Last year I wrote an article for videogame industry trade site Gamasutra entitled ‘The South African Game Development Scene: Past Present and Future,’ which attempted to look at the history of game development in the country and surmise how an industry may rise and move forward here.

The article was based on interviews conducted with a diverse, influential and talented group of developers both from and based in South Africa, but a lot of the responses were unfortunately not included due to the nature of the piece, so in an effort to share this potential goldmine of knowledge with aspiring game developers and gaming enthusiasts, I decided to start posting the interviews here on El33tonline, in full, continuing today with part six, and an interview with Naughty Dog’s Judd Simantov (you can read part one, part two, part three, part four and part five at your leisure).

Judd Simantov is the Art Technical Lead at Naughty Dog Inc., having moved from South Africa in October 2004 at the age of 22 to use his specific skill sets related to 3D animation, modelling and technical scripting, and to pursue a career in the field of videogames.

Initially, Simantov’s focus was purely on animation and digital visual arts, working on CG movie shorts and animated advertisements, before being offered a job opportunity at Naughty Dog in Los Angeles, California. Feeling frustrated by the lack of opportunity in South Africa to utilise his unique animation technology skills, Simantov took the job at Naughty Dog and is now responsible for the developer’s character and animation pipeline, as well as the development of the technologies driving the animation.

Simantov has held presentations related to his work at Naughty Dog at Game Developers Conference (GDC) events every year from 2007 up to and including 2010 (excluding 2009, to my knowledge), and has helped the team at Naughty Dog create and ship both Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and the recent industry-crushing, multiple award-winning Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.

Simantov also co-created the 3D art plug-in and related website, CGMuscle. To find out what he does in his spare time (when he has it), you should definitely visit Simantov’s personal blog over here, and check out the range of artistic endeavours he busies himself with.

Let’s begin this fascinating and highly inspiring interview with Judd Simantov:

Continue reading The Lost South African Game Developer Interviews Part 6: Judd Simantov.