Today inKonbini was released — a game I gave a piece of my soul and six months of intensive work to.
A random tweet of mine was seen by the head of a small indie studio while I was sitting in Cyprus without work. As a result, a couple of months later Phil Spencer was photographed in front of a logo written by my own hand.
I rarely get emotionally involved in work, but I loved this project, the team was simply ❤️ and the task was clear. I did everything possible to give the game the right feeling and tone of voice. Everything possible so that even after I left at the end of '24, it wouldn't be embarrassing to ship.
Today Yekaterinburg is opening the champagne and I'm with the team with all my heart. It came out well — I played the release build until three in the morning to immerse myself again and touch my own work. It was lying exactly where I left it.
When you're the art director at an indie studio (real indie, not this newfangled 100+ people kind), you're responsible not only for the notorious "vision" and "atmosphere" but for absolutely everything. I'll write a long article in both languages explaining the approach and how it all actually went, but today I was slightly undone by a discovery: in the old files I came across a 45-minute screencast of the build in which I thoughtfully comment for the external sound team on everything to do with the sound FX. Whether the menu switching clicks right, whether the crickets chirp well, and so on.
Mono no aware is my light, and it seems I caught the right thing by the tail. A Russian lad in Cyprus who's never been to Japan, trying to recreate the aesthetic of a small rural shop in the nineties — a task with an asterisk.
80–90 on Metacritic, 900+ people online, top of the Steam charts.
I often see courses teaching specific software: "Blender from Scratch," "Cinema 4D for Designers," and so on. As someone who's traveled a certain path in 3D graphics and worked in various capacities, I'd like to clarify the situation and share my perspective on what really matters.
There's a lot of text here. I hope it will be useful to those who've just started their journey into the "magical world of 3D," haven't gone too far yet, or maybe it will help someone better understand the root of their problems.
I.I
For most of my career, I've been creating images for advertising: beautiful cigarette packs with perfect highlights, "correctly" condensated beer bottles, product packaging, POS materials—agencies love using 3D graphics for this kind of work. The perfect world of visualization as a convincing argument for the buyer.
My journey began when a friend gave me a pirated CD (there were no other kinds back then) of 3ds Max 2.5 for my birthday. A lot of time has passed since then, the internet has become fast, 3D printers have appeared, but I'd like to travel back and have a little talk with that guy in the late '90s.
Let's say there's a task: hammer a nail into a board.
For this task, you need: a nail, a board, a hammer, and a person to hammer the nail. It's a crude analogy, but that's what a 3D package is—a hammer. There are many different hammers on the market: some are free, others by subscription, but all have a similar construction and identical operating principle.
Does the shape of the handle matter to a professional? Whether it's wooden or plastic? What alloy the hammer is made of, whether it has a nail puller?
You can hammer a nail with an axe (and many people use software not designed for 3D for exactly this purpose), with a sledgehammer. You could even use a microscope. 🙂
It's not so important to know how to press buttons in a 3D editor as it is to understand the principle and workflow, the sequence of actions.
The choice of a specific hammer is the master's preference—they're comfortable working with their familiar tool.
In my practice, there was a case when I was forced to switch from 3ds Max + Windows to Cinema 4D + macOS and deliver results in a couple of days. Yes, it was an unfamiliar hammer, I was holding it for the first time, I was nervous, but I hammered in the necessary nails.
If a person knows exactly what to do, understands the workflow sequence, they'll quickly figure out any software and switch from one task to another. Like with soldering: the model of your soldering iron doesn't matter that much—a specialist will solder a circuit even with a nail and a gas torch. It's important to separate the awareness of yourself as a professional in something from the tools you work with.
Replace "I'm a specialist with a red-handled hammer" with "I know how to hammer nails into boards." Then with "I know how to build crates," and then, you might find, "I build houses." And if your dream is to build a house, I'd venture to say one hammer won't be enough.
I would start forming the required toolkit by defining the goal of who you want to become and what you want to be able to do.
I.II
You're in your home, getting ready for a journey. The road to the Big City lies through a dark forest—it's a long road that will take more than one year. You have time to pack your backpack, mark the trail on the map, and listen to advice from those who have already passed through this forest.
That's exactly how I imagine professional growth, becoming a specialist. Preparation is important. Many acquaintances ran into the forest in sneakers and a t-shirt, didn't really understand where they wanted to get to, and at best, returned home disappointed. At worst, they're still wandering somewhere out there in the thicket, picking berries.
Every item you take with you should be justified by understanding why you need it. Don't neglect the point of plotting your route, understanding what the landmarks look like.
The main principle I'd keep in mind: always keep moving. Watch tutorials, read forums, listen to podcasts, but remember that no one will take the next step for you. Yes, before lighting a fire, it would be great to learn exactly how to do it, but theoretical knowledge alone won't make you warmer. And if you stumble upon some problem—look for solutions yourself, it's part of the journey, like a side quest.
Don't take job offers that lead you off the path. As someone who took on a bunch of side tasks and worked at many companies of the most diverse profiles (as long as it involved "hammers"!), I know what I'm talking about. Such "well-sort-of-kind-of-suitable-for-now" positions won't make things better—you won't progress much.
If you don't have orders, it wouldn't hurt to announce yourself louder. Perhaps people just aren't aware of your existence yet. Post your work on social media, on Behance/ArtStation, read chats, talk about your journey, and... keep moving.
Part of your backpack is already packed with various things. Something, perhaps, from school days, and something as part of your character. I was lucky—I had art school and a desire to understand the mechanics of how devices work, which helped me on my path. But besides that, there were also several years of music school in there.
Don't worry, throw out what you won't need—walking with a heavy backpack is harder.
I.III
People learn by repeating the actions of other people.
If you give three chefs the same soup recipe, you'll end up with three different soups. Don't worry about following the same recipe as others—it'll turn out unique anyway.
Reinventing the wheel is long, expensive, and dangerous. Try moving away from this approach toward modifying existing solutions. The superpower of creating "something from nothing" is a skill developed over years. The word "nothing" is misleading here—a person creates something new based on experience and a library of known solutions. New recipes are still built on combinations of flavors. If you mix ice cream, soy sauce, cabbage, and a couple of eggs, you'll be looking for someone willing to try it for a long time.
In the long term, consistency is better than chaos, measured progress takes you further than impulsiveness. Apparently, people only enjoy a pinch of unexpectedness and take a long time to get used to new paradigms.
The deeper into the forest you make your way, the clearer you see the final goal. I'd compare this process to focusing. Our vision has a peculiarity—we only see clearly a small part of what we're looking at, a little more than three percent is in focus. The gaze "runs around," examining the object, eyes need time to capture the whole picture.
Don't try to swallow too large a volume. Discard the unnecessary, focus your "vision" on what's truly important. In English, there's a figure of speech: "Jack of all trades, master of none," which carries a negative connotation. A person who spreads themselves too thin stops being a professional at anything. In Russian, it's the opposite—"master of all trades" contains a positive characteristic. We love "broad profile" specialists, even though we understand that being a professional at everything is impossible.
There's a great temptation to have a pool of possibilities to choose from: will I hammer a nail today, twist a screwdriver, or saw a board? But the more unrelated tasks you set for yourself, the harder it will be to achieve professionalism, the more tangled the trail in the forest will become. Even within one specific area, there's always the possibility to veer off and grab something from a neighboring field for entertainment and expanding your circle of interests.
Recently, someone knocked on my door offering to join a project as a volunteer "for now." I've seen plenty of teams like this and know the problems well enough — so I decided it's time to write it all down.
When people gather together, united by some common idea, and start working on pure enthusiasm, several predictable situations emerge.
Either the idea turns out to mean something different to everyone, or enthusiasm crashes against reality and utility bills, or that beautiful future is just too far away.
In most cases, team members lose motivation, start dragging their feet on tasks, feel like they've let everyone down and couldn't even stick with a free project — ultimately doing more harm than good. But there's not much fault with the specialist here; it's all about setting the wrong goals from the start.
Here's what matters:
Any studio needs clear process organization.
"Manageable workload" isn't a 42-kilometer marathon — it's a hundred-meter sprint.
Glory and belonging are often far more important than money.
Let me break this down.
Whether you're building a game dev studio or an asset production pipeline, it doesn't matter — wherever there's work and people doing it, there's always a production process. In the professional world, producers and supervisors handle processes, project managers and leads ensure compliance, and sometimes the ratio of managers to creators reaches one-to-one.
In most small indie teams, everyone is both manager and creator simultaneously. Tasks, at best, get dumped by whoever started this whole circus — and that's still good if they actually planned them in advance rather than making them up during the call.
Everyone works with the tools they know, the way they're used to. In small teams, individual preferences and "personal style" often seem more important than the common goal. But they're not.
So here's the first critical point: you need a crystal-clear workflow that minimizes individual quirks. Your pipeline should be set in stone from the start, only changing when the team outgrows it. Think military-style chain of command.
This doesn't mean the person handling prop models can't voice opinions about lore or mechanics — but they do it exclusively during monthly brainstorms, not by presenting a fait accompli of "I thought it would be better this way." Just as the game designer's opinion on color palettes doesn't override the art director's decisions. Everyone owns only their piece of the work toward the shared goal.
Speaking of goals — point number two.
I know a team that's been poking at some "game" for over six years. They've changed genres, seen dozens of people come and go, rewritten the lore — changed everything. I don't know if they'll ever ship anything. So far, it doesn't look like it.
My advice is simple: don't start small — start microscopic. If you're making games, make one in a month. It can have ONE mechanic, four props, a dozen textures, and two buttons — but it should be a complete game your team actually made.
You'll immediately discover how difficult it is, how poorly your processes work, how badly you manage time, how challenging leadership really is, and how people consistently overestimate their abilities. But you'll learn more in that one month than you would spending years on an open-world RPG with dozens of mechanics in a unique setting.
Imagine you're a paralyzed patient dreaming of running a marathon. To run a marathon, you need to train for a long time, sure — but first, you need working legs. Right now, you've only got a brain (the CEO), two tails, a trunk, and some gills. There was a leg once, but it got a day job and no longer has time to run with you.
Point three — belonging.
Any HR professional will tell you that money, frankly, isn't the most effective motivator. You can't retain employees with salary alone. If team dynamics are mediocre, people leave. If they're working on something unclear they can't even discuss — same result. If contributions go unrecognized or poorly acknowledged — same result. Money is just the baseline, and retaining even well-paid employees is challenging.
When money isn't in the equation at all, it gets exponentially harder. You absolutely must have results employees can be proud of. You must highlight everyone's contributions. You must let people talk about their work. Instead of money, the baseline becomes respect, professional growth, and clear understanding of what they're doing and why.
Therefore, every result — every finished product — must go live. Made a small game with the team? Great. Upload it to Steam immediately, to itch.io, to the App Store. Marketing (even if it's one person) should work in parallel with development, preparing for each release in advance, not as an afterthought. There shouldn't be more than a day between finishing development and announcement. This builds portfolios for both the team and individuals, shows people their work matters, and proves it's not all for nothing.
Beyond the internal benefits, this approach has practical advantages: you learn to navigate platform approvals, prepare marketing assets, and celebrate wins together.
To sum up: the team must understand exactly what you're doing without fighting against management. The task must be achievable with a clear deadline. During the process, you can talk about the work. After completion, there must be a release.
After several projects like this, the team becomes more resilient, capable of tackling complex work — and with a portfolio of shipped projects, far more attractive to outside investment.
