Meet Megan Sawyer– Senior Environment Artist at Bethesda Game Studios

Have you ever stopped to smell the rhododendrons in Fallout 76?

You may have even accidentally eaten some of Megan Sawyer’s work while trying to discover new alchemy combinations in Skyrim. Megan has been at Bethesda Game Studios for about nineteen years and as a Senior Environment Artist crafted much of the flora that brings the world to life.

What does a normal day look like for you?
I am a Senior Environment artist. My specialty is anything plant related, with a main focus on ingredient plants. My day to day is pretty great, to be honest. I check in with our landscape team and we all say what we’re working on for the day. Then depending on the day, I’m either creating a set of trees, or setting up a weird fantasy plant, or working in our editor to landscape a space that our players will have fun exploring. Every week we have a meeting to look at the stuff the landscape team has done, and it’s the highlight of the week. Everyone I work with is amazingly funny and talented and fun to talk with.

What was your path to becoming a Senior Environment Artist?
I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon. I’d moved to NYC after college to become an artist with MTV studios, but unfortunately it was in September of 2001. After a few years of freelancing, I moved back to Maryland. A few contacts I’d made in NYC mentioned it to their friends down here, and Gary Noonan emailed me asking if I’d considered applying to Bethesda. I did and became the 42nd employee of the studio.

How long have you been with Bethesda?
I’ve been with Bethesda for a little over nineteen years. My career has lasted longer than the entire run of Supernatural, the entire Saw horror movie franchise, and has seen the influential goth rock band Bauhaus reunite twice.

What advice do you give someone who wants to be in this industry?
Don’t limit your education to just the technical things. Get as broad of an education as you can. In college I took tons of “unrelated” classes – playwriting, social psychology, virtual reality, African American literature, art history, among other things and I use aspects from those classes as much if not more as anything I learned in strictly technical classes.

What was your role when you started?
I started in QA and transitioned into art as soon as there was an opening. My first project was creating the town of Cheydinhal for TES IV Oblivion. Bethesda was my first video game industry job.

Tell us your favorite work-related story.
A few years ago, we had a gingerbread building contest. The landscape team decided to recreate the opening of Oblivion using gingerbread. We went ALL OUT. I designed and 3D printed custom cookie cutters to make the Oblivion gates and soldiers. We had our Warhammer terrain expert advising on building stuff, one teammate melted candy and created a candy glass portal for the gate. It was amazing. The best part is that we came in second, because another team recreated the most adorable gingerbread Vault you’ve ever seen.

What do you love most about your role at Bethesda Game Studios?
I absolutely love the people I work with. I love creating awesome little plants and sending them out into the world for other people to enjoy.

My favorite project by far has to be Skyrim. I had so much fun creating all the ingredient plants and landscaping the different regions. I love seeing what people are drawn to and how they wind up using them. I still laugh when I think about all those videos people made of cabbages rolling down hills in Skyrim.

Do you have a favorite game currently?
I love adventure games. I was inspired to make games by King’s Quest IV, Quest for Glory, and Maniac Mansion. I’m also a huge fan of Silent Hill, and Animal Crossing.

What was your favorite contribution to the Fallout series?
I’ve worked on Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76, so I’ve got quite a few favorite contributions! I got to build the Cathedral of Learning in Pittsburgh for our Pitt expansion. I went to college in Pittsburgh and used to spend hours staring at that building from the stairs of a spot near my dorm room. (Fun fact, the area is called Haven because that was the name of the house my friends all lived in) I made the Nuka Cola Power Armor skin as part of a Game Jam, and it’s been very cool to see how much people enjoyed that. Lastly, I was thrilled I got to put rhododendrons in Fallout 76. It’s West Virginia’s state flower, so it was super important to me that we put that in.

Was there a feature or detail that almost didn’t make it into a Fallout game you worked on?
When we were working on Fallout 76, I did an art pass for a covered bridge in the beginning. I put two skeletons in the truck, one in a pink dress, the other in a suit, and behind the truck is a dog’s bandana. It was my tiny tribute to the best movie of all time, Beetlejuice.

What is your favorite community-related story?
I think my favorite thing so far was when the Mothman Museum reached out to us and wound up working with us to do 76 themed Mothman shirts. The Mothman Prophecies was filmed at my college while I was there, so I’ve had a long obsession with him.

What are you working on next that you’re excited for everyone to see?
I can’t wait for people to see the planets in Starfield! The landscape team has been working so hard and making such cool stuff!