games. I was a huge Unreal Engine nerd. We used Unreal Engine at that simulation studio. It was huge. If people have favorite developers, Tim Sweeney, we would joke he's a game father like Todd Howard is a game father. Tim Sweeney is my game father. I love that man. He's amazing.

[laughter]

I was like, "Screw everything else that I've been applying to, I will scrub toilets at Epic. I want to make it there." I applied. Sorry, it's a long story.

[00:06:34] Ashley: No, of course.

[00:06:35] Yasiman: I applied, and everyone's like, "Yes, Yas is pretty good." My friend who was working there was like, "Well, they're looking for someone who's-- This is a technical position, so we want someone who understands the engine and can help work with engineers." I love engineers, I love working with engineers. Art is so great, it's very emotional.

[laughter]

Engineers are like there's no chit-chat, there's no, "How's your day?" It's just, "Did you get this done?" and it's like, "Okay, cool, next." It's great. It's great. I was like, "This is awesome. Yes, I love to work with engineers." They thought I was a good fit because of my technical background. I was Epic's first-ever production assistant. That concept did not exist until they hired me because they wanted juniors.

I thought the job would be more technical, and it was incredibly challenging at times because I ended up working on, obviously, Fortnite. Primarily, Unreal Engine and some of the issues there are just very abstract, understanding who needs to put together what to make a feature happen can be very, very scary because it's just all these connections.

I am not a programmer by trade, so there is stuff that I'm just not going to know. I'm not a senior engineer or anything. It was challenging, it was great. I felt like I grew out of the position, so I left and graduated and went to Oculus. I came to the realization that after all these years of thinking AAA was for me, everyone was like, "Yas is such a AAA person. She'll die in crunch."

I was like, "You know what, I miss the wearing-all-hats thing. I miss the 'I want to do everything' and I miss the challenge of that." Now I'm at C77 Entertainment, which is a team of primarily ex-Halo devs and artists, and I'm having a blast. I'm the only producer, which is really nice. I was at Epic before Fortnite exploded. Everyone knew each other, it was like we were all fit in one building.

Everyone was on a first-name basis. It was a big family and then when Fortnite happened, it exploded, and there were just people I don't know in the halls and people telling me to do stuff that I'm like, "I don't even know who you are." It was really bizarre and I didn't like that. I liked the pre-era. I went back to that. Sorry.

[00:09:20] Jasmin: Oh, don't worry. That was super-interesting because the thing is I've heard always of producers, and my internship started as a producer, but it's not a role where you-- especially when you're at university, you don't really think about becoming a producer. I am sure there are people who do. It's really interesting to me how you adjusted to it so easily, in a way.

Was it easy because it just sounds like you grew into this role so well? Did you ever think about going into this when you were at university already, or did it just come to you because, at Epic, they offered you this very unique position?

[00:09:57] Yasiman: That's a really good question. Yes, I didn't think I would be a producer. I was like, "If I'm ever a producer, it's because I'm old, and I'm retiring, and I'm done making content" but because of just the timing of everything and my personal goals or just the location I wanted to work at, I grew into that, yes, a producer position. I was always, I don't want to say, bossy, but always people were like, "What do I do?"

I'm like, all right, "You're doing this," I naturally was like that, then being in a professional setting made me better at that because I definitely wasn't good at it, and now it's actually crazy. I was just thinking the other day of how much I've just changed as a person because of being a producer, even in life, I'm ridiculously organized now, whereas before, I'd be like, "Whatever, I'm so stressed out." Now, I'm like, "No, we're going to produce this, it's going to be great, we're going to get your groceries and pick up your laundry."

[laughter]

[00:10:59] Jasmin: That's such a great skill to have. Do you have any quick tips that we could even apply to our own life? I don't know how it's for you, Yas, but being an artist, you try to be organized and [unintelligible 00:11:13] but following is another [unintelligible 00:11:17]

[00:11:17] Yasiman: It's hard, yes. It's so hard.

[00:11:18] Ashley: I won't show you guys what's out of frame in this camera, but I am very disorganized, I'm more the kind of person where I am okay with living in disorganization, but there's a threshold that gets met, and then once that threshold gets met, then I'm like, "I have to clean and organize and get rid of things," and then after that, I'm good for another three months until it gets back to the same place.

Even my desktop is very disorganized, but we won't talk about that because this isn't about me, this isn't about [crosstalk] disorganization, it's just like my energy is spent doing other things. It is used for creative ventures and podcasting and language study, that's what I use my energy for, cleaning, not as much, so yes, I could probably use a little bit of production know-how to keep my life in check a little bit more.

I actually wanted to know, what kind of skills do you think are paramount/really important for people who are wanting to be in a similar position to you? What kind of things do you see being the most important or things that are just less desirable? Any notes like that would be interesting to hear.

[00:12:49] Yasiman: Right. Actually, there are so many GDC talks on this, but there's, okay, complete transparency, I used to think producers were like it was the dumbest job, a waste of time, why do you need someone to be a mommy for how many years of development? I just didn't get it; now I get it because it's exactly what you said, which is, you need someone to take on the burden or the energy of corralling and organizing, otherwise, no one's on the same page.

The biggest thing that I would recommend or say that you need to be good at is, obviously, communication, which is such a soft skill, but soft skills are so obscure that they're hard to develop. I don't think organization is necessarily a big one because any time I've had any issue on a project, it's because some communication wasn't made, so communication is just so obvious, huge, but then the second one is--

I hate this word, but you have to be a people person. Going on my team, I know not to ask this person a question at 11:30 because they haven't had their second coffee, and then I know that at 2:00, this person goes into hardcore focus mode, so I need to ask everything before then, and then this other person, I have to ask him how his day is before I start talking about work, but then the other guy is the complete opposite, he doesn't give a shit, he wants the full-- Sorry, can I say naughty words?

[00:14:21] Ashley: It's fine.

[00:14:22] Jasmin: Don't worry, we're all grown adults.

[laughter]

[00:14:27] Yasiman: Damn, this other person doesn't want to hear about that, he just wants to know what he needs to do, and he likes just being told what to do, and he'll get it done, and that's, obviously, my favorite type because I do have time to joke around and stuff. I love that, I hate being serious, but sometimes, you just got to get it done because it's just [crosstalk]

[00:14:49] Ashley: Get in and get out.

[00:14:51] Yasiman: Yes, and just too much going on, so yes, you have to be the person that's thinking about the organization and communication flow so they don't have to. You're like, "You're all doing this," and everyone's just like, "Okay, I don't have to worry about that. I trust that Yas is making these decisions because they're the best for the team or whatever."

[00:15:13] Jasmin: That's really interesting to have that kind of relationship with the people and the team. There's a lot of psychology even going into it. It would be important to be able to read people like you described, that's super-interesting. I don't even think into that direction, but it's great to have you as a coordinator and the person who can solve things, somebody is not completely lost.

[00:15:39] Ashley: Yes, I feel like people [unintelligible 00:15:40] make their difference also because they are empathetically in tune to what's happening with you. I feel like it would make such a huge difference, not even [unintelligible 00:15:53] in a work sense but even just if you had someone on a team in a school project or endeavor, to be in tune with you so that you know that "Ash doesn't like to be communicated with this way."

Stuff like that I feel like really makes a huge difference, and it really is overlooked because I think sometimes people want to do things their way, maybe. They feel like they know what's best for the whole when in reality it's like, no, you actually have to treat people like yes, you are a group and you're a team, but people are still individuals, and you do have to watch out for them as people as well.

[00:16:42] Yasiman: Yes, constantly reading the room.

[00:16:45] Ashley: [crosstalk] such an underrated skill, by the way.

[00:16:48] Yasiman: It is, yes.

[00:16:48] Ashley: Reading the room, so often, I wouldn't say that I'm the best at reading the room all the time, but I think that so often I'm in conversations in a large group chatter or whatever where I'll feel the shift in tone of the conversation and then I'm going to immediately be like, "Okay, how do we balance this out? This is getting really, really tense. We can't go here because someone's going to get hurt."

[crosstalk] Yes, that's me. That's probably me, or if we're playing-- I'm going to expose my friends for two seconds. If we're playing Overwatch some time, understanding that some people are getting tilted, then I'll try to be the person who's not as tilted sometimes. Just, I don't know, being observant like that I think it's really cool and important. I'm really glad that you mentioned that because we love to see more people do that. Go ahead, sister.

[00:17:45] Jasmin: I was wondering just something small because you said that at a university, your course was more general, which is always the case I guess with a lot of games dev courses. In your opinion, do you think it'd be interesting to have a producer-focused course even some of our students to maybe know about this role more or even to get some of the soft skills that you explained because I feel like at uni, you do need to do group work, but a lot of times, it's not really explained to people how to work well in a group?

You're just thrown into the deep end and then [unintelligible 00:18:19] get out of university and the struggle to even work in a group maybe because I really learned that. Do you think that was maybe something that your university supported? Do you think that should be maybe more done also already in an educational level?

[00:18:34] Yasiman: That's also a really good question. I'm very lucky that my program did have-- We had several amazing professors who were very like, "We're going to teach this as if you are in a studio." They did assign producer-type roles and explained what the producer did, but what I really liked, and I know this is going to sound hoaxy, but they did teach agile and scrum discipline, and that was fantastic because we all had an idea of how things worked.

I actually didn't totally get it until I was in a studio setting where we used agile and scrum. That's when it clicked, I was like, "Okay, I get why they do this." Then I introduced that back to my classmates, so that's how we all worked, and it's hard because that click didn't happen until I was in a real-world setting. I don't know if you can have a course for production because it is something you can get better at.

It's something I've significantly improved at, but I don't know if it'll ever truly feel the same until you're in that setting is what I'm saying. It was super-helpful we learned, obviously, about charts and burn-down charts and your scrum board and all of that. That was great. I guess I wouldn't know how to take that to the next level because the reality of it is when you're in school, I had a full-time job while I was in school, so I couldn't dedicate more than a certain number of hours.

Some other people had two jobs. It was just like you can't have a full producer role. You'd have to be a producer but also a programmer or something. That's a really great question. I know they talked about it, too. They were like, "Should we do a producer job?"

[00:20:39] Jasmin: Oh, really?

[00:20:41] Yasiman: Yes. Actually, the grad school connected to my undergrad because they do have a grad game dev program. I know they have a producer track, but they make the producers also specialize in level design or something. I feel like most producers I meet were something before that, which I think is really important so they understand the dev process. Most producers I've met were either a programmer or an artist before. That's probably why they emphasize not having a producer role.

[00:21:18] Ashley: It seems like it'd be really helpful to have someone with a little bit of experience somewhere else to then get put into production because then you have a more in-depth understanding of what that department is going to be working with or whatever, as opposed to maybe someone just being a complete outsider or whatever, coming in and doing things. I can see that.

[00:21:41] Yasiman: That was a huge issue after Fortnite exploded, the reality of it was that this is a huge product, and they have to keep hiring so that they could support it. They did end up hiring a lot of people who didn't really have a technical background, and I struggled working with them. I'd have to, instead of just saying a couple of words and then someone who used to be a programmer or something, they'd understand what I'm saying, I'd have to spend some time to break it down and explain why we can't do something, and they'd be like, "Oh, okay" because they didn't have that background. It was really difficult. I emphasize having some skill or trait so that you get the process or where you would be in that process.

[00:22:29] Ashley: Moving on to our next topic a little bit, probably just talking a little bit more about production and production roles. You may have touched on it a little bit before. I'm trying to keep up in my brain, but I wanted to know, what's a typical day as a producer like, a day in the life? How do you start your day? How do you end your day, anything like that?

[00:22:59] Yasiman: Now it's a lot different. At Epic, it was very time-consuming. My phone was always going off. It'd be 3:00 in the morning and I'd get a message from someone that's like, "Can you do this right now?" and I'm like, "Why does the servers in Brazil have to react this way right now? Now I have to deal with this." It was really, really tiring. Now a typical day, because I work at a no-crunch studio, is that I'll try to break it down, although I don't know.

Obviously, I wake up. We usually start our day with stand-up in the morning, and I'll run that. The reality of it is if I wasn't there, people would just be like, "All right, we're all doing this" and then they'd separate. I have to be like, "Okay, so you're doing this with this person, right?" They're like, "Yes." I'm like, "Okay, I'm writing that down. It better be done by the end of the day."

Then, "Okay, so you need to talk to this person, right?" They're like, "Yes, I'll talk to them after this." I'm like, "Great" because if I don't do that, people just go off into their own little worlds. With COVID-19, it's really difficult to make sure those side conversations keep happening because we're all remote right now. When we're in the office, it's just like, "Oh, let's hop into this meeting room for a quick sec," but we don't have that, so I have to be super on top of all those little conversations.

First, in the morning, it's straightening out everything that needs to happen because there has to be someone to do that. It sounds insane. You'd be like, "Oh, we're all adults. We could totally [unintelligible 00:24:44]

[00:24:45] Ashley: [crosstalk] No, even more so why you probably need to do that because I feel like since people are adults and they feel pretty independent or whatever, it's just like, "Oh, I can just exist in my little corner." It's good to have someone like you being like, "Actually [crosstalk] [laughter]

[00:25:00] Yasiman: It's so insane. When I first started in production, I didn't know that people-- [laughs] It sounds bad, I didn't know that people were so bad at being organized in their tasks, so I would just trust that they would do it, and I'd feel bad like I was babying them, but then I'm like, "That's my job, I have to be the person who sees the big picture because they're all focused, laser-focused on these little things." After stand-up, the rest of my day is emails, emails, emails, no, I'm kidding.

[laughter]

I do answer a lot of emails, but it's mostly, I'll always look at the big picture, the big schedule, I'll make sure that we're on the right timeline, and everything that we're doing in the next few weeks makes sense. It's never that smooth, so then the rest of my day is making sure we're all on the same page about that. I'll get tons of little messages from people being like, "I'm unclear about this," or "Oh, I don't think this person does this thing," or "I need to do this other thing," and then I'm like, "Oh, wait, that other thing requires us talking to four other people. Let's make sure we do that."

It's a lot of connecting the dots because people don't have time to do that, I need to make sure that I'm doing that. Because we're a smaller studio, I also deal with a bunch of other little side things like legal stuff or contractee stuff. Right now, I'm trying to figure out publishing stuff, so that takes up a lot of my time. I guess I would define that as getting answers for other people who don't have time to get those answers. [laughs]

Then just little meetings throughout the day. It would be so different if we were in an office, to be honest, because you hear the conversations, and you're all on the same page in the same room, but it feels like I'm on a huge team, just because it's so hard to communicate stuff right now.

[00:26:57] Ashley: For sure. If you were all in the same building, it's so much easier to be like, "Oh, I need to talk to Ash. I'll just pop over and see them and stop her before she starts another sculpt or whatever and ask her this question," but when it's remote, it's like, okay, I send a message, and hopefully someone sees it because when you're working on stuff, you can be this deep in the zone and forget about all of your notifications, and then you see you see that Yas messaged you two and a half hours ago and you feel bad because now it's like, oh, no, you needed to know this two hours ago. I can imagine [crosstalk]

[laughter]

[00:27:46] Yasiman: Oh, no, I don't hate it because people take forever to respond, I hate it because they feel so bad having them. I don't know what they're doing, so I'm not sure if they're at a stopping point. If we were in the office, it's like, "Oh, he got up to grab a coffee, let me go catch him during this time," but if I see him super-focused, in the zone, sculpting away, or concepting, I'm like, "All right, this isn't the time," but I feel so bad messaging them and being like, "Hey."

[laughter]

"Funny gift to entice you. What are you up to?"

[00:28:22] Ashley: Oh, no.

[00:28:24] Jasmin: I do wonder, does it get easier over the past year, or is it still at a point where you think, "Oh, I still wish we would be back into office"? Is it getting maybe that people are being a bit more aware of that they need to be more present on Slack, for example, have it open on another window at all times, or do you think it's not like in people's heads yet because it's still such an unusual thing to be in?

[00:28:51] Yasiman: I think it's a balance almost because some people have been better at it. I have one person on my team, and I love that he does this because it's almost like real life, but he'll just call me when he needs something, and I'm on my computer, so I just answer, whereas other people are still in the same situation that they're very focused when they're working when they're at home, they're like super in the zone, understandably, so it'll always be difficult to get someone's attention who that's their job, they have to work that way.

Yes, I think it's 50-50, some people have adjusted, some people haven't. I think in an ideal world, we would do a flex schedule, which we're talking about now where half of the week we're all in the office on those important days, but then we've designated Wednesdays, for example, as a no-meetings-allowed day, which obviously doesn't apply to me, but everyone else is allowed to be focused in the zone.

"We're not talking about it today, it's a tomorrow problem." I'm like, "Okay, this is great" because I love that day in a lot of ways because that's when I'm not bothered by other people, so I can clean up our tasks and go through our bugs and reprioritize things and get in the zone. I think, yes, in an ideal world, we would just be working from home a few days a week but then have that social interaction for those needed connections that are lost.

[00:30:22] Ashley: That honestly sounds ideal. So many people, especially if you're on the more introverted side, having the ability to have both, I feel, would help a lot of people, or help people who have social anxiety problems. For example, knowing that like, "Oh, man, I have to spend a couple of days around people and then I can prepare coping mechanisms or whatever to help me get through those days."

Also, knowing that I could come home and work from here in my pajamas, with my cat, I feel like that would help the mental health of a lot of people. It's a big topic right now since everyone-- well, not everyone but a lot of people at a lot of different industries are working from home now, but there are still the people who are like, "Oh, I miss the office" and then other people who are like, "No, I prefer working from home." I think that if you had more options to help people, I think it would help retain people a little bit more maybe but then just make companies a better place to work at. That sounds great to me.

[00:31:33] Yasiman: Yes, absolutely. You need those days to prep. Even before we do stand-up, I spend 10 to 15 minutes just organizing all my thoughts because I just woke up. I'm all over the place. I'm not really organized, by nature, I have to force myself to be. You do need those moments away, where you can be secluded to figure stuff out, I agree.

[00:31:59] Ashley: Hopefully, we'll see a bit more of that in the future because, again, I do think it will be really, really beneficial. There's people like me, who enjoy people, love being around people and then there's people who do just as great work, but they just want to not be around people right now. I feel like we should be accommodating those kinds of people.

Another question that I had for you, which again, we may have talked about this already, this job that you're doing right now, how does it present different challenges in comparison to other things you've done? This can be in comparison to the place that you're working now, as opposed to previous places you've worked, or even just how you started work in the industry, versus production. Anything like that would be cool to hear.

[00:32:58] Yasiman: That's a good question. I've never worked during a pandemic before.

[00:33:05] Ashley: There is one thing.

[laughter]

There is one thing

[00:33:12] Yasiman: The biggest challenge, maybe it's unique to our current situation, but I had left Oculus. I went on a fun-employment thing, so I didn't work for a couple of months because I'm like, "I need summer camp break. I need that." I did that before I went to C77. Then I was at C77, I think it was March. I met everyone. They're all still pretty new to me, the team is new.

Two weeks later, we've been in quarantine [unintelligible 00:33:53] [crosstalk] the challenge there was like, "I have to emotionally connect with these people because I need to give them direction without upsetting them." I have to do that now with this technology barrier, whereas at Epic or Oculus, it's so easy just making friends your first month. At the end of the month, everyone knows you, you have jokes, everyone's cool, you're all on the same wavelength.

That didn't happen. Not that it didn't happen, my team and I, we all love each other. We're actually super-close. We're also just friends, which is awesome. It was awkward for a while, being like, "Please, like me." We ended up hiring people that we've never seen in real life. It's even harder then. Actually, those people have gotten very close to me, because, I don't know, it's just crazy

how you gravitate to emotional support from certain people. I was really happy that I could be that person for some people, and I haven't even met them. It's awesome. That was really hard. To actually answer your question, I think the bigger organization, the harder the communication gets, insanely hard. At Epic before Fortnite, if I wanted to get something done, I'd talk to two people, and then Fortnite happened, it took nine people to get something really simple out of the way.

Now that I'm back on a smaller scale, I only talk to one person. It's fantastic because the bigger company is, the tiniest little change is going to ripple across all these other people, or you have to get approval from crazy high stages. It's just so insanely difficult to get the most-- I had to change a word on a website once because someone had a typo and it took 10 people and the legal team and the marketing team, and I tell them, "I just need you to fix this word. I didn't even write it. It's just wrong."

[00:36:22] Jasmin: I'm sure the person that did that typo was like, "I don't know who did that typo. I didn't cause all this mess."

[00:36:29] Yasiman: It's insane. We once had a meeting about whether something should be a circle or a square, and that was this whole thing, and I'm like, "Just make it a freaking square. I don't care. We'll fix it later. This is an expensive meeting. We have the head of this guy and the head of tech and the lead artists. This meeting probably cost like half a million dollars every second.

[00:37:01] Jasmin: Like a day out of a sitcom, you couldn't even make to [unintelligible 00:37:04]

[00:37:08] Ashley: You're just sitting there being stuck in your own body watching things happen and you're like, "Oh no." These are people in higher positions who threw together the meeting. I wish people understood there needs to be a meeting cost. I think there is a meeting cost calculator that has a timer and you put everyone's estimated salary and then it'll tell you how expensive the meeting was. That's why you have a producer. [unintelligible 00:37:43] No, we have the head of engineering here. We can't- [crosstalk]

[00:37:56] Yasiman: I'm really thinking about such a situation actually, because any time you put a dollar amount on somebody is like, "Can we please stop bringing money into this?" I don't want to know. [crosstalk]

[00:38:10] Ashley: [unintelligible 00:38:12] in that certain situation. What a day as a producer? Honestly, it seems like you would be busy basically like busy bee all day. To me, obviously artists and things have a lot of things to do, but the person corralling everyone, I don't know how you have the brain space really, because I barely have the brain space for myself.

I'll do enough, like writing things down, like the basic, basic things, but writing things down for 5 people or 10 people and 15, 20 people or whatever, that's a lot of work. I have no idea how you keep it together, honestly, in your brain. That's insane.

[00:39:19] Yasiman: I will add that like-- Oh shoot. What was I going to say? Oh, yes. In an ideal world, you wouldn't need a producer. If everyone's perfect and everyone's constantly communicating and coming to the same agreement all the time, and everyone shares the same vision and everyone knows the budget, you won't need a producer, you don't need a producer. That's why Naughty Dog doesn't have a producer. They don't have producers. They don't need it.

That's why they crunch so much because there isn't someone being like, "Okay, if you really want to get this done by this time, I really think we should do these things first, or we should cut this completely, or, oh, wait, before we do this, we need to do this. Otherwise, that's going to block these other people for three months or something." That's why I need a producer because no one is perfect. I wish.

[laughter]

[00:40:09] Jasmin: Because management skills are a whole thing in itself. You can't expect everyone to have the art skills and design skills and then management, that's a whole thing that you can go into, and having somebody being responsible for that and not having that extra pressure on you while you have to work on other things, it's amazing. I hope to have a good producer on a project- [crosstalk]

[00:40:34] Yasiman: Oh man, yes.

[00:40:35] Jasmin: -or wherever. That's the most other thing which maybe many people not think about if they're just going to work as an artist or a designer or something on a project, they're not going to think, "Oh, if I had a good producer," but then you get there and there's nobody to like plan these things. You can't just throw into the deep end, then you realize that they need somebody to be responsible for that big- [crosstalk]

[00:40:56] Yasiman: I always say there's only really, really good producers or really, really bad producers. I've only ever met really good or really, really bad and obviously, I'm really good.

[00:41:11] Jasmin: Obviously?

[laughter]

[00:41:14] Yasiman: Objects aside. It's one of those skills where it's a switch, you either can do it or you can't, and that's the reality of it. It's like any other-- I think a lot of skills are like that, but-

[00:41:26] Jasmin: That's true.

[00:41:26] Ashley: Sure. I'm sure the team that you're currently on is very thankful for your presence, and I hope that all the good producers are getting nice gifts and gift baskets and treats- [crosstalk]

[00:41:43] Jasmin: We send them all the good vibes.

[00:41:45] Yasiman: It's truly keeping the ship from sinking out here in these streets. Yes, we're going to stop right there for now and take a short break.

[music]

[00:42:25] Jasmin: Welcome back to All Inclusive. Before the break, we talked about how Yazentered the industry and what it's like working as a producer and we've got a lot of super interesting insights into what her day looks like. Next, I was very interested to maybe talk to you a little bit about what kind of art you enjoy, because you mentioned that during university and also in between that, that you worked inside Unity and Unreal by yourself, but I also saw you have a lot of cool artwork on your website and all these little games on HIO, so yes, just wanted to talk a bit this art includes that you enjoy doing and how it might inspire you.

[00:43:04] Yasiman: Yes, I like making [crosstalk] Yes, I love 3D art. I obviously went through that low poly, cute 3D phase that I think a lot of artists go through, minimalist stuff, and then I got super into materials in unreal and making crazy materials, making sure they look good. The whole like PVR pipeline and all of that which is how I got really interested in the tech art stuff.

I was like, "Oh, you can make some cool shaders and all that. This is really neat and if I change this value, then I can expose this and now you can make it all twisty or whatever," stuff like that I really enjoy it because I liked basic game development and I liked art so I liked that bridge that was created. Outside of that, I always did traditional art in school. We did have to take studio art classes, and those are some of my favorite because I'm sure the two of you have had to take traditional classes at some point and you're in this super quiet room, you might hear someone cough. There's a naked person in the middle of the room and you're just in the zone going at it.

I really, really loved that and so yes, in my free time I do freelance illustration and stuff. I hadn't been able to do that before because other places I worked didn't allow their employees to do freelance. Yes, I've been really taking advantage of that with my current studio. They're wonderful. They're like, "Absolutely, do whatever you want outside of your work hours. What happens after work stays there."

I found that I tend to make a lot of work, and I think the two of you definitely probably relate, but you probably make a lot of stuff when you're like feeling something. You're like, "I just need to shove these emotions to somewhere else." Culturally, Jasmine and I are both Iranian and there's always something going on on that side of the world, so I'm always drawing stuff, and so I'm always creating stuff based around my background, and I don't live close to my family, and so it's like the best way to connect with them.

I do enjoy making both 2D and 3D art, and the last 3D type thing I've been working on was, well, originally I was making this whole super-intense material library for myself so that I could reference side projects for fun, and then my friend was like, "What if we made like a PS1 style game," and everything looked awful, and I'm like, "That's fake, let's do that."

[00:46:10] Jasmin: Here's why graphics are so cool, honestly. My favorite aesthetic.

[00:46:14] Yasiman: We got super into investigating why it looks the way it does, what causes the popping, and so I wrote like a little shader that mimics that, and that was super fun, and it was originally in Unreal now where we've decided to continue it in Unity just for fun. The name of the game is called the Animal Knife Fight and you play as-

[00:46:39] Jasmin: I've seen it.

[00:46:40] Yasiman: Oh, you've seen it on Twitter.

[00:46:42] Jasmin: Yes, so good.

[00:46:43] Yasiman: You play as these tiny animals with like different knives and different weapons. I'm just going through and making all the animals, and I rigged and animated them. I don't want to show too much because it's more exciting when it's like, "Here's everything," but that's been my passion project games-wise, and then on the side, I do painting and illustration. I have a project that I might be working on that you guys might find interesting. There's this Brewery in Brooklyn run by two Iranian women. They needed help design with some illustration stuff, and so I'm helping them out there. I don't know, it's been a blast. Quarantines are great.

[00:47:31] Jasmin: I think it's so inspiring that you let your cultural background be influenced in your art too, and I want to do something similar as well because there is so much you can draw from that, and because we're also not really see it much on media, like we touched upon that on another podcast with Jared who does a lot of African inspired art. It really makes me think that we should do more of that for our cultures too.

When I saw one of your paintings on your website, I was very Iranian. I was like these old paintings you see, and it was very pretty and cute. I love that. It made me feel I want to do something like this, but how do you start to do something like that in a respectful manner and that people appreciate it. Do you have, I don't know, like the way you approach it, or do you talk even to relatives about it maybe, and show them the stuff you do, what they think about it? Anything in that line?

[00:48:32] Yasiman: Well, they're super sensitive about, I don't know-- My family history is they were all before my grandmother, it skipped my grandmother and went to my mom because she's a painter, but before that, they were all these super emotional artists that had these tragic background. They're really sensitive about it when I'm like, "Oh, I'm thinking of starting a new painting," and they're like, "Oh, why? Why must we do this way?" I'm like, "Oh, my God, they're so annoying."

I don't know if I can explain it, but I feel this thing, I have this concept I've wanted to experiment with. There's a lot of weird color stuff I've been enjoying, weird color and lighting stuff and interpreting that in a unique way, I guess, and mashing that together and figuring it out. I don't have a process. I might come up with a thumbnail or something just to make sure the idea works, and then I'll have a reference.

I remember when I learned artists work with reference, my life changed. Yes, I always have a reference, and then I'll trace it out, my thumbnail basically I'll blow it up and retrace it on the canvas and then get to work.

[00:50:05] Jasmin: Do you think it helps you also in your job as a producer? Does it give you new perspectives or even spikes on the inspiration to do things differently in your job there?

[00:50:17] Yasiman: I do enjoy working with the engineers a lot because of their black and whiteness, but I am emotional. I think all artists are emotional. Those days when someone's like, "I'm not feeling it, I'm feeling things. I'm not 100%," I completely get it. I'm like, "I totally get it. Just don't even work. You need to just lay in bed and listen to sad music. I totally get it. Go do that." They do it and they come back they're like, "I work until 3:00 in the morning, I got all this crazy stuff done. I made up all the time. I feel so good." I'm like, "Yes."

I understand emotionally that feeling and also because of my game art background, I understand the pipeline. A while ago someone was like, "I did this thing and then in my head I'm like, "Oh my God, this system doesn't exist. You shouldn't have done that. We need to talk to this guy and set this up properly." That's just because I'm hyper-aware and I have to be.

[laughter]

[00:51:20] Jasmin: No, I think that's great to have such a broad spectrum of interests, and also being able to dip your toes into them and get something out of that, and then go back to that. Also being able to have that freedom of doing that, like you said that you can now freelance. On the other side, I feel like that's a great addition to have in your life. How do you manage your time? That sounds like a lot of work to do, but then again, you're a producer, you can do this, and you produce your own time.

[00:51:55] Yasiman: Reproduction life. Before I went into production, I wouldn't have been able to be totally on it, but because I think I'm lucky in that my career and my hobbies are separate, if that makes sense. I'm very lucky that my hobby also happens to be something that people like to purchase. I'm like, "Oh, okay." I think that's what keeps it separate. My relax thing is, "I'm going to turn on the TV, throw something on and work on this freelance illustration or something." It's so zen. It's not work for me, and I think that's what it is.

Also, I will say, not having social obligations is incredible with freeing up your time, not commuting to work. I would take the train and it takes an hour or whatever, and now I don't have to. That's two hours that I get back.

[00:53:00] Ashley: How do I even put this? I think it's so nice to be a more well-rounded person in the end. Having those experiences and having that separation from what you're saying your hobby is and your work life, I think it makes you a better overall person to be around, having that experience doing freelance and having experience working with cultural art and things like that. It all makes you you, and that richer person brings richness to the team that they're on.

It can be hard to, as an artist, from my point of view, also, it can be hard to let yourself be different and not only just do art, but it's good for you. It's like vegetables but more fun, I suppose, making sure that you're doing stuff like that. Moving on quickly into the final topic. I was hoping you could tell us a little bit about how you're hoping to bridge the gap between game engines and general media, which is interesting to me because game engines are powerful things.

I feel the more and more that people catch on to a real engine being able to be used for a bunch of things, the more we'll see it maybe stepping into the film world or whatever. Tell us a little bit about that. Where's your mind at with that?

[00:54:38] Yasiman: I think I'm very, very lucky that I have the background and the engines to bridge the gap, and we're slowly seeing some artists on Twitter making really cool animated content, like 2D stuff in blender. It's traditionally a game space, a game's tool, and so it's super cool seeing these new perspectives from these tools and it's like, "Oh my God, now Unreal engine is running in a car." That's crazy, or also like doing a bunch of the stuff with the Mandalorian that they did and all of that. It's incredible and I think people don't understand that there is a connection there, and I know the whole our games art argument, and I always say, "No, games are not art, but you can make it art."

That's what I'm excited for and I hope more people like us and me who have this interest in both 2D and 3D art, I've obviously seen Jasmine's work and it takes that. You encapsulate that perfectly, like the hand-painted tuniness, if you screenshot it, you think it was painted, but actually, oh, I can rotate this. I can explore this and look at all these little details, and that's not possible in Photoshop.

[laughter]

The animations and stuff is so easy to hook up in Unreal and I can't wait for when everyone is ideally maybe we're in VR and maybe we can walk around and, "Oh, this light needs to move to the left a little bit and in this space," that's so cool. That's what I hope the direction we're going in. What about you guys, what do you find yourselves drawn to?

[00:56:37] Jasmin: I think what you like touched upon that whole thing of bringing 2D into the 3D space is a huge thing for me as well, because I love traditional art and I started with traditional art, but I wasn't passionate about it in the sense that I would see myself being really good at it, but then as soon as I discovered 3D, I was like, "I can merge this and then be good at this," and merge these passions that I have into something that I can actually reproduce into the ideas that I have in my head and bring them on-- not on paper, but into 3D and trick people maybe into thinking it's 2D.

Having that tool is super powerful and I think it also brings people from other spheres into games and also this type of media, because maybe people who are into traditional art or architectural paintings and stuff that would never consider using Unreal or anything like that because it's so game focused, but with opening of that door, it can really enrich our industry too and art as a whole because we can all merge everything together into this huge pot and be inspired by each other and enrich each other, and the whole process of that it's a much better. It's democratizing the whole thing, like that the boundaries break apart.

[00:57:58] Yasiman: Yes, that's very well put. Though the architecture things is a great example, too.

[00:58:04] Jasmin: Yes, it's a big thing.

[00:58:08] Ashley: This question is hard for me to answer because I'm pretty new to this sphere in more ways that of one, not necessarily just starting freelance work or whatever. I didn't start out trying to be a game artist at all. I became a game artist because game artist was easy to find on Twitter and people were not precious with the information that they knew. I went to school to try to become a character animator and work in animation.

That's actually on my degree somewhere in this room, and actually says that I'm a character animator on paper. What I actually wanted to do was more like the classic. I grew up with Disney Films and Cinderella and things like that, and I wanted to affect other people the same way that those cartoon films like 3D animated films affected me, so a lot of what I find curious over into game art is in really simple terms, I really just care about what it makes you feel and like trying to figure out why something makes me feel a certain way, mood matters a lot to me. My current work in progress, I'll send it to you later, is going to the more moody sort of rich side.

I feel if I can make someone feel something, make them feel like they're in the space that I'm in, then that's really it, because that's all I've really wanted. I think that as we move forward as an industry and more people realize game engines potential, we will have more opportunities to make people feel things that they probably didn't think that they could feel before, whether it's through video games or VR experiences, or anything like that, or using a game engine to help bridge a gap between film and other things.

There's a tremendous potential that game art holds that is just now being pursued and unlocked. On my end, it's always been about the art. If the art is good, and if it makes you feel something, then that's really all I care about, which may not be an answer that some people like, but it's fine, because that's my answer. That's all I'm here for. Yes, I guess that answers your question.

[01:00:54] Yasiman: No, that's awesome because that's a perfect example of, I was in this space, but then I discovered that this one opens more doors, but I can-- It's the same, I can transition and whoa, like, "That's so cool." I don't know. That's so awesome that you came to that realization.

[01:01:11] Jasmin: Because it's so cool when you play games when you see an artwork, and you can imagine yourself there, or feel I'm going there, that's the best thing ever. That's being able to travel through space and time, almost, and experience being there. Its something magical about art and game art, especially because you can immerse yourself into a space that doesn't exist maybe, but you created it for the people and for yourself, and I think that's-- Yes, it makes you feel like a magician almost for sure. [laughs]

[01:01:43] Ashley: We all get to touch a little piece of it. We all get to make things happen for other people, so yes, that's a great place to end actually. That makes you feel things, you guys.

[crosstalk]

[01:02:05] Ashley: We're good.

[01:02:05] Yasiman: All warm.

[01:02:06] Ashley: All warm and fuzzy, but, yes, that was great. I just want to say for people listening, you can find Yaz on Twitter and her website, we will be including those links in the description box below so you can keep up with them and find out all the cool things that they're doing and keep an eye on it, so thanks for coming on and talking to us and hanging out.

[01:02:34] Yasiman: Yes, this is great. You guys are so fun to talk to.

[01:02:38] Ashley: Oh, good.

[01:02:40] Yasiman: I hope it sounds formal. I hope we can continue to be friends and continue the conversation.

[01:02:47] Jasmin: For sure.

[01:02:48] Ashley: It's been really refreshing.

[01:02:49] Jasmin: Yes.

[01:02:50] Ashley: Yes, I'm glad. We're trying to make this podcast like a refreshing space, so I'm glad that you feel about it that way. That's good.

[01:03:03] Jasmin: It's the best compliment we could get. It brings us back to that old fuzzy and warm wholesome feeling.

[01:03:11] Ashley: We're just never going to leave this spot. We miss you now. [laughs]

[01:03:17] Jasmin: Thank you so much for coming on, we had such a great time with you, and if anyone listening would like to suggest someone to join us on the podcast, someone who's a great positive force in the community, along with being great at what they're doing, please send us an email at allinclusivepdcst@gmail.com. That's allinclusive, no spaces P-D-C-S-T@gmail.com. That can be a 2D artist, a 3D artist, a community manager, or someone who works in QA. We're open to having anyone come on here and talk to us and have a cozy chat.

[01:03:55] Ashley: Yes. Thank you for joining us for another episode of All Inclusive. We hope that you have had as much fun listening to us as we do talking. You can find us on a couple of different social media channels, which you can find in the description box below, and that's most likely going to include Twitter, YouTube, and Spotify. Thanks again, and we hope you'll enjoy you'll join us for another episode of All Inclusive.

[music]

[01:04:36] [END OF AUDIO]