Q&A with Lucas Bolt: From BUas graduate to World Art Supervisor at Guerrilla Games

How did you end up at the games programme at BUas? 

Lucas: ‘As a kid, I spent a lot of time building with LEGO bricks, creating worlds, castles, and other imaginative structures. This naturally transitioned into an interest in making game art. I initially started working with the modding tools available for “The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion”, which taught me a lot about the basics of game engines, 3D assets, and how a full game comes together.’  

‘When I was in secondary school, a teacher mentioned there were actual programmes to study game development. I initially didn’t expect you could find such great education in this field in the Netherlands. After finding out about BUas, its atmosphere, the course material, and the industry-experienced lecturers, it became clear that this was the right place for me.’ 

Could you tell us about your most memorable project during the programme? 

Lucas: ‘One that stands out was a large group project where we had to create a full level for Unreal Tournament. It was incredibly intense and involved level designing, sculpting, texturing, and lighting everything from scratch. We ended up creating a beautiful mountain temple, and it was a very rewarding experience.’  

What stands out from your time at BUas? 

Lucas: ‘I loved the Game Lab courses. Working on short projects in small teams taught us how to pull all aspects of a game together with all disciplines combined. It was a great way to see how far we could push ourselves in a short amount of time with tons of motivation.’ 

‘Another great story was how several of my classmates ended up interning at Guerrilla Games. It was an amazing journey that we all took together, with many of us staying on after our internships.’  

What are you doing now at Guerrilla Games? 

Lucas: ‘I started at Guerrilla over ten years ago as an intern and grew into one of the World Art Supervisors. Initially joining the architecture team for environment art, I was helping build one of the cities for Horizon Zero Dawn, which was really cool as a beginner. Since then, I have specialised in landscapes for the Horizon franchise. Mountains, rivers, forests – all things natural. Work can involve everything from creating assets to world building, designing quest and combat spaces with level designers, and dressing cinematic environments.’  

‘As a supervisor, I now oversee these processes and help drive them forward. Guerrilla Games, much like BUas, has a strong focus on achieving top-quality results. We are always asking ourselves, “How can we do this better?” It is an inspiring place to work, not just because of the projects, but especially because of the team, the atmosphere, and the incredible location in the heart of Amsterdam.’ 

Why are you visiting BUas today? 

Lucas: ‘I am here to give a guest lecture on photogrammetry in games titled "Crafting Digital Landscapes: Photogrammetry in Horizon Forbidden West". I will be talking about how we used photogrammetry to make the landscapes in Horizon as photorealistic as possible, and what we have learned along the way.’ 

What changes have you seen in the games industry over the years? 

Lucas: ‘Games have become more complex and bigger, which means we need to be more efficient in how we work. Technology is a big part of that. Things like procedural content generation allow us to do more with less. It is crucial to keep up with these changes.’  

‘But while artistic insight is still key, technology helps streamline the process, for example, AI is becoming a helpful tool for smaller tasks, and we can start considering how to use it more in our workflows. For students it can in some cases already act like a knowledge base, elaborating on technical things and answering more complex questions as it evolves.’ 

What are your future plans?  

Lucas: ‘I want to dive deeper into procedural content generation. It requires you to really study and understand the structure of the subject you are creating. That then allows you to design better systems to automate parts of it, which ultimately increases the quality of the environments. Blending artistic insight with procedural systems is where I see things going.’  

‘On the side, I also enjoy designing LEGO builds. It’s a really fun creative challenge to re-mix LEGO sets you already own and to come up with something very different. Recently that led me to win a competition on the LEGO Ideas platform, and I designed a LEGO build based on the Dungeons and Dragons theme which became an official LEGO set.’  

This interview showcases how a passion for creation can evolve into a fulfilling career. Find out more about Lucas Bolt's work on his LinkedIn profile, or check out his Instagram account to see his LEGO creations.