Introduction

My name is Michael Eurek and I currently reside in Chicago IL, USA. From childhood, I had always been interested in game development, mostly because I was a big fan of playing them. I had a passion for art as well, so it seemed natural to make being an artist in games my goal. I graduated from Vancouver Film School in Canada in the end of 2009 and worked some small commercial projects as an animator in Chicago. I also interned at a motion capture studio.

The gaming industry is not very large here and can be very competitive, so after my internship, I started applying to various positions all over the place. I ended up in Los Angeles at Pixomondo (a film VFX studio) as a junior 3D generalist. I’d say this was my first start in transitioning to games. I worked on the Oscar winning film “Hugo” there and learned so much. I took some time to update my portfolio and continued working in film / commercials in LA and Chicago until 2014.

I went to Baton Rouge and worked on “Left Behind” (voted one of the worst films of the year!) and had a really fun time. After coming back to Chicago, I learned as much about UE4 as I could and made the Temple of Time video. This is what helped me get a job at Phosphor Games. I’ve been working on 2 games in the Heroes universe (based on the television show of the same name).

Getting to Know Zelda in UE4

My brother had an NES when we were children and I remember watching him play The Legend of Zelda. I was so enamored by the story, music, gameplay, and adventure! The Ocarina of Time (OOT) is probably my favorite game of all time. I think everything was just done so well with that game. I loved all of the environments, so I absolutely wanted to try and recreate some of them.