Fresh GDC talks span Sunset Overdrive, Pixar and interior design

As the GDC 2015 lineup continues to grow, conference officials are excited to highlight a few notable talks on game art design that you should keep an eye on.

These talks are part of the Visual Arts track for GDC 2015's Main Conference, which will take place Wednesday-Friday, March 4-6 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA. This in-depth track is available for All-Access and Main Conference pass holders, and remains one of the more popular and exciting tracks of the show. 

In "Designing CounterSpy: A Journey From Games to Pixar to Games," Dynamighty art director Mark Holmes will share what he's learned over the course of a career that started in games, spanned 16 years at Pixar and brought him back around to games again as an indie developer. He'll cover some key lessons learned in his time at Pixar, and how he applied those learnings to the creative design decisions that went into Dynamighty's striking debut game CounterSpy.

Learn from the challenges Insomniac Games overcame in designing Sunset Overdrive to accommodate an array of player character body types and genders at Adalbert Kinsey's "Player Choice of Gender and Body Type in Sunset Overdrive" talk. Kinsey serves as lead character technical director at Insomniac, and you can expect to walk out of her Production/Visual Arts session with a good understanding of the systems and tools developed by the studio to give players full control over the appearance of their in-game avatar -- as well as some tips you can apply to your own project.

Also, don't miss Ubisoft Toronto artist Dan Cox delivering a thoughtful talk on practical ways developers and artists can apply proven interior design principles to their work making games. During his talk, "Interior Design and Environment Art: Mastering Space, Mastering Place", Cox will take a deep dive into more complex Interior Design techniques and practices to show you how they can help you master space and place in your own projects.

Of course, further details on these and all announced talks is available now in the online GDC 2015 Session Scheduler, where you can begin to plan out your conference week and later export it to the up-to-the-minute GDC Mobile App, coming soon.

Conference officials look forward to announcing more GDC 2015 sessions spanning a diverse array of game industry issues in the months ahead. GDC 2015 itself will take place March 2-6 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

For more information on GDC 2015, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.

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