Welcome to Gloam, Branimira Yordanova?
We're delighted to welcome Branimira Yordanova to Studio Gloam as our Senior Lighting Artist.
Bran brings seven years of cinematic and real-time experience across some of the most ambitious projects in games and film. We asked her a few questions to help you get to know her.
Tell us about your background - how did you get into games, and what's brought you to where you are today?
"I started my career working on cinematics on Suicide Squad alongside Rocksteady Studios. After that I continued my cinematic experience on Sackboy: A Big Adventure, League of Legends: Wild Rift trailers, Magic the Gathering, and Scrooge: A Christmas Carol. But nothing could compare to the interactivity of working on a game where I could help shape player experience with my art. So I joined Rockstar Games, working on environments, missions, and cutscenes."
That journey from cinematics to real-time is a thread you see in the best lighting artists, a deep understanding of how light tells a story, combined with the technical discipline to make it work at scale in an interactive world. Bran has both.
Why Studio Gloam?
"Working on so many different projects, each with a different team and unique tools, is a fantastic way to stock up on knowledge points. Lighting teams across games are often quite small. But as we've pushed the limits of what we can achieve in games, having a strong lighting team to rely on is more and more integral to the final look of a great game."
That's the gap Studio Gloam was built to fill. And having someone who has lived that reality across multiple studios, who understands both the craft and the constraint, is exactly what we need.
What do you love about your craft?
"I like analysing an image. Why did the director place this light there? Will this scene look more dramatic if the character's face is in shadow? What if we do the opposite of the norm and show a horror scene bathed in light? Bringing the principles movie directors use into an interactive world, this makes working in games so unique, imho. I also get to play with pretty lights all day!"
This is what separates a good lighting artist from a great one. It isn't about knowing the tools, it's about asking the right questions. Why this light, here, now? What does it mean for the player? Bran thinks in those terms instinctively, and it shows in her work.
Outside of work, what are you into?
"Us lighting artists always have to work in the dark. So outside of work you can find me outside in nature searching for a sunny spot to sit in. I do video editing, drawing and photography as a hobby, play board games and search for the next animated movie to get obsessed with."
Bran trades the dark for daylight, you'll find her outside in nature, camera in hand, playing board games, or deep into the next animated film she's fallen head over heels for. A person who clearly knows how to switch off, which in this industry is a skill in itself.
Welcome to the team, Bran. We're glad the pull of interactivity won.