Over on the Drawmycharacter Facebook page, former Origin Systems artist Denis Loubet has told the next part in what now seems to be an ongoing tale of his career at Origin Systems:

When I was first hired at Origin, they were not sure whether they would have enough work for me to justify my full-time status. Within the first week my time was booked for months as every project jostled for my attention. Of course, at that time, there were only about 12 people in the whole office.

Aside from illustrations for manuals and covers, I was working with Commodore 64s, Apple II gs, and Atari machines. The horror of those old days was that if you wanted your game to hit all of the market, you had to write it 3, 4, or 5 times to cover most of the platforms. If was not until years later that the PC grabbed 90% of the market, and you could finally write your game only once and get a big chunk of the pie.

The computer graphics in the early days consisted of mostly pixel editing. Working with the Koala Pad on the Commodore and it’s horrible graphics limitations. Working in DeluxePaint on the Apple II gs. Trying to comprehend the awfulness of the color palette of CGA graphics on the PC. Yeah, it was an “exciting” time! 😉

Yes, the stories you heard of epic Laser-tag battles in the office were true. Richard was a master at arranging awesome events like that. What was also true was my “shortness of temper” towards computer problems. So I went through one or two keyboards, and a handful of mice, so what? Is that any reason for the stories to haunt me to this day? 😉

Once again, the accompanying image — something he drew for Steve Jackson Games — has nothing to do with the story. But it once again demonstrates Mr. Loubet’s keen artistic talent, even so.