Mads Vadsholt
Game Designer, Art Director, 3D Artist, Sound Designer, Composer
Mail: madsvadsholt@gmail.com
Born in 1992. Copenhagen, Denmark.
As a child, I made a lot of drawings, but it was when I discovered graffiti that I felt like devoting my life to something creative. Looking carefully at other peoples graffiti while I would ride the train to school became a natural instinct. I would spend all my freetime drawing and painting graffiti wherever I could and after a while people started paying me to do so. As I became older I felt that graffiti was not enough. I wanted to be an artist and not just a creative street boy. I was recommended The Animation Workshop as a great place for studying to become an artist of drawing and animation. After visiting the school and spending a large amount of hours looking at their website, I decided this is what I’ll do.
Getting into The Animation Workshop changed me completely. I had expected to become a great illustrator or perhaps a concept artist and still be a graffiti writer, but the school was all about software… Every day we were taught how to make computer graphics and I was quite dissapointed in what my dream school turned out to be. However, after half a year of almost quitting and almost being kicked out of school, I found love for the software. I realized that I could create amazing images in a few hours that in drawing would take months to finalize.
As school went on, I did a few animated film projects and learned a lot about how film production whilest my skillset grew. In 3rd year I got the chance to work on a video game as my bachelor project. The thrill of making video games and the awesome teamwork experience would beat all other creative categories I had been doing my whole life. Our bachelor game, Lost Tracks (Link?) had succes and I felt like I wanted to continue down that path. I did an internship in a tiny game studio and right after I graduated from The Animation Workshop, I had an idea for my first very own game, The Forest Quartet (link?). I reached for the stars and felt I was ready to make something totally amazing with the bits of experience I had. It proved itself to be a thousand times harder than I thought and especially with no money. I struggled for 2+ years between working as a freelancer and working on the game when I had no work. I tried appying for funds now and then, but nothing came through. It was very tough, but sometimes fun because I had a lot of great work experience both as a teacher of animation and as a freelance 3D artist working for various studios and people around the world. The game finally took its real shape when I was admitted for a 2 month recidency in Sweden called Stugan, (Link?). Being able to work fully focused on the project with amazing programmers and gamedesigners around me did the job. I had something good and so I found the funds to develop the game further with a great team. The rest is history!
ASSOCIATED PROJECTS