Abraham Valdez has been a character artist on video games like Army of two: The Devils Cartel (Xbox360/PS3); Medal of Honor: Warfighter (Xbox360/PC/PS3); and Matt Hazard: Bloodbath and Beyond (Xbox360/PS3). He has most recently been a character artist at the Los Angeles studio of Kojima productions, a subsidiary of Konami Digital Entertainment who are the publishers of games like Metal Gear Solid and Castlevania.
As a senior character artist at EALA (Danger Close) Studios (2010-2013) he specialised in creating high resolution character models with military equipment and gear.
And as a character artist at Vicious Cycle Software (2006-2010) he created likenesses or used features of certain actors to create unique faces.
Since October, 2014, he’s been an instructor at Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood, Los Angeles. Gnomon is one of the top schools specialising in computer graphics, training for careers in the entertainment industry.

READERSVOICE.COM: What was it like growing up in Brooklyn and were you always drawing or taking photos of people?

ABRAHAM VALDEZ: It was a great experience growing up in Brooklyn, there was a very strong sense of community there and yes I was always drawing. Recently as a family we were discussing our favorite childhood memories and for me it was drawing through the summer days and nights.

RV: You’ve said that you use 3ds Max which you learned in college, ZBrush, Maya and Photoshop in your character designs in games. What different uses do these programs have? Do you use one for faces, say, and one for equipment on a character, or maybe one for architecture?

AV: Every software has its own strengths and weakness but the artist is the determining factor in the output of art. I primarily use Zbrush for modeling anything organic and still use 3d Max for hard surface but that is primarily based on my personal preference and comfort.

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– copyright Simon Sandall