Who are you, and what do you do?
I’m Gabby, a video game developer and multidisciplinary artist who specializes in creating stylized 2D/3D artwork for games.
I’m best-known as the creator of A Mortician’s Tale and worked as an artist on indies like Celeste, Parkitect, and Super Crush KO among many others.
By day I work at Drinkbox Studios as a senior game artist-- most recently on Nobody Saves the World and currently on a new, unannounced project. By night I work on my own small indie games, illustrations, and over the past year have gotten into tattooing as a hobby.
What hardware do you use?
At Drinkbox’s office I use a Windows PC and a Wacom Cintiq Pro 24 with a random mechanical keyboard, mouse, and headset I found around the office.
At home I use Windows PC and a Wacom Intuos Drawing Tablet with a much more aesthetic mouse and keyboard setup:
- Keyboard: Pink Filco Majestouch 2 with Astrolokeys key caps
- Mouse: Quartz Pink Razer Lancehead Tournament Edition
- Controller: Xbox PowerA Enhanced Wired Controller in “Pink Lemonade”
- Headphones: Pink DEEBOX
- Palm-Rest: Aurora Collection TKL Keyboard Palm Rest
I slowly built this setup over the pandemic and my desk has subsequently become a much more inviting space for personal work and playing games with friends.
For illustrations and tattoo designs I use a 2014 MacBook Pro and iPad (6th Gen) with an Apple Pencil. I love having the ability to use them away from a desk and work at my couch, kitchen table, or even take them to a cafe.
For tattooing I use a Dragonhawk Rotary Pen, ATOMUS Cartridge Needles, Dynamic Colour Co inks, and an Itari Thermal Printer for stencils. I would love to buy a fancier tattoo machine one day, but I’m still pretty new at it and wanted to start with something more affordable.
And what software?
At Drinkbox we use our own proprietary game engine, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Blender for art, Discord for team chat, TortoiseSVN for version control, Google Docs for documentation, and Bugzilla for managing bugs.
For my personal games I use Unity, Photoshop, Blender, ZBrush, and Substance Painter. I use Trello for project management, Google Docs for documentation, and Pinterest for gathering inspiration and creating visual development boards.
For illustrations and tattoo designs I use Procreate.
What would be your dream setup?
Honestly, I would just like more space.
Right now I live in a cozy one-bedroom attic apartment with my cat. I’d love to have a secondary room that I could use as an office, with a larger desk with space for a Cintiq, and a dedicated spot for tattooing.
Toronto rent/housing is absurdly expensive though, so this may end up being a literal dream.