A date with Destiny

Darren shares key moments from early on in his career that helped shape the way that he works today

“There were a couple of memorable breakthroughs I’ve had in my career. The first was during my time at Bungie. Some point during the production of Destiny, my workflow started to click and I got to the place as an artist where I could pretty articulately get my ideas out in a close to 1:1 fashion.

The thing I spend a lot of time and effort on is putting that 3D or photo texture into the scene and then rebuilding it or embedding it into the image in a way where it all sits together. If I do as intended, it should be hard to figure out how I did it. I try to cover my tracks and have as much image data as I can get in an image, while also hitting the look I’m going for. As a reminder I keep folders of benchmark images made by me or others, so I have a ballpark that I know I’m trying to stay in stylistically.

Prior to that, I think I did some of what I would consider good work, but it was unintentional or done out of sheer will and extraordinary effort. I mean, I think some of that earlier work was good or useful, but I didn’t always know how to replicate my successes every time. I was just sort of trying super-hard and would get lucky as a result of the effort sometimes.

Since that breakthrough, I’ve grown to a place where I can start to analyse images in a better way to know what works and what doesn’t, and why. I wouldn’t say I’ve mastered it, but I feel like I can more regularly get my work to that five per cent wall and then spend more energy struggling there.”