Scarecrow Studio and the Creation of '3 Minutes to Midnight'
A native of Barcelona, Spain, Jan Serra started his first engineering company, SEETECH, in 2004 at the age of 22. After twelve years of working on projects for automotive companies including Ford, Nissan, Volkswagen, and Audi, he decided to pursue a new passion: the creation of graphic adventure games like the ones he had played and loved growing up.
In late 2016 he founded Scarecrow Studio, an independent video game developer currently working on 3 Minutes to Midnight, a comedy game planned to release in 2019. Jan holds a bachelor’s degree from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and an MBA from ESADE Business School.
Here, we get the inside scoop on what it's like behind the scenes at Scarecrow Media and the development of '3 Minutes to Midnight.
Can you take us through the Scarecrow Team (Scarecrew)? What is your make up? Is everything done individually or as a team?
Scarecrow Team is composed of 6 members: Pavlina Kacerova- marketing and PR; Daniel Peña- concept art and character design; David Puerta- environments; Julen Dieguez- programing; Jorge Bompart- animations, and myself (Jan Serra), who wrote the story, does the game design… and tries to make all the pieces of the puzzle come together. Each position is really defined, so a lot of work is done individually, but we work as a team, since each scene needs to be discussed and be seen from all the points of view. It’s impossible to get a scene right without all the team members in sync.
How do you decide when it is time to bring in a new team member?
Normally, we would decide this during the planning phase of the project. In that phase, we define the scope of work and how many people we will need. Then, during the project, there are moments where we evaluate if the work is on track and everything is going as it was estimated. If not, we examine why we are not on track, and if it is because the amount of work was more than initially anticipated, we incorporate a new member to the team.
Are there things you’re looking for in new candidates that could help them stand out? Anything in a portfolio that specifically catches your eye?
You often see good artists with a good portfolio. However, if you are looking for an environment artist and all you see are concepts of characters, you can’t really judge whether the candidate is the right fit. Obviously, no artist can have a portfolio that covers all the aspects an employer is looking for. Nevertheless, they should try to have a more diversified portfolio if they are applying for different positions. If you want to show you are versatile, your portfolio must be as well.
Goes without saying that companies receive hundreds of CVs, and normally, they don’t have time to go through all of them, so you want to make sure yours is going to be seen.
Read the job posting carefully, and even though it takes time, show the employer you really want that job and that your application is not a copy/paste batch that you send everywhere you are applying.
Those applications are really easy to spot and the first ones that get cut in the selection process.
Is your goal to keep a small intimate team or grow into something much bigger?
Both. We are trying to create a company that will specialize in point-and-click adventure games. Right now, we have one game on the works, “3 Minutes to Midnight” and one small team fully dedicated to it. However, in the future we hope to produce more than one game a year, so we will grow into something much bigger but keep the size of the team for each game small.
What does your onboarding process look like for new employees?
For starters, we try to select candidates that fulfill all the requirements in our job offer. When that is not 100% possible, we prepare for this before they start work. For example, if we use certain type of software that the new employees are not familiar with but they are familiar with similar software, we give them enough information beforehand so they can be a bit more ready when starting. Then, we introduce them to the team and the workspace, making sure they understand each team member’s tasks and responsibilities.
We also appoint a senior team member they can turn to if they need help. Then we introduce them to the tools the team uses and the tools they personally are going to use. We also prepare many “one-subject-lesson” documents to try to prevent mistakes we made in the past. It is a document the employees can use as a guide. After all that, we evaluate a little bit how the whole process went and how the new employees are doing. That will basically determine whether they become full part of the team or not.
Take us through a day working at Scarecrow Studio.
We start working early, around 6:00. Some days we have an early meeting discussing the work that needs to be done, making sure everyone involved in a process has the right information. Some days we just work on those items that need to be done. Every now and then, some obstacles pop up and they require extra work and research to be solved, but nothing so far that we couldn’t fix.
Scarecrow Studio works on the publishing and development side- how do you decide to work with an outside source? Once working together, do you find collaborating outside the team difficult?
We try to outsource some aspects of our project, such as art, music, translations, etc. In some cases, it works fine, in some other cases it doesn’t work at all. From my experience, you can outsource simple and well-defined tasks, such as translations. But, for things like art, I personally would not recommend it.
For each one of our environments we need to take literally hundreds of things into consideration: the perspective, how the character will change size around the scene, where the exits are, where to place the important objects, the animations we will implement in those scenes, things that will do parallax effect, and so on. This all requires a lot of back and forth that needs to be done quickly. If we hire a freelancer that lives on other side of the world and we find a mistake, we will have to notify him, wait for the answer, wait for the changes, try the new changes… Basically, something that could be done in 5 minutes would take around 2 to 3 days… And as we all know, time is very precious, especially for indies.
Can you tell us about the creation and development of ‘3 Minutes to Midnight?’
3 Minutes to Midnight was born out of 15 years of boredom doing a job that was not making me happy. I decided to quit that job and do something more fun and fulfilling. I always enjoyed writing stories, and I loved video games (still do). Adventure games are my favorite genre. Long story short, 3 Minutes to Midnight was born.
And about the development, I think it’s like any indie game development. Some days everything goes smoothly and extremely well, and other days we encounter obstacles, but nothing that our team hasn’t been able to turn around.
At the beginning, we were a bit lost, since it’s my first video game, but once I learned the needs of each team member and what they needed to execute their job properly, it got easier. After every single aspect of the game was defined, production went full throttle.
What were some obstacles you had to overcome for its success?
We had many obstacles, we still do, but we keep overcoming them. At the beginning, it was harder. Organizing and planning is what I do best, but I need to know and understand what I’m organizing and planning before I can do it properly, if that makes sense. This is my first game, so at first, there were so many things I didn’t know (and there still are), so learning all the things I had to learn in order to be able to organize the project was challenging.
Also, in the beginning we had some team members who weren’t right for the project. Sometimes you find out right away, sometimes it takes longer to realize. Without going into specifics, I will quote Andrew Eifler, “A team is only as strong as its weakest player.”
Any exciting projects you can share details about?
We are 100% focused on 3 Minutes to Midnight, but soon, we will start the development of our second project. At this point in time, I can only share that it’s going to also be an adventure game and that its story is not related to 3 Minutes to Midnight.
We always ask what advice companies have for ambitious artists out there- what would yours be?
Do not apply for a position just to apply and see if you get lucky. Show the employer that you really can do what they require. In addition, show them that you really want that job. Send a customized sample of what they are requiring. It takes a lot of time, but it’s always a win-win situation.
For the artist, it will show the employer that you really want that job and put you in a better position in the selection process. Even if you are not hired, you will have something more to show in your portfolio that might land you another job. And for the employer, it will help them evaluate whether your skills and style are the correct fit for what they are looking for.
See more of Scarecrow Studio and 3 Minutes to Midnight here: