The Art of Henning Ludvigsen 

Henning Ludvigsen is in his early thirties; he got several jobs in his native Norway as a designer or creative director before he moved to sunny Greece where he now works as an Art Director at a game development company.  

We were first introduced to Henning's artwork when we followed a link on Natascha Roeoesli's website, and were simply blown away. Natascha, our newest columnist (see "The Hidden Power" in this issue), happens to be Henning's girlfriend and is a very talented artist herself. We will publish an interview with her in one of the upcoming issues. 

Art Scene: Ok, there are a lot of other questions... but I guess what interests all of us the most is how you ended up in Greece? And for a game company? I had no idea that there are game developers in Greece!  (...) 

Henning: No. Well, let's start from the beginning. I had a top position as the creative director in a nice advertisement agency in Norway but was working on a computer game project - Darkfall - on the side, just for fun. It turned out that this could be something bigger, so I got more and more involved in this. I was part of a team of 5 at Razorwax when we suddenly got a proposal from a Greek investor who was interested in our project. When we had our first meeting in Athens, a member of one of the teams joked that Razorwax should relocate from Norway to Greece due to the lower taxes and cost of living in Greece. Eventually, the two teams realized that this idea actually made very good business sense, and by December 2002, the relocation of Razorwax was finalized. Back then about a dozen Norwegians moved down to Greece, and we're pretty much the same amount today.  (...) 

Art Scene: Let's talk about "Darkfall", the game that really changed your life... what exactly is your job here? 

Henning: I'm working as Art Director for Darkfall (www.darkfallonline.com). This means that I am in charge of the art and animation department, and am responsible for the look and feel of the game. We're a small team, luckily, so we are all left with a lot of freedom, which I think is important for any aspiring artist. Down to detail, my tasks vary from project planning and deciding what we need to do. I quality-check everything we make, I create 3D models and textures for the 3D models, I create special-effects, icons, graphics user interface, set up resources, export and evaluate objects, and play-test. We all do a lot of different tasks, which is the good thing of being a small team; we all get to be a part of all the different bits of the game. 

www.henningludvigsen.com 

Read the whole article in issue No. 72.