Group project

Well, the group project has finally finished! It went a lot better than I expected, to be honest I expected some falling out, but it went smoothly. Our final level, is ok, I think some of the other groups are a lot better . Apparently this has been a very good year.

We pretty much made what we set out to make. At the start we were told not to get out of hand with the Imagineering, but some of the other groups went crazy with it and made excellent levels. Ours still looks a lot like the queens building though, and seeing as we basically knew next to nothing about UDK at the start, I'm happy with what we made. I've got the basics of the program now, and it will be exciting to be able to make something of my own, and be able to run through it. There is something a lot more motivating about being able to see your finished assets in a game engine.

On a small side note, I also understand a lot more about how to texture. Seeing how the light effected things in UDK helped me understand why you should paint everything with no shadows. Before I was focusing with what looked good in 3ds max, but now I understand a lot more.

I'm not going to go into detail about how people did in our group, I'll leave that for the feedback sheets. The main problem we had was organisation; we had no clear roles, and that lead to a bit of disorganisation. Each member was pretty organised about getting their own work done, but when it came to meetings it was difficult. Stuff would be said, but things would not get organised. With a team leader, an art director ect ect, it would have been a lot easier to keep everyone on the same page.

Myself, I think I mad enough assets, and worked as hard as I could on this project. It took a little while to get used to things like collision boxes though. I think I learnt a lot working on this project, and I defiantly learnt that I can make objects a lot faster than I thought. Its made me speed up my asset modelling a lot. It seems a bit crazy that in the first year it took me three weeks to model a bin.

There could have been a few more tutorials available on blackboard. Some of the third years showed us some basics, but there is nothing on the basics on blackboard, such as making a bsp block out, which would have been very helpful. The meetings we where meant to have each week on Thursday with Mike stopped as well, which was ok, but it felt like we were not getting much feedback.

As I want to be an environment artist, I'm going to work on some environments of my own. I've got a few ideas than I'm going to work on in the last semester. I've also still got to put all my assets in a room in UDK which I'll be working on this week. Formative assessments go moved to this Friday, so I shall post up my review of my second year after that. Anyway, this is a lot of words, so here's a lot of pictures of the finished level.

Life Changing or Career Building?

Developing skills that would be useful in the games industry. That’s what this course is meant to teach us. But what does that mean? What does the industry really want? We could be taught learning attributes, or the other hand we could be taught technical skills.

Soft skills “relate to a person's ability to interact effectively with co-workers and customers and are broadly applicable both in and outside the workplace”. This is a really useful to have, but alone it will not get you a job in the industry; you also need technical skills. Employers have started looking for people who have these skills, as they tend to work better with other people. However, this is not really something that you can teach, it’s something learnt through experience. 

Hard skills are “a person's skill set and ability to perform a certain type of task or activity”. These are technical skills, such as being able to build a model in 3ds max. These are really usefully, as they are needed to complete a job.

Making a course that works to train students for the games industry is really difficult. The field is constantly changing, so students have to be able to keep on learning and adapting. The quality of work they produce has to be really strong, as people already in the industry have really strong technical skills. There also seems to be a conflict from studios wanting people who are really good at technical skills and people with liberal arts backgrounds. It is difficult to say what the industry wants, or what it will want in say ten years time.

The way forward might be some kind of compromise, providing students with both the technical know how, the ability to adapt and change, and a good understanding of art fundamentals. Another difficulty is that different students would like different jobs. Some would like to be concept artists, others would like to focus more on 3D modelling. It would be difficult to balance the course to make sure that both sides of things take equal amounts of the time. The key is balance, to make sure students can get the best of what they want out of the course.

Soft skills are the most difficult. There is no real way to teach them. Working as part of a group helps, because it requires good communication. I’m not really sure how a course can teach or encourage the learning of these skills. It can however help people adapt to different situations. In an industry that needs people to constantly keep up with new programs and technology, this can be replicated in the classroom. If students are constantly asked to learn new technology, then they will getting better at learning and not being put off by new and different things.

There is also a pressure from the government side of things. The course needs a written part to qualify as a BA hons, but this doesn’t fit well with what we would be working on in the industry. It’s good to keep up with our writing skills, but in a job it is unlikely we will be writing a design document.

Creativity, the talent myth and craft

Firstly, what are the definitions of both creativity and talent? The two are often interchanged, but sometimes are not used correctly.

Michael Mumford suggested "“Over the course of the last decade, however, we seem to have reached a general agreement that creativity involves the production of novel, useful products”. This means that creativity is making things or solutions that are original and useful. Talent is a little different than creativity. It’s defined as a natural born ability, which is above average. Talent is really useful, but personally I also think it requires a lot of work to get to what most people call talented. 

A lot of ancient cultures, such as ancient Greece, China and India didn’t have the concept of creativity. Art was considered more discovery than creative. Plato did not believe in creativity, replying to the question "Will we say, of a painter, that he makes something?” with “Certainly not, he merely imitates."

The modern day idea of creativity is thought to have originated from western culture, during the renaissance. During this time there was a big art movement.

Creativity is often associated with the fields of art and literature, although it is there in other fields. However, in art and literature, it often considered enough to have only the originality, and not the usefulness. This can lead to some confusion in the term creativity. A person who works in an office (say in logistics) can be creative, thinking up creative solutions to the problems presented to them.

Creativity is a very useful skill to have in the game art industry. It is considered a ‘creative industry’. However, I would argue that the creativity that is needed for these jobs is more the type that needs to produce things that are both useful and original. Were as in different jobs, such as fine art, originality might be celebrated more. For example, Henri Matisse’s work has a very good use of colour, but his paintings can sometimes be a little abstract. This is not a criticism, is just that it’s aiming in a different direction.

Let me put it this way. Children often have lots of creativity, especially when drawing. They will draw whatever comes into their heads. But it’s not really something that you can take and present to an art director. Drawings that we need to make have to be founded in reality. This adds a lot of rules, but being creative often means that you can work round constrictions and still produce something that is original.

On a slightly tangent note, there is an artist, Dave Devries, who takes children’s drawing and repaints them. The result is slightly disturbing, but shows off their crazy ideas really well. 

In the games industry, I think creativity can be shown in different way. It could be an original art style. Or it could be a new gameplay mechanic. It could even be a fantastic score. Best of course would be a combination of things. Sometimes the bigger AAA titles can get a bit samey, sticking to formula because it is guaranteed to make profit. But taking risks and producing something a bit more creative can make something new, innovative and fresh. This is something that, in my opinion, the industry needs.

updating again

Sorry I haven't updated this as much as I should have done, the group project has eaten up  a lot of my time. It's been ok, if nothing else it's made me speed up making assets. It now seems laughable that we were given something like three weeks to make a pile of trash.

I'm not too far behind in Visual Design either (surprisingly). Currently doing the cultural walks project, which was really confusing. The brief seemed really vague, unlike what we had done before, and not very focused on game art. I've  made it into a small inner city garden, and I guess that'll be ok, it can be an environment. Not been feeling so great about things in general, the other day I was painting and nothing seemed to be going right, it just looked rubbish to me. I know I'm progressing, but it's so slow, and everyone else just seems so much better and to be progressing so much faster. 

I've started going to the life drawing on Thursday, which is a lot nicer than the one on Monday. I get more done, its less restrictive and it just feels more productive. It would be nice if we could get a male model in this year though, we've only had female models and it would be nice to get some variety.

And I know I'm a bit behind in Critical Studies.

from generalist to specialist

The games industry is a very fast changing industry. Because it is relatively new compared to other entertainment industries, for example, the film industry, it is constantly shifting. The technology used to create games has gone from very basic 3d models to the high poly models that we have today in the space of my lifetime, and shows very little signs of slowing down.

Because the industry is growing so quickly, it means new job roles are being created. In the past, a very small team of people worked on games. For example, two people, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, created pong, which was a very early game . Now big budget games often have hundreds of people working on them. For example, the games developer Naughty Dog employs over 170 people. However, this company was started by just two people, Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin.  The job roles that people have has also become more specialised. There was a time where the programmers would make all the graphics themselves and the role we are training for didn't exist.

An exception to this could be the growing amounts indie game developers. They usually have smaller teams, with people taking on multiple roles. The internet has helped greatly with this, as it allows small developers to promote their games to a wider audience. The finished game can also be made available for download, which cuts down the cost of distribution and allow more people to get a copy of their game. An example of this is mine craft, which was originally made by one person, Markus Persson, and later expanded to a larger team . Also, the wide spread use of smart phones has lead to more mobile games, which has been great for smaller  developers as these games are smaller and do not require such a large team to produce.

Because of the size of games, some companies use outsourcing . The definition of this is   'Outsourcing is any task, operation, job or process that could be performed by employees within an organization, but is instead contracted to a third party for a significant period of time.' This is used because outsourcing companies are often in countries outside of Europe and north America, so it costs less. They are often used on big projects were lots of assets need to be made. However, some people are afraid that outsourcing limits the jobs available to  game artists in the uk, as it is cheaper to outsource a lot of assets. On the other hand, it is often difficult to tell what you might get back; the benefits of having a team in one place can't be under estimated, as it makes it a lot easier to communicate between people and make sure that everyone is on the same page.

Because the industry changes so quickly, it is difficult to be able to predict what will happen in the next ten years or so. More and more specialised jobs may be created as games get bigger, or it may be that smaller teams will become more predominate, with employees taking on multiple roles. Personally, because of this, I don't think it is a good idea to become too specialised while working on this course, as you never know what developments might happen in the future or what jobs will be available.

http://operationstech.about.com/od/glossary/g/Outsourcing.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft#Development