Interview with Alexandre Labedade – animation developer

Hello Alexandre, thank you for agreeing to this interview. How did you come to work on the Space Hunt pinball machine?

I’ve known Hervé Coussillan and Alexandre Mak for several years, and we meet regularly at the James Game Center. It was Hervé who first told me about this pinball project, knowing that I had the skills required for the animation part. I contacted Alex directly to find out more.

Is this your first time working on this type of project?

I’ve previously worked on video games, but mainly on programming. The animations I’ve produced before have tended to be for more “classic” things (like architecture, special effects or scientific illustrations). So this is indeed the first time I’ve worked on animations for a game, and I’ve really enjoyed it 🙂

How did you organize your work with the other team members?

Most of it was between Luis and me. He produced the storyboards that I had to follow in order to create the animations. I made a few sporadic suggestions to fix a few details, but for the most part, I followed the artist’s instructions to the letter. I also had a few technical exchanges with Christophe to organize the files and certain cuts, as the video sequences could be a little complex for certain missions. Hervé then took over to provide the soundtrack for these animations.

What constraints did you encounter when working on Flipper?

As I didn’t work on the hardware side of things, I was spared a whole host of technical worries, which the other team members managed brilliantly! As far as I’m concerned, it was a case of keeping to deadlines as best I could.

What do you take away from this experience? Did it open new doors for you?

I was able to improve some of my skills in animating and rendering cartoon characters. This may seem simpler than rendering an ultra-realistic image, but today’s standard rendering engines offer functionalities that are more dedicated to obtaining images that mimic reality. As soon as you enter the realm of non-photorealism, you’ll quickly have to find ways of bypassing standard features and delving deeper into the bowels of the rendering engine to achieve the desired result.

The Pinball machine is now open to the public. Have you had any feedback on the animations?

All the feedback I’ve had has been positive, and that’s made me very happy.

Do you remember the first time you discovered Pinball?

I was able to get close to the beast during a test session organized at Alex’s place. It was there that I also met Christophe and Luis for the first time. I’d already had the opportunity to see the mechanics of other pinball machines, but this time I was very pleasantly surprised to see the quality and optimization of the layout of this prototype’s components.

Compared to video games, what do you think pinball machines have that you don’t?

The physical contact with the machine and the fact that you have to use almost your whole body to interact with it seems to me to be the most notable and appreciable difference. I’ve always admired gamers who can keep games going for dozens of minutes at a time, as this requires concentration and reflexes that I find more difficult to
execute than sitting on the couch with a controller in hand!