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New thread title is better, and having an actual tag means I can filter for the thread instead of scanning for the moof tag. Also re-reading the OP is a mindfuck because some of it is copied from something I wrote years ago 
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May 31, 2011 17:10
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Aliginge posted:But with the advent of the new Nintendo handheld and the PSP2 and talk that the latter's visual fidelity rivals current gen consoles while Iphones/Ipads, mobile and such very much heading in the same sort of direction - what avenues do you guys see for low-spec specialisms, lower-polygon, hand painted textures only, that sort of thing? I think it's a terrible idea for anyone new to the industry to try to specialize in what amounts to 'previous gen' style. In addition to burnout, there is a very real group of folks who grew up and got married and had kids and their skills hit a ceiling and they haven't learned new ones. These are the ones competing for the top of these jobs, which means fewer opportunities for advancement, and while you're working in these positions you're not learning new technology or skills gradually which means more time spent outside of work learning 'cutting edge' techniques. There will always be some market for older art techniques for a variety of reasons (nostalgia, development cost, processing power, etc) but the notion of someone new to the industry trying to specialize in it seems like a poor idea. I think the golden rule, above all else, is to be really good at what you really want to do, and if you're good enough, you'll get there and have a job and enjoy it. I don't doubt there will be work for these things but there is a built in industry atrophy that leads to the creation of specialists in these areas already, so I think trying to be one is a fools errand.
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Jun 6, 2011 06:06
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treeboy posted:holy gently caress...I got the job with Vigil. It's a full time entry level temp position but I got it...I'm kinda speechless and in shock. Please tell me it's a dream. Congrats dude! Hope it still feels like a dream when you realize your job is to clean up mo-cap of a dude taking a dump, forever 
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Jun 9, 2011 18:03
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ceebee posted:My resume is garbage :[ My work experience was call center and retail work and then a decent (at the time) portfolio and some side project games. I never found an online mod-team that stuck through poo poo - real life friends were where the student/indie games I worked on happened - people are more accountable IRL. You need to organize your portfolio into something that puts all the Amazing right at the front instead of using a blog.
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Jun 10, 2011 17:35
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Amrosorma posted:I'm working with a really great team on an indie FPS and one thing we've run into is that we just have way too many art assets to deal with. Environmental assets are finally under control after finding an extra three 3D artists dedicated to environmental stuff. For whatever reason, environmental artists are pretty easy to find. Do you have a link to your mod?
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Jun 13, 2011 23:09
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Amrosorma posted:http://www.smirkandgrin.com/ You haven't even hit the untextured AK-47 'media release' phase yet. Impressive How are you managing to attract quality folks to the team? I'm not trying to poo poo on you but as a dude with a few hours a week that he would love to devote to making cool FPS guns for his portfolio I am woefully unimpressed.
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Jun 14, 2011 02:22
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Monster w21 Faces posted:Question to character artists. Pretty much any Quake 3 practice is not used today. Nowadays, characters are usually a single mesh, with removable props/armor/etc as separate meshes. These are all rigged to the same skeleton and then have an animation (or several) played on that skeleton.
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Jun 14, 2011 14:13
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Monster w21 Faces posted:What about faces though? I mean if you were to use a standard body mesh how would you save memory and yet have varied heads? I thought you were talking about the rigid animation of quake, sorry  Head swaps are common, although a lot of games will have one common head that has a bunch of morph targets and different normal/texture maps to effectively make it different heads (with the same topology). This lets you use one set of morph target data to animate all the faces in the game, rather than creating a full set of morph targets per head. Other games will use a bone-based facial rig instead, or custom morph targets per character.
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Jun 14, 2011 14:20
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ceebee posted:Just got my first freelance gig. As soon as I picked the first one up another person contacted me about freelance. WOOHOO! Congrats dude!
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Jun 17, 2011 09:31
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Classical training is a great benefit to any artist, although it isn't required. I'm self-taught 3d and have a business degree, and I would love to have more classical training. A lot of the classical skills that I have (understanding materials, observation and analysis, notions of form and color theory, etc) I learned bass-ackwards. The problem with 3d-centric programs is that a lot of them skimp on the fundamentals, and if you spend all your time in college just learning software and not learning any of the fundamentals you will get hosed. Even when you're photo-reffing an authentic M16, all of those fundamental skills come into play, from color theory (I think it actually becomes more important when you're working with something that is a 'fixed' color in the real world) to understanding form, and especially observation. Most of my observation skills come from a lot of long walks on campus with my rendering programmer friend. Learning to observe how light interacts with colors, forms, materials, and then moving on to understand the construction of objects, shapes, wear and marking and damage, etc, is a really difficult to learn skill unless someone is walking you through it. Monster - most people have suggested the things I would already, although I will say get involved in forums asap. Always be making something. Reading and watching tutorials makes you really good at reading and watching tutorials - you will learn faster and 'better' if you constantly work on something new and discover the problem areas on your own, so you can research them. A tutorial that dodges the pitfalls doesn't teach you where not to step, it teaches you to follow a line and when you steer away from it you will inevitably stick your foot in a hole. I would avoid open source software just because there are more tutorials and better documentation for the commercial software. 3ds Max or Maya (I prefer Max, Maya is better for animation but not for poly modeling, and Max has a better tool in Render to Texture than Maya does Project Surface), read the documentation, work through the intro tutorials so you aren't stumbling over rotating poo poo, etc. Read as many tutorials/watch as many as you can. Just don't think that lets you advance ahead on the "work out the bad" track. You're going to have to make a lot of poo poo work before you make anything good, and there isn't any shortcutting that. Pick someone who you really admire as a 3d artist and observe their work and try to emulate and learn from that - you'll get a lot farther than comparing yourself to scrubs. Aliginge posted:Max and Maya are both very popular, with Softimage trailing behind a little bit. You'll come across people who claim to be Max Guys or Maya People, as transitioning between programs is hard once you've learned how to model in one. I disagree - the transition is fairly easy, so long as you know enough about what you're doing in Max/Maya to understand the concepts - if your understanding of the workflow is 'I push this specific button and it makes Art' then you're going to have a hard time, but if you understand the higher concepts they're pretty easy. Don't get me wrong, it'll take a couple of weeks to get up to 90-95% efficiency in the new program, but that's something that jobs will allow for (and its easier in a workpalce where you can turn around and ask Ben 'whats the button to bridge two open edges together with a new polygon?') and that's realistically not that long of a time. Sigma-X fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Jun 17, 2011 |
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Jun 17, 2011 20:03
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Odddzy posted:To add to this, I would also say don't look for criticism on Deviantart or other ''artsy'' social boards. The spectrum of criticism is simply off the wall (From what i've seen at least). Yeah, polycount, gameartisans, threedy, cgtalk - these are all good sites. Deviantart is the worst. You want forums, not 'portfolio' sites. Also if you're learning 3ds Max and have questions feel free to IM me - this actually applies to anyone in this thread: SigmaX01 A lot of stuff when you're learning is a lot easier if you can just harass someone for an answer. Sigma-X fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Jun 17, 2011 |
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Jun 17, 2011 20:40
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Alterian posted:I hope you didn't get your sense of color and texture from walking around! I don't know what you're implying I should have done instead but like I said, I don't have a college level formal art background, most of my fundamentals come from high school and from self learning. This is why I think a college program that stresses these is valuable - I didn't have it
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Jun 17, 2011 21:12
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Alterian posted:You went to RIT didn't you? I was just making a joke about it being "brick city" code:Also I can't hear/see 'Brick City' and not think of the less endearing name every guy had for the male-dominated campus.
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Jun 17, 2011 23:28
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Solus posted:I'm gonna assume the best place to start vehicles/props/weapons is to draw like a crazy mother? I wouldn't mind UI's as I'm a minimalist at heart, I suspect my Grandfather was German, not Polish. Do you want to be a weapon/vehicle modeler, or concept artist, or what? I can't draw and I'm a weapons/vehicle artist
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Jun 19, 2011 05:21
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I used to have my old portfolio available, contrasting it with my 'current' portfolio was pretty neat and I felt it was useful for folks. But I haven't had it up in like 2 years. I really need to get a new portfolio together.
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Jun 20, 2011 23:10
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Chasiubao posted:So, if the past couple of years are any indication, games that go from subscription to F2P didn't have enough subscriptions to sustain themselves. My buddy who used to work for a company that did F2P games exclusively said their average take per unique account was $80 per account. As in, effectively every 3 'free' players, there was a $320 player balancing them out. Compare that to to $13 a month for 2-3 months (not counting the first 'free month' included in the box, which post distro and retail is probably closer to $20 in takeaway) and it looks really loving lucrative. I don't have it handy but there was a Game Developer article on LOTRO going F2P and doubling their monthly income in the first month and then increasing after that. The motivation towards going F2P is cash dollars. The motivation to do anything with a large project is the hope for more cash dollars.
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Jun 22, 2011 02:34
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sebzilla posted:I'm thinking about embarking on a Game Design course with Train2Game, and would be interested to hear if anyone in this thread has experience of them and thinks it is any good or not. I've had a chat with a guy from the course and it all sounds very interesting, and from what he said the job prospects for those graduating the course are pretty solid. On the other hand, I want to be sure it's worthwhile before dropping five grand and 18 months on it!  he is outright lying to you do not attend Train2Game for any reason they are the bottom of the loving barrel and you'll be lucky to qualify for a tester position Solus, I haven't used Blender and am a 3ds Max guy all the way, so I might be biased, but if you have the opportunity for Free 3ds Max (or any other software) take it! The worst case scenario is that you don't use it. The best case scenario is that you prefer it, learn faster in it, etc. It is a terrible idea to focus on 'learning' a bunch of 3d programs rather than getting balls deep in one - once you're really, really deep in one of them learning the others is relatively quick, because you know all of the available processes to a 3d modeler, and its just a matter of learning that Maya calls chamfering edges beveling edges, etc etc. It's worthwhile to fart around a couple of different programs early on to figure out which has the most intuitive interface (protip: none of them, from what I've seen) and then stick with that one.
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Jun 22, 2011 14:58
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Jaytan posted:Do you think your last sentence becomes any less true if you replace the words "Game Design" with any of the plethora of other majors with no practical application offered by universities? Game related majors are such a narrow part of the field, though - someone with a 3d art degree that isn't games related is going to presumably have more experience with non-games 3d and have a portfolio, or the skills to make one, that will let them land advertising, design, film, etc work. Same thing with programming - games is a narrow part there, and afaik with programming your degree matters more, so having a degree that isn't Games Programming but instead is a general CS degree, you'll have more options available to you. Game Design is narrow as it is, so going for a game design degree is probably OK, except again, 95% of the places with Games Degrees are loving fly-by-night scam colleges or unaware, clueless colleges.
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Jun 22, 2011 20:41
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Mango Polo posted:What? I'm assuming they spend a full day interviewing him. Volition did the same for me - picked me up from the hotel, put me in a room with a bunch of folks for an hour, then off to the next one, with a stop for lunch. End of the day, drop me off at the airport. And then something terrible happened, but that's another story
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Jun 23, 2011 00:36
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Solus posted:While dressed as wolverine in a tophat?, smoking a pipe Did I wander into the SR:TT thread? Alterian is right, for art, a website is fine. Video is really, really overrated and still pushed by schools that started their curriculum when VHS demo reels were the loving rage. It's really important to stick, at the very minimum, your website URL on every image on your site, because if someone saves it to their hard drive they're going to forget where it came from and they're not going to try to tineye/google it unless they really, really, really want you, and if they really want you that badly, make it loving easy for them before that feeling passes
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Jun 23, 2011 15:44
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Shalinor posted:I imagine video's still important for animation, though, no? I agree with this, but also it is important to mention, I think, that art and animation are two different things in my mind. I think it would be interesting to see how folks break down disciplines, both mentally and at a studio level. Here at Volition we're a large studio with a ton of specialization and part of that probably plays into my perception of animation being a different 'discipline' than art, which is really more just 'making models.' @ phone interviews - 30 minutes to an hour - you're usually talking to 1-3 people about workflow and role and they're kind of brief (Vicarious Visions or some other small studio, I forget which [the guys who did Dead Head Fred?] had me on a conference call with 3 folks, since they were a small studio - they were also looking for a generalist - smaller studios will usually need you to wear more hats). On-site interviews are usually with a much larger group of people (a good cross section of the folks you'll be working with - I think I talked to most of the artists at Volition when I had my interview)
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Jun 23, 2011 17:51
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Ignition Games in Austin is apparently dead. Boo-urns.
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Jun 24, 2011 17:28
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Superrodan posted:Wait, what? No they are barring the door and not letting my buddy into work. There is an article up now: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/35449/Ignition_Lays_Off_Console_Devs_In_Austin.php
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Jun 24, 2011 21:41
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Andio posted:Do you have an interview there too? I don't think is wrong of you, for what it's worth
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Jun 27, 2011 23:46
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warburg posted:What would be the best way to start a career path in environmental/character modeling? I love drawing but I have little experience with actually 3D modeling. Would it be best for me to just sit down at my computer and teach it myself with tutorials online or are any of the schools worthwhile? My cousin suggested FullSail Game Art Degree since he went to FullSail for music and loved it. I considered going here since it would give me access to all the neat tools needed for modeling. However, reading through this thread and the older ones kinda killed my enthusiasm for attending. Fullsail is expensive and isn't going to focus on the fundamentals as much. I know folks who have gone through it and it isn't a straight diploma mill dumping graduates, but the people who get the most out of it are the people who would do well anywhere, they don't offer anything unique outside of their accelerated learning program, it's certainly a kick in the pants. I'm not sure if that provides a BA, or not, however. I think ceebee would advocate for Gnomon pretty hard at this point. VFS also does a pretty good job - I think these two are the high end of "make 3d for games!" schools. Neither offers a BA to my knowledge, however. I taught myself 3d entirely via tutorials and a fuckload of hard work, and some of the folks I work with are the same way, so it is definitely doable. I'm not sure I would call it the best, however.
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Jun 28, 2011 00:23
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endlosnull posted:Being a startup with little to no funding is pretty scary so getting a partnership with Bungie is a really big step to getting noticed and getting our game out there. Woo How are you a startup with little to no funding? I thought Weisman starts and sells a company every year or so and I would imagine with his track record he should have no problems either finding funding or having a stack of cash of his own to run it off of. Am I grossly off mark here?
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Jul 1, 2011 04:57
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How the gently caress do I move from Art to Design? Anyone make that journey here? I want to design combat systems and stuff. I want to be the guy saying the gun shoots reticulated induced plasma balls instead of just the guy who models the plasma baller.
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Jul 1, 2011 16:17
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I'll 'Nth' that the '3 years experience and one shipped title' has secret writing next to it saying "or equivalent skill, or the balls to think you have the equivalent skill" the job posting I took was one that had that, and my 3 years experience was making small, 10-week long games with friends and doing a bunch of stuff for fun/mods that never went anywhere. What is important is that you demonstrate ability and can make it clear you are a serious business guy and not a graphics tightener interested in free game demos.
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Jul 4, 2011 19:16
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BizarroAzrael posted:What sort of thing would be desirable for a Technical Artist portfolio? I'm probably going to keep on with the UDK work and maybe do an entry for the game dev contest, but the stuff I've sounds online seems quite general or learning more heavily on the 3D asset creation side. Perhaps material and shader work in UDK? Maybe make some simple assets like a gun(or something less obvious) maybe a really basic character model and get them working in the engine? techartist.org is a pretty good place for techartists. Volition is kind of a mecca for Tech Artists, but here they do a variety of things: create shaders create Maxscript plugins (exporters, tools, etc) create Python scripts (other exporters, other tools, etc) Occassionally dabble in C++ for additional toolwork, I believe. Basically tech artists write tools and work on the art/content pipeline. If we need a new exporter, they write it. If we want a quick rigging tool, they write it. If we have to batch a bunch of data, they write it. Anything that we want to have happen to data inbetween the creation software (max/photoshop/etc) and the game, they help massage that into place. Have you tried getting one of those download manager programs to allow you to resume your download of UDK?
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Jul 4, 2011 20:50
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BizarroAzrael posted:gently caress all of you with your broadbands and editor tools and youtube tutorials (without a good hour to stream ahead of time) I can literally try taking the UDK download and breaking it up into .rar chunks if you can suggest a good place for me to host it. e: also seriously where the gently caress do you live that you don't have broadband? I thought you lived in the UK. I live in a goddamn cornfield and my pipe is as fat as a I am.
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Jul 6, 2011 00:38
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BizarroAzrael posted:or not apply at all? This is not the correct answer, ever. You lose nothing by applying and have only potential gains. If it's a position you were interested in, apply for it. Just so long as you aren't forming a habit in applying every month you'll be fine. I'm not sure on mentioning your previous application in the cover letter.
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Jul 6, 2011 18:08
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Super Slash posted:Man what's the deal with this phrase, I got told the exact same thing for not getting their Design Assistant job. Bluntly, it means you don't know enough about how to do the job and they don't want to spend time teaching you poo poo you should know. Companies are willing to give you time to learn their proprietary software, standards, etc. They aren't going to give you time to learn the basics of whatever task you're doing. For example, when I started here, I was given a week to get up to speed on everything that I needed to know about what I'd be working on. I was making assets by the end of the second day while continuing to read up on the various docs we had in regards to art direction, story, style, design, etc. If you can't do that, and they instead need to spend 2 weeks teaching you how a SCRUM team works and how to send out outlook meeting invites or whatnot, then you're going to be hearing that.
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Jul 6, 2011 23:48
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zacpol posted:A kid from my high school went to the University of Advanced Technology, and wanted to get a job making video games. He was also the kind of kid who played WoW in class and made horrible photoshops of flaming swords. Can someone tell me how this school is? I can't imagine all that legit if they offer a class on how to lead a guild. Last time I was at GDC (07 I think?) I met like a billion students from there looking for work. For some reason they all felt like networking with me (a student looking for work), I guess because people that aren't students are scary or something. This concludes my UAT stories.
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Jul 8, 2011 00:53
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typhus posted:I've watched the Gears 3 credits a good 30,000 times already to watch my name scroll by, and will likely watch them 30,000 times more. I knew that this would happen, but I was ill-prepared for the metric fuckload of joy that would accompany it. Our Artist credits end with me - I'm the only Weapon Artist on Red Faction Guerrilla and Armageddon, and so I'm on a line by myself, and nothing comes alphabetically after Weapon Artist  I've done other stuff in addition to weapons (vehicles, walkers/exosuits, and some environment props) but I've done all the weapons on them (except for Mr. Toots the Unicorn, because I felt the character artists would do a better job since I was never a fan of the RFG Ostrich I did).(what did you do on Gears? I am a huge Epic fanboy) Seeing your name in the credits or seeing the game in a store is absolutely amazing. I don't know if it is like that for everyone, but for the really passionate folks that I know that's always been the payoff. Sigma-X fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Jul 11, 2011 |
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Jul 11, 2011 19:05
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Aliginge posted:As of today I am now officially the sole artist at DNA Dynamics. Congratulations dude! Glad you finally made it!
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Jul 15, 2011 02:23
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Take the interviews. If it progresses any further than that and they really want you, then you mention that some other changes in your life have happened recently and you would not be able to move to {location} but you are still interested if it is possible to work remotely with {amount you are comfortable with} travel to on-site. As a serious biz community guy you're going to be traveling some anyways and you are not necessary to be on site for a fair amount of the work you do so working remotely is not unreasonable for most of the job. It's important to wait until they really want you specifically before you go all "BUT THERE IS A TWIST" as that improves your chances of getting the job because they've already decided you're the most qualified candidate. e: it is my understanding that traveling to Paris from the UK is relatively painless, like a long train ride kind of deal (3-4 hours?), and that the UK itself is pretty well connected/small. I could be hugely loving wrong though because I am terrible at geography.
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Jul 19, 2011 16:01
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I'm not going to suggest for/against a long distance relationship because that's a highly personal thing, but I stick by my earlier advice of:Sigma-X posted:Take the interviews.
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Jul 19, 2011 17:46
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The Cheshire Cat posted:One of the mission arcs I've written for City of Heroes was featured in the latest issue of PC Gamer. What's a good way to represent this on my resume when I'm applying for industry positions? I still have no professional design experience but the fact that my amateur work has gotten attention from the gaming press seems like something I should play up. Have a 'projects' section that looks like this: Projects City of Heroes player module Mo/Year-Mo/Year - Created X Missions in the CoH custom module thinger - Featured in July issue of PC Gamer "This module is like a blowjob from Lady Gaga - exciting but weird" Game I made in Flash Mo/Year-Mo/Year - Available at https://www.kongregate.com/URL - Platformer where you play as Regret as a Character something like that. Nobody cares that you flipped burgers at McDonalds for 4 years in high school, anything more than 3 years back is probably not worthwhile, use that space for your projects.
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Jul 24, 2011 19:27
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I am not really a twit or whatever yet but I was linked this and it is fantastic: http://twitter.com/!/petermolydeux quote:Want to make our next game appeal to both sexes. For every kill you get a new piece of furniture to decorate your house?
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Jul 27, 2011 17:00
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Spectral Debt posted:Keep in mind that I am a more "traditional Artist" than anything else. I'm working on transitioning to become more design and computer oriented for a more realistic career choice. Any words of advice and criticism is extremely valuable. If you want to make games draw a bunch of characters, equipment, environments, etc, in a consistent style that defines details, color, and form. look at other concept artist's portfolios and get a better idea of how that's all they do. Do you hang out on conceptart.org? Basically, looking at your portfolio right now, it appears you have a decent understanding of anatomy and color theory and can render a human fairly realistically if you choose to do so. So do so. A lot. Give them capes and guns and a magical hat, and then draw some environments for them to run around in full of objects they can interact with or explode, and then draw the tools and vehicles they will use to interact with these environments. Alternatively, if you are more interested in the graphic design portion, then consider getting into Interface Design and learn yourself some flash and a little bit of 3d and make mock up interfaces for games, painting over promotional screenshots in photoshop/illustrator/etc
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Jul 28, 2011 01:03
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