Meticulous Builder - Rogi Calalec

3D Art Director, The Studio of Secret 6, Inc.

- Justine Bernice Basco

Carlos Gregor Calalec, or “Rogi,” has always enjoyed playing with Legos since he was a kid. Now he finds himself living his dream—building finer and more advanced versions of Legos, as 3D Art Director of The Studio of Secret 6, Inc., a game development studio based in San Francisco and the Philippines.

After finishing his Computer Science degree at De La Salle University, Rogi took a short course on 3D Arts and continued the journey that led him to his current job. This 31-year-old artist works side by side with AAA game developers while juggling roles as a husband, father, and son.

What made you decide to enter the world of 3D creation?

I get to be creative and it’s just fun to do. Since I was a kid, I’ve been playing with Legos, so we build stuff; and here with 3D, limitless ‘yung possibilities. I was like, “Oh, wow, you can do anything with this!” And you don’t even need specific blocks for it. You can create anything you want. It just gives you that satisfaction seeing it in real-time 3D where you can move it around, zoom in and zoom out. It brings out more of my creativity, unlike in programming, which is more of logical thinking. So I kind of felt more at home with it.

What is it like to work in the field of AAA game developers?