Each week on Show Us Your Rig, we feature the PC game industry's best and brightest as they show us the systems they use to work and play.
Ben Knapp, Senior Character artist on Smite over at Hi-Rez Studios, continues a trend we've been seeing with character artists featured on Show Us Your Rig. Specifically, they have an excellent reason to cover their desks in toys. Ben has figures ranging from X-Men to Assassin's Creed to Dragon Ball Z and beyond all around his desk, and a massive Cintiq touch screen in the center. He was kind enough to take some time and tell us about his PC and more.
What's in your PC?
Dell Precision T3600 Workstation
- CPU - Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-1650 @ 3.2GHz
- Motherboard - DELL Precision t3600 Motherboard with Intel Chipset
- Memory - 16GB DDR3
- Drives - 2TB HDD in a Raid 1 configuration
- Video - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti
- Power Supply - DELL 635W
- Case - DELL Midtower
- Display - WACOM Cintiq 21UX, DELL 2208WFP
- Mouse - DELL USB Optical Mouse
- Keyboard - DELL Entry keyboard
What's the most interesting/unique part of your setup?
Simply put, the Decor. I have a pretty cool selection statues, figures, and reference materials I have collected over the years. These resources prove to be invaluable when creating character art, giving me inspiration and reference. I spend most of my time at this desk Monday-Friday so I feel it has to be entertaining to me as well.
The figures on my desk started out from just having some select action figures I grew up with. I started with some classic 80s figures and then started to branch out into different comic book figures and video game ones soon after. Eventually it has grown into what you see here. My favorite is a custom Skeletor action figure I found online; never before that had I seen a figure that actually made Skeletor into a thin mage opposed to a body builder with a skull head.
What's always within arm's reach on your desk?
You will always find a Wacom pen and a protein bar within arms reach. Also given the type of character I am working on, I might grab some additional reference materials and sprinkle them around my desk.
What are you playing right now?
Right now I am playing only a few games. My go to game is Marvel Heroes, if you look at my desk you can see why. Outside of that I am a huge fan of survival horror type games and I am really enjoying Alien Isolation and the Evil Within.
What's your favorite game and why?
My favorite game is Resident Evil 1, closely followed by Resident Evil 2. I know a lot of people hate the controls and cheesy acting, but I never had a problem with that. I had not played any other survival horror game before this and it made a huge impact on me. I never had experienced a mood and atmosphere like that prior to playing RE and it showed me there is more to games than just run & gun and platforming.
