Chris Goodswen, a Character artist who had studied at NUCA’s Games Art and Design course had visited to give us a lecture on his journey to his way in the business and his story of going through further education and working on projects that would be useful for actual studios.
When he had first started at NUCA he mostly wanted to develop his skills in drawing and digital illustration. Learning the importance of things like Colour theory, anatomy and Architecture and Perspective for landscape and environment images.
Also learning the benefits of research and understanding of gathering resources to back up your work and enjoying the freedom in creativity he had while it lasted. As when you’re working for a studio you’re under a strict brief most of the time.
When he had reached his BA Honours year on the course he had to have a solid foundation in research, knowing what to look for and gather what he needed for his work.
He also had to study anatomy, not only in the sense of muscle structure but also the skeletal bone structure. Chris was not confident in his 3D skills and felt safer in 2D work, but he has realised that working in 3D is a valuable asset and jumped into learning and developing his skills for it.
Along with sculpting and modelling in 3D, learning to animate is crucial as well, to make the model compatible and flawless for animation rigs to be compatible with the model.
At the end of his year he helped with his fellow course mates build and help with the exhibition. After the exhibition (and plenty of drinks) he had achieved the results he had desired and applied to Abertay University for a Masters Degree in Games Design.
Throughout this course Chris developed further technically and artistically, in his first semester there was tons of writing to be done on research case studies and theories on game design, along with learning low poly modelling and 3D animation.
He learnt that on making games it was a tough learning curve to achieve, having to design, model, texture and animate everything and really harsh crits to coincide with them.
When moving onto his second semester, Chris was placed into bigger teams for projects, being assigned to focus on characters.
He had started to use UDK (Unreal Development Kit) for his work on the projects, using the unreal engine to create their ideas, not to mention more harsh crits to their work.
Along with these massive projects each member of the team had to write narrative theories and professional specialisations, explaining the roles of each member of a team and how cooperation can create more efficient and high quality work. Each being at 4,000 words each. At the end Chris mentioned that all the work was over 13,000 words, not including development work.
Reaching his third and final semester, Chris was assigned to his last project on the course and it was the final stretch, No modules were needed and there was a focus on just one game. Students were put into groups and teams of 15 and Chris had been given the role of 3D modeller and temporally taking Art lead.
Most of Chris’ work for this project takes place in his final portfolio now.
When working on Character designs, Chris suggested producing a vast amount of thumbnail sketches of the character, rows of heads and face displaying emotions to see the variations of image that you can produce for the character. One when you have chosen a handful of strong designs from the batch you should go on to develop full body images, in case you do that first and you receive a bad crit for your hard work, making sure to display your character in an interesting gesture rather than flat and dull poses.
Chris went on to explain the situation of the Games industry today, saying that when looking for work, other jobs are needed to sustain you as jobs in Games can be quite difficult to come by. Saying that in the mean time looking for jobs you should always keep developing your skills to keep yourself sharp and inspired.
Suggesting to make friends in the business everywhere and whenever you can, times can change when you have a friend on the inside who can get you a boost over others going for a job.
Big “Triple-A” industries like Ubisoft, THQ and EA will not employ juniors anymore, insisting that years of experience are needed for their work frame and schedules, again proving the point that making friends can get you places, if you have someone on the inside of where you want to get employed, it can really get you a step up ahead of others.
Amongst working for Studios, in between jobs Chris said that working freelance is always a good option, it may not be always Games related but its enhancing your skills and earning money, two major bonuses.
Overall he said that in the first years of getting into the industry, getting yourself involved with smaller scale studios is the best plan, gather years of experience under your belt and then try and spread out to bigger industries and get your name out there for people to recognise.
Overall, I found Chris’ lecture very awe inspiring, briefly shocking from the amount of work that is needed for the work and even more amounts for getting into the industry. But in all forms this boosts my desire to get there, seeing the hard work and portfolio’s of images showing years of hard work, fun and experiences he’s had on the way to where he is now.
No comments:
Post a Comment