MechWarrior Online Developer Q and A #1: Alex Iglesias

Developer Interview 1: Alex Iglesias

MechWarrior Online: Can you give us brief bio?

Alex Iglesias: I’m presently living in Miami, FL. Am 27 years old, and graduated with a BFA in illustration from Ringling School of Art and Design, plus took a few courses at Gnomon school of visual arts. Previously worked at Day 1 Studios, Ignition Entertainment, and have done a bit of freelance.

MWO: Your deviant art profile says all Mechs all the time... so how long have you been drawing Mechs?

AI: If my memory serves me correctly, it started all the way back somewhere between 1994 and 1996, so about 15-17 years.

MWO: What do you have against furries? 

AI: Haha, Well, for the record I don’t hate all of them. I’ve actually been friends with a few over the years. It’s mostly just the subculture as a whole that makes my brain hurt. If anything, it’s for the all the horrible eye scarring artwork it tends to fill the internet with, and how defensive it gets whenever called on it.

MWO: What is your first MechWarrior® experience? Video games or BattleTech®?

AI: Oddly enough, I believe my first experience was with the Somerset Strikers cartoon which sparked my curiosity, followed by the sega genesis game, then MechWarrior® 2 Mercs.

MWO: Did you start drawing Mechs after that or did you always draw giant robots?

AI: The Mech stuff started probably after the sega game, or MW2mercs, but became a serious habit once I started getting into the novels at around 12 or 13. However, I’ve always liked drawing exploding combat stuff as best as I can recall, the earliest art I remember making were crazy looking crayon doodles of stick figure airplanes and tanks blowing each other up when I was 4.

MWO: How did you get involved with Catalyst Game Labs?

AI: By pure luck. Around late 2007, Mike Vaillancourt contacted me because he wanted a few illustrations for one of the Cthulhutech books. Afterwards, throughout most of 2008 he kept asking if I was going to go to Gencon that August and hang out at the booth. I was consistently unsure, and pretty much at the last minute decided, “Why not? sure.” What I had not realized was that 2 weeks prior, his company had partnered with Catalyst Game Labs™, and that we were going to be at their booth. Additionally, I also did not know at the time that Catalyst was comprised almost entirely of ex FASA writers and staff. Imagining that I might be at the booth for hours I brought my crappy laptop and a wacom tablet with me to kill time. When I actually got to the booth, Mike began introducing me to people, when I started recognizing names from the credits or covers of BT books from years prior. After my barely controlled mental regression to being suddenly 15 again, I guess I sensed it was a good time to start drawing Mech stuff right then and there. It apparently impressed their art director, Brent Evans, and a few months later I’m getting assignments to do book covers.

Read the rest of the Q&A with Alex Iglesias