Chris:
I didn’t think I was that good, words from our guest, Steve Derrick, on today’s episode. You know what stands out to me about that sentence, he didn’t say I’m not that good, he said he didn’t think he was that good. It’s always in our head. Our minds will make us believe anything, and often, our minds try to tell us all the ways we are wrong and all of the ways what we are doing is not good enough. How many times have you said something like this, I can’t do it, I’m not good enough. Well, our guest today thought he wasn’t good enough, but he didn’t care. He listened to his heart, he followed his passion, and you know what, he was pretty good. And people from all across the world noticed just how good he was. What do you say, enough talk, let’s get over it.
Chris:
All right. So our guests today in the Get Overit Podcast is Steve Derrick. I’ve never met Steve before. One of the great things about me doing the show is I’ve been meeting new people, and this is the first forum that I get to know them. So I’m going to get to know Steve while the audience is getting to know him as well. Steve is, correct me if this title is incorrect, Steve, but a director of organizational development, is that right? Did I get that right?
Steve Derrick:
Yup. That’s it.
Chris:
And Vicarious Visions who Steve was just telling me now is a Blizzard studio, we’re going to talk about that, which is a video game development company. He’s been there for 22 years, aside from this career that I have questions about video game development, I’m going to ask him a little bit. Steve has a passion for art in particular, and painting and during the pandemic, which is where I saw some of this that it was really inspiring. He was inspired by, like all of us, like a lot of us, I hope most of us, by the bravery of the frontline healthcare workers. And he began painting portraits of images he saw of them. I think all of you out there probably saw those really dramatic pictures of those healthcare workers with their masks and lines on their face. And so, he began painting portraits of them, sending the portraits to these individuals. It’s a really inspiring story. He received a lot of recognition for it. And Steve is here today to talk to us about that and some more. Welcome to the show, Steve.
Steve Derrick:
Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.
Chris:
So, upstate New York, you’ve been here all your life?
Steve Derrick:
No, no, no. I moved here 22 years ago for the job. I’m originally from Utah, and grew up in Utah, worked out in California, Utah, Arizona, and then moved up here for Vicarious Visions back when it was a little startup company.
Chris:
And so, were you always keen on video games? How does one get into video game development? Do you like video games or is it more the development aspect that drives it?
Steve Derrick:
I do love video games. I love art probably more so than video games, but I love art in video games. So, I think 22 years ago, video games is pretty new. It’s not that we didn’t have games back then, but they were not top of mind for everybody. I have a degree from the university of Utah in painting and drawing. And then after that, I got into doing storyboards for film and advertising companies, kind of like [inaudible 00:03:09]. Did comps [inaudible 00:03:12] things like that. And that was freelance, I had kids, thought, I don’t know if freelance is going to be a good long-term thing for me. I needed something with benefits. So I went back to school and got a degree in computer animation.
Steve Derrick:
And during this time, I played video games and loved video games, and found out that holy cow, you could make a career in video games. That was it. I was like, okay, that’s where I’m focusing, that’s what I’m going to do. And right after school, that degree, I got a job here in upstate New York.
Chris:
Okay. So then you went back, you said, this is what I want to do, got it, and then found the job here, and then that’s when you moved to upstate New York?
Steve Derrick:
Yeah.
Chris:
But the thread was always art, right?
Steve Derrick:
Thread was always art.
Chris:
Talk to me about that. This has always fascinated me. So I have neuroscientist by training. There’s always the nature nurture thing in science, are you born with it, do you acquire it, I always think it’s a combination of both. But with art, I am not an artist. I don’t draw well, I don’t do much well with art. So I feel like there is a lot of nature there. Where did you see it first and how young were you when you started to recognize art was really something that you loved?
Steve Derrick:
Going back to the nature nurture thing, what is it about neuroscience that really just gets you excited? Why do you like neuroscience?
Chris:
I love neuroscience because there’s something inside of our head that does everything for us that we do, and no one really understands what that is. And that alone is fascinating. It’s the world’s biggest computer that no one can crack. And that drives me.
Steve Derrick:
It’s exciting, right?
Chris:
I really wanted to understand what the hell that thing is and how it makes us do what we do. Very exciting.
Steve Derrick:
There are other scientists, other people that are really smart. Why aren’t they all neuroscientists?
Chris:
I don’t know, maybe they find other things more interesting.
Steve Derrick:
Maybe. Yeah. So I think with art, there are people that are pretty good with high hand coordination and can see things and actually appreciate art really well, but just don’t really have that internal drive to want to create and want to make things and see things and express themselves in that way. So, if I was to have you, a neuroscientist, try drawing a picture of a person, and I teach you and you do it 950 times, eventually you’re going to get pretty good at drawing whatever that is I ask you to draw, but you’re not going to really care deeply about that thing. But there are people I think that just really get excited about certain things, and there’s an emotional attachment, and you develop it through passion, and you may do it differently than some other people. But I think that’s where kind of the passion behind art comes.
Steve Derrick:
I think the longest time back in middle school, I’d go back to my defining moment being, I lived in Utah and at the base of the mountains where I lived, they’re pretty big mountains, and you get the snow on them. There’s not a lot of trees in Utah like there are here. So when the sun sets, everything just turns pink.
Chris:
So you had beautiful landscape?
Steve Derrick:
Yeah, amazing landscape. And the whole mountain would turn pink, and sometimes you’d get this wind on the top of the peaks. They’re like 10,000 feet these pinks, you get this wind, and the big plume of snow coming off it would be a big pink flaming cloud. I was just like, wow, that’s so beautiful. I want to be able to explain this to somebody. I’m not a writer. I can’t explain and make you feel what this looks like, but maybe I could draw that. Maybe I could get somebody and be able to explain that to other people through some sort of visual way. And it was from there, that was my defining moment, I want to be an artist, I want to be able to communicate things to people that maybe they’re not seeing.
Chris:
So you think that the skill, if you will, can be acquired, but it’s the passion for leveraging that skill and turning it into something beautiful that really separates the artist? Is that what you’re saying?
Steve Derrick:
I think so. I mean, you could render something the same way I render something, and it’s going to look different for me. There’s going to be a passion and something that’ll come through. It’s probably not that easy for some people to see, but I think that’s my idea of what kind of separates artists from just craftsman or something like that.
Chris:
With that eye, with that passion, so like you said, so video games, which as a kid, now my kid and I play with him, one of the things that I actually noticed, and as the technology has gotten so much more advanced and the games have become so much more real like, that they are a lot more beautiful if you will. The scenery is incredible. I was just actually playing Zelda on a Nintendo Switch with my son. I grew up playing Zelda. I’m walking through these beautiful landscapes, and the scenery is just incredible. It’s truly incredible. I don’t know if it’s just being older, I see it differently than when I was a kid, I’m sure there’s a little bit of that, but it has gotten much more advanced. Did you see those elements in video games back in the day from an art side or would you just view it like most. Yeah, you did.
Steve Derrick:
So your reality now and what your son’s reality now is, he’s going to look 10 years from now, he’s going to look back and be like, you remember how stupid video games looked. That one Zelda game I used to play with my dad that was really low resolution. We did it on the Switch that had a very little tiny processor. Now I’m wearing these VR contact lenses that you can see everything like it’s real life.
Chris:
Like it’s right there?
Steve Derrick:
Yeah. It’s just in the eye of the holder at the time. I played games Like Baldur’s Gate, were hand painted backgrounds with these things and it was just gorgeous. It was really pretty. But now we look at it and we’re like, look at that, whatever.
Chris:
And a little bit more on this, and then I want to talk about the current time and these portraits. Can you walk me through really the development of a game, because what I always find fascinating is, in the game, amongst all of the art and beauty and scenery and high resolution, all the graphics, there’s a game. There’s a concept that you have to do. You have to win something, you have to attempt something. There is a game. What happens first? Can you explain to me how a game is born, if you will. What’s the cycle of a game? Is it a concept of the game first and then the scenery’s built around it? Does it all come at once? What does that look like?
Steve Derrick:
It kind of all comes together at once [inaudible 00:10:29]. It could be that you got to find something that’s going to be the fun. The fun is the important part. It can be beautiful, and if it doesn’t play and it’s not fun, no one’s going to want to [inaudible 00:10:40] this is a beautiful game, it really sucks. Or if it’s too tough. So the fun is the important factor. So finding things that are fun to do, and then after that, making the mechanics feel really nice and easy, so you could play it with whatever it is you’re playing it on. And then the art accentuates that, makes it a different experience. So it’s other worldly or escapism things.
Steve Derrick:
A lot of it goes back to, if you’re playing Call of Duty, some of the things in Call of Duty are things that you played as a kid. Kick the can, capture the flag, some of these things, now you’re using a little avatar and you’re playing that same thing, but in a different reality. So you focus on the fun and then build on top of that.
Chris:
I always wondered, are games built for certain platforms? Do you know that going in, or certain systems, and then they get adapted? Is it known from the beginning?
Steve Derrick:
Most of the time. Most of the time, they’re built for a system. Sometimes can go backwards, we’re making Call of Duty for a mobile platform. How would you do that and how would you make it fun because you don’t have all the processing power and the fun that you could do on a big thing or a computer. But now you’re working on a handheld system or something like that.
Chris:
I said Nintendo, for this is just for an example. Does the video game developer, I’m sure they have their own, but in someone like that, do you develop a game to pitch it to someone to sell, you know what I mean? Or is it someone they hire you to do it so you know you’re working with them? Is it all on the above, it just depends what the relationship’s like?
Steve Derrick:
So there are publishers just like in the writing industry. They’re the people that have the money that do the marketing and pay the bills, basically. A book is published by a writer and an illustrator. A game developer can work as an independent and work with a publisher to publish the game. Or you can be owned by the publisher like we are. Our company Activision Blizzard, they own a bunch of different companies, and we work with them to publish the games that we help create.
Chris:
Right. Right. I’m assuming they’re doing market research, seeing what’s playing, what’s good, what people like. And just like any product development, that all feeds into the product development, right?
Steve Derrick:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris:
And then the last question I have on this, sorry, it’s really interesting to me, I know it’s complex, is there an average time from idea to you have something to play? Is it years, is it months, does it completely depend?
Steve Derrick:
It depends on the timescale. A game can take anywhere from six months for a small little handheld game to three to five years for bigger console, massively multiplayer online kind of games can take quite a while, and they’re multimillion dollar budgets, so they’re big.
Chris:
Like you mentioned, it’s gotten a lot more complex with the ability to play online and all of these things, I have to imagine.
Steve Derrick:
Now they’re competitive sports and there’s professional teams and people watching them, millions of people in the stands. Yeah, it’s crazy. I can go on this for a long time.
Chris:
For people that are listening to this on recording or they find this podcast later, we’re recording this now in 2021. We’re right about to be in February. We are right about one year into the COVID pandemic. This has affected, obviously, all businesses and everyone’s at home and personal life. You’re mentioning you’re working from home now, just like I am, just like most people are at this time. I want to understand from you, tell me how, clearly it affected how you work your home, but how has it affected you as a person? What about this pandemic, what has it really done for you? We’re going to talk about how you turned to your art, but I’m wondering just on a personal effect, what has it made you feel, what has it made you appreciate, what did it make you look at differently?
Steve Derrick:
It could have broken me, it really could have. I’m a very outgoing people person. I need to associate with people. I come from a family of nine kids. That’s a lot of kids. An extended family with my brothers and their kids and their kids’ kids. We’re like 90. If you’re talking about how many people are in my immediate family, small immediate family, it’s huge. I need to be a part of a group and working with and being part of things. What’s happened with this is going home and being home, I’m a recent empty-nester, just recently right during the pandemic. You’re working alone, being alone, working in an office at home alone. There’s a lot of alone.
Chris:
Yeah, a lot. Humans were not meant to be in isolation like this, for sure.
Steve Derrick:
Yeah. At least this human, this human was definitely not.
Chris:
Same.
Steve Derrick:
So what have I come to appreciate is I’ve really come to appreciate technology. Had this been back in the 80s, oh my gosh, I don’t know what-
Chris:
Smoke signals, I have no idea.
Steve Derrick:
Really come to appreciate technology and people’s ability to adapt and make the most out of situations. So that’s what I’ve come to appreciate a lot.
Chris:
You have, or inherently have and had this sort of, I’m going to call it a hobby, it’s probably more than that to you, but something that you love. Before you started with the portraits, were you painting more, were you doing more art in this time, just to channel some energy? Do you always do it consistently?
Steve Derrick:
Before the pandemic, I’d travel quite a bit with my wife for fun, but also with work, I do travel [inaudible 00:17:13] Activision Blizzard and stuff like that. Anywhere I go with and traveling, I have sketchbooks, I have a lot of sketchbooks and fill them up. I’m sketching all the time, every time I’m sitting anywhere in a meeting, I sketch in the back of church, just sketching people in the audience. It keeps me paying attention. So there’s that, but it’s always been a hobby. At work when we had an office, we had a figure drawing group that we would meet and draw once a week. That was as much as I really did. I did some painting, but it was more for hobby. As soon as the pandemic hit though, just before the pandemic, I wanted to get better at drawing and painting people because I like people and emotion and being able to see emotion and get something out of a painting. It’s a little different than a tree or a plant or a rock or something like that. You can paint a pretty rock and people might be impressed. A person, you can get something out of that. That’s what I was hoping for.
Steve Derrick:
So when this pandemic hit, we all got sent home and we working from home. And I thought it was going to be a two week thing. It was like, okay, well, whatever, going to be home for two weeks. It turned into a lot more than two weeks. And I said, there’s no way I’m going to be able to just sit around and watch Netflix. I need something, I need some sort of purpose. What am I doing? And that’s when I went on some social media, was pretty new, I’m a newbie to Instagram, I had two followers. And saw on, those pictures you were talking about the frontline workers, a lot of them were from Italy, it was Time Magazine’s persons of the year.
Chris:
There was an Instagram account, Steve, that had these that you saw, right?
Steve Derrick:
It was Time Magazine.
Chris:
It was Time. Okay, all right.
Steve Derrick:
And it came up on the newsfeed thing, and I’m like, wow. I was drawing relatives and friends and I was bored silly, like whatever, I don’t care about this. There’s no passion there. But when I saw these, the look in their eyes and the, they just look hammered. They looked like they had just been through a battle but they came out victorious. Like hey, we won, we came out of that, even though there wasn’t really a win, it was just they made it through the day. I said, you know what, there’s a lot of emotion in that picture, and I wanted to paint them. So I painted three of them. And in the article that had their Instagram tag or whoever it was that, you could tell who it was. And I sent an email to them, IM to them, and said, hey, if you want this painting I painted for you, I’ll mail it to you. And they were like, oh, this is great, amazing, thank you very much.
Steve Derrick:
I did that to a couple others and then reached out to some local, our nurses here that friends and family knew. And the reaction I got was, this is documenting a time in history and this is one of the best things anybody’s ever done. You get the crying face emojis. The amount of energy that it was getting back, it was so like, wow, I had no idea this was going to be so impactful.
Chris:
In the context of, when we talk to people on the show, I was mentioning this at the beginning, we say like, hey, you had your get over it moment in business or in life. This necessarily isn’t you getting over it, but this is something where you saw something and it just channeled all of the passion that you have for art, you found a place to put it into. It’s almost like a get over it moment.
Steve Derrick:
It is a get over it moment, yeah. It is because it was a way for me to stay sane. I tried to get over it with just doing family and friends, and that just it wasn’t there. But then it connected with, here’s a real purpose. Here’s a real way to channel something like that. I just went in 110%.
Chris:
And you felt it back when the response, I imagine, right?
Steve Derrick:
That’s what keeps me going. I don’t get paid for this. It takes up a lot of my time, but the response you get back from these people. I’ve painted people all over the globe now.
Chris:
Yeah, that’s the cool part. So talking about that, so it just sort of snowballed. Once people started to see them, you got some recognition for it, it just sort of, people would reach out to you and say, hey, could you paint me, is that what happened?
Steve Derrick:
Even before it was on CBS News, because CBS News kind of blew it up. But before CBS News, I was following, the requests I was getting were coming from the hotspots. So I was getting a bunch of Italians. I speak Italian and Spanish, and so I was back and forth with some of these Italians. And then it moved over to the UK and Spain. And then from Spain to New York City, and then New York City from there to across the US. And then down to Brazil and then Mexico, and then back to the US again. It was these little hotspots that you could see where their spikes would come up, that’s where you’d get all the requests in from those places. But CBS News and CNN and Washington Post, a lot of different places, those just blew it up.
Chris:
So how long does it take you to paint one of these portraits on average, I’m just curious?
Steve Derrick:
Three to four hours depending on how detailed some of this stuff is. If they’ve got a lot of, one of those PPEs that they have, and it’s got a whole scene of a lot of stuff in it, then that’s going to take me a lot longer than if it’s just a green hat.
Chris:
Right, right. And how many have you done now, Steve?
Steve Derrick:
250.
Chris:
Wow. So something like this, you can’t see this on the radio, but that one is just a white uniform with the green mask. So what I’m looking at there, everybody is, it’s a healthcare worker and she’s got a regular, like an N95 mask and then a shield over her. What’s incredible is the detail in the fold, Steve, how it lays like that.
Steve Derrick:
This is her [inaudible 00:24:09] outfit.
Chris:
Is it pencil? You sketch it, then paint, or is it all paint?
Steve Derrick:
It’s pretty rough sketch at the beginning because you end up painting over it, gouache. So whatever you paint on top, it covers it up. So it’s gouache opaque paint. The sketch is pretty rough. But then after that, it’s gouache layered and layered. I start with all the skin tones, get the skin tones. It’s really important for me to get all of the nuances in the face.
Chris:
Right, because that’s where all the emotion is, right?
Steve Derrick:
Yeah. Well, it’s not even just the emotion. If I draw you and you have a, let’s say you got a little cut across your eyebrow.
Chris:
And I have a crooked nose a little bit.
Steve Derrick:
And you have a crooked nose a little bit. Then if I don’t get that, you don’t see that as you.
Chris:
Then I’m not me.
Steve Derrick:
It’s not you, it’s somebody, oh, it’s a nice painting, that’s not me. You have the bloodshot eyes, you have the damage to your face from the N95 masks and stuff, that brings back all the emotion of that time. The bloodshot eyes, oh yeah, that’s that time I did that 12 hour shift and six people passed away on my shift, and that was the worst day in my career. I remember that time.
Chris:
If you talk to these individuals some of them are, I mean, have you communicated with them?
Steve Derrick:
I communicate a lot digitally. I think I’ve talked to probably less than six in person. Most of them have been, well, one of them was from the CBS News meeting, they hooked that up. And I would have met her otherwise. No. Most of it, to answer your question is through back and forth, IMs and Facebook Instant Messenger.
Chris:
Just as you’re doing it, so sort of like, you’re right, okay.
Steve Derrick:
Back and forth stories and stuff like that. There’s some gut-wrenching stories. I don’t put all that information always on my feeds because I post them all, because some of them are probably a little too tender to put in social media, like, yeah, this is the picture that my brother took of me on Zoom after I called him because my patient died.
Chris:
Exactly, it’s very raw. Can you let everybody know your Instagram so they might be able to check that out?
Steve Derrick:
So it’s SDerrick, D-E-R-R-I-C-K _bunkerboy.
Chris:
Bunker boy, B-U-N-K-E-R Boy, you know what we’ll do, is we’ll put in the show notes when the show comes out. We’ll put the link in the show notes. So you can go through the grid there and just take a look. Some of them I’m scrolling through now where it’s, you have some group shots of some, it looks like a group of nurses just looking up. These American flag-
Steve Derrick:
That’s a group from New York.
Chris:
They must be a group, right?
Steve Derrick:
Yeah, it was a group of nurses from one hospital in New York.
Chris:
Yeah, that’s really cool. I know this was available digitally in a museum where you can go and just check it out. Is it still available?
Steve Derrick:
Albany Center Gallery did a pop-up show when they could have. I think they could have 10 people in a gallery at one time. This was like a two week thing, but it’s still online at the Albany Center Gallery, if you go back through their history.
Chris:
People can check it out.
Steve Derrick:
There’s currently a show in New York City, on the Avenue, in New York city on Columbus Avenue, there’s six of my paintings in one of their portraits and paintings and things inside these abandoned storefronts, has a gallery along Columbus Avenue.
Chris:
That’s cool.
Steve Derrick:
And they have six of my paintings in the rapid testing center for COVID in the city. We have seven the National Museum of Labor right now through April.
Chris:
Wow. Did you ever think that would happen, Steve?
Steve Derrick:
No. I didn’t think any of this would happen. I thought I’d just be sitting around.
Chris:
Where does that take you in this for the future? Does this just reinforce this passion for you even more? Do you see yourself maybe when you retire or something, like you’re going to travel and do more painting? Do you see a new trajectory here or are you just going to continue doing things as they come?
Steve Derrick:
I definitely have the passion and it will always be painting. I think I’m still passionate about this, so I’m going to keep going. But hopefully there’s something else I can find passionate that adds value. Hopefully I’m not doing it for free all the time. I’ve done a lot of paintings and financially, it hasn’t really made me a wealthy man. But eventually it would be nice to have something doing that adds value, but also adds financial value back. That’s not my goal right now.
Chris:
The paintings are beautiful. And again, everyone, we’ll put the link for both things, for the gallery.
Steve Derrick:
My Facebook is easy too, Steve Derrick Facebook.
Chris:
So it’s Steve Derrick on Facebook, SDerrick_Bunkerboy Instagram, again, we’ll put the link, it’s easier to click. And for everybody, it’s been a really tough time, the toughest time I’ve had. It’s been hard for me, it’s been hard for my wife, and then it’s hard for both of the two together in a relationship during this time where you have no outlet. And I think this underscores too that if you do have a passion, if there’s something that you really love, the best time to turn to a passion is in a time where you’re down and you’re feeling out. I guess for everybody out there that is in a similar spot, but has an outlet, channel it, because you never know what’s going to happen. Like in your case, you would have never expected that this would be the outcome, and it was all because you’ve really channeled it there.
Chris:
Do you have anything to offer to anyone that you’d want to say like, someone’s struggling and has that, what would you say, just go for it? Were you worried that it wasn’t going to be good or whatever, you just went for it?
Steve Derrick:
I definitely I wasn’t going to be good. I didn’t think I was that good. I think I’ve gotten better. If you look at my early paintings versus my later paintings, 250 paintings later, you’re going to get better. My current paintings are much more realistic and better executed, but my early ones are just as impactful. Did I think this was going to be well-known and recognized? No, but that wasn’t my goal. It was more, hey, I really think you’re doing an amazing job being a nurse or a doctor or someone on the front lines. I feel you. It’s more altruistic.
Chris:
Right. And you just went for it and you see here’s what happened. I will have to say, before I knew this existed, before I knew that you were doing this, I recall seeing one of those images. I don’t remember when it was, but it was kind of in the thick of it when I first saw the image of, was a nurse or a doctor just looking completely defeated with the lines on their face. It made me realize how real this was, and made me realize a lot of things, how real it was, how serious it was, how thankful I was that there’s people like that doing that every single day. But I just remember it being a real feeling, visceral, I felt it. But then I see it, and then you go on with your day. You saw it and channeled it and I think it’s fantastic and it’s really beautiful work. So I just want to thank you for doing it. Thank you for taking a little bit of time to talk to us on the show.
Chris:
He is Steve Derrick. I am Chris Fasano, this is to Get Overit Podcast where people come together to discuss the various ways to just stop getting through it and start getting over it. So, Steve, thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate the time.