the Collette Michaud Interview

Q1, Hi Collette, Firstly could you introduce yourself and what your job title was on the game,

My name is Collette Michaud and I was an animator on “Zombies Ate My Neighbors.” I was also head of the Lucas Arts art department.

Q2, ZAMN is a fantastic game as I am sure you will agree, what other games have you worked on?

I also had the pleasure to work on “Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis” as Lead Animator, “Monkey Island II” briefly as an animator and graphic designer of the packaging, “Sam&Max Hit the Road” as a Designer and Animator, “Mortimer and the Riddles of the Medallion” as Designer, Project Leader, and Artist. I then helped launch Lucas Learning, a sister company that developed educational games for children. There, I was project leader and designer of “Droidworks” and “Star Wars Math Jabba’s Game Galaxy."

Q3, So firstly what was it like working at Lucas Arts?

I really enjoyed working at LucasArts. It was the early years of games in general and as an artist, technology was moving at light speed. When I started there, we had only 256 colors on the screen to work with and by the time I left the company five years later, we were working with millions of colors and scanning artwork into the computer rather than drawing directly into it using a mouse. On Zombies, I had to animate the graphics on the PC, then switch over to the Nintendo to make sure the colors looked right in that resolution. It was a back and forth kind of operation that seemed archaic at the time even.

Most everyone who worked at the company was single except for a few of the managers. We worked all hours of the day. About 60 of us were all crammed into one small building. My desk was within three feet of two other artists even though I was the manager. In the middle of the building upstairs there was a bunch of couches where you could always find people like Tim Schaffer and Ron Gilbert meeting about something or just hanging out cracking jokes. When we weren’t all working together at the office, we were many times hanging out afterwards.

We all were ambitious and wanted to just make great games. Most of the time, we had no idea what we were doing because the technology was changing so fast underneath us. Most of the time, everyone was following their gut instincts and figured things out as they went.

I should also give credit to Kelly Flock, who was CEO for a short while. He had vision for where the games industry was headed and he respected talent. He basically stepped out of the way and made it possible for the project leaders, programmers and artists to make great things to happen. Because of him, games like Sam & Max Hit the Road, Day of the Tentacle and especially Rebel Assault came into existence. He provided the right environment for encouraging creativity and innovation.

Along these same lines was the emphasis on original story lines. Project leaders like Brian Moriarty, Hal Barwood, Tim Schafer, Steve Purcell, and Ron Gilbert were celebrated and encouraged to come up with completely original games. It was a wonderful and magical time at LucasArts.

However, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the best part of working at LucasArts was that I met my husband of 22 years, Steve Purcell. And we got to work together on the creation of Sam & Max Hit the Road.

Q4, Ever get to work with George Lucas and did he have any input to the game or the artwork?

Early on he would come to LucasArts and meet with the entire company at our company meetings. We would all sit and stand around the couch area upstairs and just listen to him talk about what he was working on and ask him questions about what it was like to make the first set of Star Wars movies.

In 1998, LucasArts marketing department head, Mary Bihr, put together an elaborate launch event for “Mortimer and the Riddles of the Medallion” at the big games show down in LA.. George was flown in and sat on a panel where we talked about the game and answered questions about it. We sat next to each other, but he didn’t really say much to me before or afterward.

After “Mortimer”, I left LucasArts to help launch Lucas Learning. In the early days of this new company, a few of us met with him in his office up at the ranch to talk about his goals for creating learning software for children. He gave a few notes early on for “DroidWorks,” but then became enmeshed in making the first trilogy of Star Wars movies. We never really interacted much after that.

Q5, In an interview with Mike Ebert he said that the games art style and overall fell spawned from many classic movies... what movies inspired your team?

Oh, the usual: Frankenstein, Dracula and Creature from the Black Lagoon. I mainly took my lead from Mike Ebert.

Q6, You was obviously working on some very limited hardware at the time, compared to the what Lucas Arts were normally used to (PC adventure games) how did your team find the change?

Yes, as I alluded to earlier, we had to create the artwork in the PC and then transfer it to the Nintendo low res screen format to make sure it translated right. It was a time consuming process. However, the Nintendo platform was also very forgiving in that it didn’t show details. So it was a bit like painting an impressionistic painting. You had to stand back from it to make sure everything was coming together in the way you wanted it to. Up close, it looked like a mess.

Q7, I personally loved the game, was you and your team happy with the result?

Sure! It was a lot of fun to work on.

Q8, What about Mr Lucas? Do you know if he was happy with the game you guys made?

No, by this time, he was a bit out of the loop with the games company. He had stopped coming to company meetings and was deep into writing for the Star Wars movies. I think he was probably just happy that LucasArts was profitable, which up until shortly before this had not been the case.

Q9, Is there anything you wish you could have changed about the game after seeing the final product?

Oh, I always wish that I could be a better artist and animator. But in general, I wasn’t very involved in the design of the game. It was really all Mike’s terrific vision and implementation. My goal was to please him, which I hope I did. I did have a lot of fun working on “Zombies." Mike was super easy and fun to work for.

Q10, And finally, you current position as CEO of the Children's Museum of Sonoma County seems to be quite a departure form your video game roots, tell us more about it?

Actually, it’s not all that different from what I was doing previously in the games world. As a games artist and then later on as a designer of them, I was always creating interactive worlds inside the computer. Now, I’m doing it outside of the computer, which for me is a lot more fun because of the hands-on nature of the work. Instead of relying on programmers, I now work mainly with construction workers. Some of which are amazingly talented artists as well.

I get to see the results real time and am not dependent so much on a technology I don’t understand how to program myself. I know how to use a hammer, saw and screw driver. On a philosophical level, kids today are practically born with a screen of some sort in their hands. My feeling is that we need to provide them with every opportunity to work with their hands and bodies as a whole. To grow up doing the things we did as children, building forts, splashing in water, creating art on paper and getting their hands dirty. The Children’s Museum of Sonoma County gives them the opportunity to do just this - learn through hands-on experiential exhibits, activities, and programs. It’s very rewarding to see the results of my work on a daily basis as I walk around the Museum. I’m very lucky that my pervious career in games gave me a solid foundation for what I do today at the Children’s Museum.