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Totally slipped through with an 86 (even though my average is an 81 across 4 AAAs, blast!)! Adding this to my resume post-haste, but if they ever move it up to 90, I'll never be able to work in this town again. As an aside, I wish there were reviews of FB games anywhere. Anytime I catch flak from industry-folk about working on FB, I have to be all, "Hey buddy, Kotaku called our last game, 'actually pretty good'!"
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Jul 26, 2012 18:29
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Well the mass layoffs expected for some time at WB Games just happened. So glad I got out before that.
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Jul 26, 2012 19:11
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devilmouse posted:Totally slipped through with an 86 (even though my average is an 81 across 4 AAAs, blast!)! Adding this to my resume post-haste, but if they ever move it up to 90, I'll never be able to work in this town again. I'm jealous, my last title has an 84!!
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Jul 26, 2012 19:51
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I was wondering if you guys had any advice for an arty person who wants to get into the gaming industry? I'd like to be a concept/game artist, but I'm not one of those types that are into drawing those 100+ hour photorealistic landscape masterpieces that are often synonymous with "concept art." My style is really cartoony, kinda like Scott C's work (actually, he's probably got the best job I can think of.) Now, he doesn't seem to do any 3D modeling or animation to my knowledge, but so many artist positions I've seen advertised also require knowledge of modeling programs like Maya and Zbrush and other stuff (along with industry experience, haha welp). Is he just a really anomalous example of a game artist who doesn't have to use those programs, or am I being a dope and using the wrong search terms or something? Should I be looking into learning these programs if I wanna get a job where I draw stuff that ends up in a game?
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Jul 26, 2012 19:58
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Hughlander posted:Well the mass layoffs expected for some time at WB Games just happened. So glad I got out before that. Any word on numbers?
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Jul 26, 2012 20:10
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I've provided translations for something like six dozen games over the years and because they're all J->E projects I don't think any of them are above 80 on metacritic. Nier has this reputation of being a core/game-media darling and its metascore is 68. Still, my social-game stuff gets read by millions daily (?), so I guess I have that to be happy for.
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Jul 26, 2012 20:19
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Gary the Llama posted:Any word on numbers? Word is it's about 60 or so. http://www.joystiq.com/2012/07/26/layoffs-hit-warner-bros-seattle-studios/
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Jul 26, 2012 20:45
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VoidBurger posted:I was wondering if you guys had any advice for an arty person who wants to get into the gaming industry? I'd like to be a concept/game artist, but I'm not one of those types that are into drawing those 100+ hour photorealistic landscape masterpieces that are often synonymous with "concept art." My style is really cartoony, kinda like Scott C's work (actually, he's probably got the best job I can think of.) If you're strictly shooting for a concept role, you won't need to know how to use packages like 3DS Max or Maya. However, there are some concept artists that use them to greybox up a scene and throw in some basic lighting as a base for their concept. It's not a requirement, but it's certainly a useful tool to have at your disposal. If you're looking for a spot in development as a 2d artist (texture, UI, branding, etc.), you'll want to at least be competent in one package (preferably either Max or Maya) and understand the basics of texturing. Without being a texture artist or 3d artist, your best shot here is probably for a UI art spot. At which point you'll need to show at least some competency in typography and basic design principles. For any art position you'll need a portfolio. It's important that you tailor it to the studio you're applying to -- show them you can work with their style. It's great to have a style all your own, but it's important to be able to match the style of the studio. My advice would be to find some studios that you like, and try to do a few pieces that match the style of their concepts (use your own characters/environments). Throw those in your portfolio with some other pieces and start shopping it around. Your portfolio needs to convince them that you can do the kind of work that they're looking for. If it can do that on its own, you'll be signing contracts in no time.
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Jul 26, 2012 20:51
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VoidBurger posted:I was wondering if you guys had any advice for an arty person who wants to get into the gaming industry? I'd like to be a concept/game artist, but I'm not one of those types that are into drawing those 100+ hour photorealistic landscape masterpieces that are often synonymous with "concept art." Have you considered mobile games? Almost all of the art produced where I work is in Photoshop or Illustrator (or sometimes Flash for animated stuff) since we do 2D games. UI is an option as well, but as Gearman said, you want to show that you understand UX principles, like flow and whatnot. I'll also second putting together a portfolio that matches the (general) style of the place you are applying. Some art managers will look just for ability, but it won't help you to have a portfolio of ultra-violent images and apply for a job as a concept artist for Adorable Puppies 2. You can consider looking for contract work. Many of the artists I know started as contractors before getting a full time gig.
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Jul 26, 2012 21:04
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VoidBurger posted:I was wondering if you guys had any advice for an arty person who wants to get into the gaming industry? I'd like to be a concept/game artist, but I'm not one of those types that are into drawing those 100+ hour photorealistic landscape masterpieces that are often synonymous with "concept art." My style is really cartoony, kinda like Scott C's work (actually, he's probably got the best job I can think of.) Nothing you've got in your deviantart page is useful as concept art for anything 3d. Concept artists are not Pretty Picture Drawers. Concept artists do a significant amount of ideation and iteration, and then create blueprints and callouts for the way things should look. It's got more in common with industrial design than it does cartooning. About the only thing your current work would be useful for is possibly look-dev for a 2d game. Obviously, you can flesh out your portfolio more. What do you want to do? What would you like to do specifically? What kind of games, what kind of companies? Go to Scott's concept art section and focus more on that stuff. He's got a lot of Mood Paintings and doodles in there still, but the things like the model sheets and callouts are the kind of thing a concept artist will be doing. I actually think about half the poo poo in his portfolio is really not indicative of what a finished concept should be - he's got a lot of really rough stuff in there that would either require a lot of hand-holding the 3d artist working off the 'concept' or an existing body of work to draw from - for example, his "Iron Cross with Goat Head" sketch is an example of an environment callout piece, but the fact that there isn't any actionable detail there and it's only the major form means either he's going to have to give a lot of verbal communication with the artist (bad workflow) or more likely there is a bunch of existing reference and examples and a style guide that the artist can work from to figure out the secondary and teritiary details. As a concept artist you need to be able to direct and design entire, tangible things, rather than just drawing a cool picture of something. You need to know what the back of Hero McDudely looks like, and you need to draw that out too, you can't just draw the front. Honestly, I think the number of studios where someone like Scott C would be useful at are incredibly small - you kind of need to Make The Job yourself at that point, and that means being mindblowingly good, which requires a lot of effort. I've only worked with a handful of 3d-capable concept artists, but environment concept artists in particular frequently get to do paintovers of 3d blockouts put together by designers. My biggest question would be: Why are you afraid of learning a 3d package? Why do or don't you feel it will help you? Also, nobody does 100 hour photorealistic landscape masterpieces. If it took someone 100 hours to do one of those they'd be fired, 2.5 weeks on a single landscape drawing means you're going to get less than 40 of them done over the entire development cycle of a game. To be cruelly blunt, either man up and become a genuine ~Special Snowflake Unique Person~ so that you have enough weight to throw around that you can make a job for yourself, or stop using the ~but I'm a special snowflake unique person~ as a crutch to avoid learning how to actually do the job the way most people do. No one with a concept art job is unskilled. And while we're at it, understand that the things that you want to avoid that you feel are "synonymous with 'concept art'" are done by actual ~Special Snowflake Unique People~ that are hard as hell to find. Just because it's more common to see than cartoony dudes doesn't mean it's easy. TL;DR: If you want to become a concept artist you should start concepting some stuff, which means you should come up with a discrete, solid idea and begin fleshing it out, breaking down every character, environment, and object in that idea, such that they could be recreated in the medium that you are targeting.
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Jul 26, 2012 21:18
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Boy howdy those generalist Unreal programmers are basically loving gold dust, huh?
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Jul 26, 2012 21:27
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Thanks for the advice so far, guys! Yeah, I'm aware that I need to put more concept-style stuff (turnarounds and such) in my portfolio, it's something I've been working on but haven't made anything worthwhile for yet.  Tailoring my portfolio is something I've learned in school already, I just haven't had the nerve/felt ready to send any real-deal companies my portfolio yet. I'm just not good enough.Sorry to get on your nerves Sigma-X.  The whole reason I was asking that stuff is because I was getting an impression that Scott C is, yeah, a unique case that isn't representative of the work of usual concept artists ("special snowflake", as you put it). I just wanted to know if that was true or not, and was wondering if it was worth studying a complicated program from scratch of if I'd be wasting hours on something that doesn't actually make any difference to my resume when I should be doing other things that would make a difference. In addition to beefing up my portfolio, I wanted to know if 3D programs are another thing to work on.Also, Sigma-X posted:And while we're at it, understand that the things that you want to avoid that you feel are "synonymous with 'concept art'" are done by actual ~Special Snowflake Unique People~ that are hard as hell to find. Just because it's more common to see than cartoony dudes doesn't mean it's easy.  Exhibit A, some practice recreating a frame from Jacob's Ladder: 
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Jul 26, 2012 21:58
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3d programs aren't a resume line item - they're a tool. They have a number of valid uses and proficiency in them would allow you to quickly block out the proportions in that room, maybe figure out some lighting, etc. You didn't get on my nerves - I'm pretty unflappable - but basically you've got nothing in your portfolio that would get you anywhere near a junior assistant concept intern position. Scott is a special unique case and I don't want to say "you Must conform to X" the reality is that maintaining a personal, cartoony style and doing concept for games is not terribly compatible, especially as a break-in kind of thing. Really your best bet is to buy a concept art book for a game you would like to work on and go through the concepting process outlined there for characters, weapons, and environments. Only 50% of concept art is actually the final picture - the other 50 is ideation to get there. And yeah, you need to work on your realistic illustration there because it's got issues. Which is why I was assuming (correctly it appears) that the "style" was a crutch and meant you couldn't do realism. I'd be surprised if Scott c can't do realism.
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Jul 26, 2012 23:13
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mutata posted:I just thought it was funny. I largely ignore all that "REQUIRED!!" junk on job postings in any case. It all basically amounts to "We want someone who will be able to do the described job very well" and if I think I can be that guy, I'll apply and have answers ready if they call me on something. Most of them are so arbitrary (like picking 85% over 80% or 90% etc; 3+ years or 6+ years or 5+ years, etc) that they're obviously filters for the least of the applicants. I read an article recently by Ted Spence, CIO at EEDAR, called Programmer Moneyball that's relevant here. You might have seen the article reprinted on Gamasutra. Ted Spence posted:C. Northcote Parkinson wrote about this strategy in his 1958 book,"Parkinson's Law". He described how you want to create a job listing so fiendishly specific and devilishly challenging that you only receive one applicant, whom you can hire right away without wasting your time evaluating the rabble. When I read through a two page long job listing that specifies dozens of "requirements" for a candidate, I can clearly see that the HR person is really trying to cut down the number of resumes they have to read.
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Jul 26, 2012 23:30
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I was reading the OP and was wondering if my best bet to become a designer were to get a cs degree while making stuff on the side? I really have no clue about any of this but it seems like programming would be required wouldn't it? I'm just trying to find out as much information as I can I guess :o and it feels weird asking.
whalestory fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Jul 26, 2012 |
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Jul 26, 2012 23:36
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whalestory posted:I was reading the OP and was wondering if my best bet to become a designer were to get a cs degree while making stuff on the side? I really have no clue about any of this but it seems like programming would be required wouldn't it? I'm just trying to find out as much information as I can I guess :o and it feels weird asking. I'd say the number one rule of trying to get into the industry is to make games. I'm not sure if I would recommend CS as your route if you want to be a designer, but I have plenty of friends who went that way. It worked out well for some, and not so well for others, and the main difference between those people were how many games they made outside of class and how hard they worked in class. If you are learning programming, you are just going to learn how to program, not how to design a game. If you are motivated enough, being able to program will allow you to make more games and improve your skills. But it isn't a magic ticket into the industry, especially if you put in the minimum required effort to get by. I enjoyed going the CS route because if I struck out on getting a job in the games industry, I still had a solid set of skills that made me hire-able. The Glumslinger fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Jul 26, 2012 |
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Jul 26, 2012 23:51
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This has class written all over it: http://kotaku.com/5929381/report-zynga-insiders-dumped-lots-of-stock-before-it-tanked
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Jul 26, 2012 23:52
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In the UK a lot of the games jobs going, and a lot of other jobs, are programming ones. I wish I took a different route in education... 
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Jul 26, 2012 23:57
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whalestory posted:I was reading the OP and was wondering if my best bet to become a designer were to get a cs degree while making stuff on the side? I really have no clue about any of this but it seems like programming would be required wouldn't it? I'm just trying to find out as much information as I can I guess :o and it feels weird asking. I started out as CS, then went IT. It gave me nice pretty general experience in most computer related subjects, which is nice for interfacing with the various departments. While doing that I was building things on the side, and thankfully once my degree was done game companies starting becoming interested in me.
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Jul 27, 2012 00:01
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Pixelboy posted:This has class written all over it: Haha, the comments.
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Jul 27, 2012 00:03
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Pixelboy posted:This has class written all over it:
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Jul 27, 2012 00:06
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Ah, thanks for the responses!  Also, how do degrees like say this http://games.soe.ucsc.edu/undergraduate-study look? Are there career counselors out there that can apply to game development?
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Jul 27, 2012 00:11
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whalestory posted:Ah, thanks for the responses! I don't know about that one in particular, but some of them are pretty good. USC's design program is really good, I have heard good things about UCLA's. While we are talking about game schools, I just wanted another excuse to post the play through video from a student game a bunch of my friends made for a class last year: http://vimeo.com/41821010
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Jul 27, 2012 00:24
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Casual Connect was a ton of fun; Aquarium party was one of the best I've ever been to. How on earth does WildTangent make that much money?! Yankees were staying in my hotel and got to see a coworker of mine get denied taking a picture with Derek Jeter. I got to meet an even bigger legend: 
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Jul 27, 2012 06:08
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Sion posted:Boy howdy those generalist Unreal programmers are basically loving gold dust, huh? We just manufacture ours now out of raw interns, too hard/expensive to find experienced ones. Our core programming team all started out as interns anyway but now we are seasoned Unreal programming veteran ninjas.
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Jul 27, 2012 09:43
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Hey guys, I just got my receipt in the post for this course, Foundation Game Art at Futureworks in Manchester UK. I plan on doing either the BA Hons in Game Design or the BA Hons in Digital Animation with Illustration immediately after.  Here is my most recent thing I'm adding to my portfolio. I'm well versed in Photoshop and as of yet all I do is 2D. I have next to no 3D skills and I'm hoping this course will put a little more under my belt and basically help me produce the kind of portfolio I'm going to need to succeed in getting into the industry. From what I understand I'll be vastly more hire-able if I can texture things and help with asset creation as well as just design critters and people. Obviously I'm already committed to this Foundations course but what do those in the industry think of the BA Hons one? Am I on the right track by going to school for this? I seem to get quite a bit of conflicting information ranging from 'School is useless, you need to be Superman' to 'There are jobs in this industry and I don't see why you couldn't get one.'
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Jul 27, 2012 16:49
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I remember someone showing the most early character concept art for the Russian lady from Alpha Protocol once, the concept artist was told what body parts should look like what actress, and he made a Frankenstein-esque colleague of photos for the most extreme first draft I had ever seen. I mostly enjoyed seeing the  tears of all the game concept art students who were working like their storyboards should look exactly like the final product.
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Jul 27, 2012 17:04
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Man, I swear that t-rex is making bedroom eyes at me.
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Jul 27, 2012 17:12
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Speaking of rough concept pieces, im doing some look dev for a forthcoming ios game, exploring different drawing style for characters. Posting it up now that it's appeared on our company's FB page. One sheet of about a million sketchy explorations for character styles I've been doing recently goddamn my arm is dropping off by now. Seriously this is the rawest sketchest stream of conciousness of mine (you can evenb see how i abandon each concept early on and move on to the next :p ), but I wish they put my coloured, finished pieces up instead :B
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Jul 27, 2012 22:05
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Comrade Flynn posted:Casual Connect was a ton of fun; Aquarium party was one of the best I've ever been to. How on earth does WildTangent make that much money?! You also collected enough Hats at the conference to make Gaben proud.
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Jul 28, 2012 22:42
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DancingMachine posted:I had a phone screen with Zynga this morning, then their stock dropped 37%... Coincidence? Take a look at Z2Live. Sent you a PM as well.
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Jul 28, 2012 22:43
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I feel like I should probably know who this is, but I don't have a clue, because I am bad with faces, and names, and everything. When I do finally make it to a GDC, it'll be awesome. "Oh, hey, uh, yeah, you're that... dude. Great, whatever. Want to get a drink and talk about nerdy stuff?"
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Jul 29, 2012 01:35
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Shalinor posted:I feel like I should probably know who this is, but I don't have a clue, because I am bad with faces, and names, and everything.
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Jul 29, 2012 01:37
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Shalinor posted:I feel like I should probably know who this is, but I don't have a clue, because I am bad with faces, and names, and everything. That's Gabe Newell. Small anecdote: I met him last October at Blizzcon, and when I asked him for a DotA2 beta key, he told me to email him, and then he never responded back. I'm still heart-broken. In all seriousness, my friends got a picture with him and he's really nice about all that sort of stuff.
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Jul 29, 2012 01:38
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Maide posted:That's Gabe Newell. Small anecdote: I met him last October at Blizzcon, and when I asked him for a DotA2 beta key, he told me to email him, and then he never responded back. I'm still heart-broken. In all seriousness, my friends got a picture with him and he's really nice about all that sort of stuff. To be fair he gets thousands of e-mails a day. I'm now imagining him being like that episode of the Simpsons where Marge sent a fan letter to Ringo Starr, and he takes the time to answer every single one he gets, so he's several decades behind. So look forward to getting your beta key in about 2030!
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Jul 29, 2012 01:52
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The Cheshire Cat posted:To be fair he gets thousands of e-mails a day. I got a beta key from a friend a couple weeks later so it wasn't really a big deal. It was really cool to meet him though.
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Jul 29, 2012 02:12
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Oh, I thought for sure that was Matt Groening, initially. And here I was getting ready to whip out my "Oh, that's great, did you manage to get a personalized, signed, and dated cartoon from him too?  " line.
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Jul 29, 2012 02:30
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Met Curt Schilling at a PAX a few years back.
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Jul 29, 2012 10:43
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Diplomaticus posted:Met Curt Schilling at a PAX a few years back.
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Jul 29, 2012 17:41
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Hello Games' Sean Murray on Loving Crunch. It's disappointing. I thought this guy was pretty decent, turns out he's an arsehole who thinks people should work harder, but evidently not smarter, as he advocates lying to QA and jamming in new features at the last minute. Luckily an EG user took him properly to task in the comments pretty quickly.
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