Brenda Cook

From Sega Retro

BrendaRoss.png
Brenda Dee Cook
Place of birth: Northern California, United States
Employment history:
Divisions:
Role(s): Artist, Animator[1]

This short article is in need of work. You can help Sega Retro by adding to it.

Brenda Dee Cook[2] (née Ross) is an American artist, designer, and former Sega Technical Institute video game artist known for her work on a number of Sega's first-party games like Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sonic Spinball.

Career

Background

Born and raised around the San Francisco Bay Area, Brenda Ross recalls being passionate for art from at least three years old, involving herself creatively in a number of crafts projects and art contests throughout her childhood. After exiting high school, she received two scholarships for art, proceeding to attend university in both Illinois and San Francisco for fine art and design. This eventually led to her hiring as a graphic designer and illustrator at the age of 17; "[since then] my entire career has revolved around fine and commercial art."[1]

Sega Technical Institute

Concept art for Brenda Cook's cancelled Fat Daddy

Ross came onboard as a graphic artist and animator[1] at the newly-founded Sega Technical Institute around 1989 or 1990. Her first games would be Dick Tracy, where she drew much of the game's larger character artwork (including the comic book-style cutscenes), and Kid Chameleon, where she was also tasked with animation duties.[3] Ross ended up providing artwork and animation for a number of STI's unreleased titles as well, including B-Bomb, Jester, and Fat Daddy.[3]

Famously, Ross was one of three American STI staff providing artwork for both Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball and Sonic the Hedgehog 2. While most of her contributions for the latter were unfortunately left on the cutting room floor, a magazine-published prerelease screenshot of a desert zone (rumored to be named "Dust Hill Zone") captivated the early Sonic community for years. It was eventually discovered to be a mockup created during her time with Sega, something which created an association between Ross and Dust Hill for decades to come.

Later career

Like a number of other Sega artists, Brenda Ross left Sega Technical Institute around 1994. She appears to have migrated to nearby developer PF Magic (also headquartered in San Francisco) for a time, working on seminal titles like the very first Dogz: Your Computer Pet - creating the Petz' iconic 3D animations.[3] She also seems to have either been employed by or provided freelance work for Neversoft, contributing art to the 1997 PlayStation release of MDK. Following her exit from the video game industry, she married and assumed the surname Cook.

At the dawn of the 2000s, Brenda Cook (through her association with the fabled "Dust Hill Zone" mockup) eventually drew the attention of the Sonic fanbase, resulting in at least two published instances of members of the community reaching out to her for questions. Unfortunately, these interactions were both fraught with issues. Notably, Sonic scene member ICEknight had discovered Cook's personal email address for use in a potential interview, but then proceeded to publicly post her email on a popular Sonic forum before doing so. Reportedly, this resulted in Cook being "flooded" with repeated Dust Hill questions "over and over." Due to this, she ended up only replying to a single community email (from a scene member named Deviance) in February 2001.[4]

Following this, another member of the Sonic scene by the name of WetflameG tracked down Cook, locating her instant messaging username and reaching out to ask further Dust Hill questions.[5] However, before introducing themselves, WetflameG chose to instead compliment Cook's hair, and then had to be prompted by Cook to ask their question - with Cook's replies then growing notably short. While WetflameG appears to have noticed this and attempted to regain the artist's trust, Cook stated she busy with work and had to quickly excuse herself, but not before asking that her personal username not be leaked in the same manner that the Sonic scene had previously done with her email address.[5]

Legacy

Production history (Ross)

Interviews

Photographs

Main article: Photos of Brenda Cook

External links

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Interview: Brenda Cook (2015-11-25) by Cindy deRosier
  2. ↑ http://lemontreeworkshop.com/about.htm (Wayback Machine: 2015-02-16 05:54)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A994ZMfpP_Y
  4. ↑ https://www.sonicdatabase.com/interviews/brenda.htm (Wayback Machine: 2012-07-07 00:06)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 https://randomsonicnet.org/srz/index.php?page=interviews/br2.htm (Wayback Machine: 2024-02-25 12:50)
  6. ↑ File:Kid Chameleon MD credits.pdf
  7. ↑ File:Sonic the Hedgehog 2 MD credits.pdf
  8. ↑ File:Sonic Spinball MD credits.pdf
  9. ↑ File:Ballz MD US manual.pdf, page 19
Retrieved from "https://segaretro.org/index.php?title=Brenda_Cook&oldid=1047789"