second year reflection

So it's come to the end of the second year. This will probably be my last blog on this address, as we'll be getting marked next semester. It's a bit of a shame we don't get taught stuff for the last semester, but that will give me some time to work on my personal stuff, maybe some summer projects.

This time last year, I learnt so much by working on the summer projects. It felt like I was putting all the things I had been taught into practice. This year, I hope in the next semester I can get a bit more comfortable with using UDK. I'm only just ok with importing things and building BSP, which obviously isn't going to cut it for the third year. I should be able to make a small level of my own in the time before summer. I need to get some nice looking things together for a portfolio. I have an idea which I have started working on, an Egyptian tomb.

To be honest, I am very worried about the next year. I have improved this last year, I am happy with the progress I am making. But I am not sure it's enough. I think, if I cannot get a job in the games industry at the end of this course, then that's ok. I guess my priorities have changed a lot this last year. It is an industry that I would like to work in, I just don't think I'll be up to an industry standard by this time next year.

I'm also a little bit worried I won't be hired in other jobs because of my degree. Potential employers might look at the degree, then think I've been taking a mickey mouse degree. I hope that doesn't happen.

Back to course related stuff. The feedback was ok, I've got a little work  to do over the Easter. A few visual design things need a little work. Like the presentation thing. I've also got to finish off some 3d, such as putting all the assets for the queens project into a BSP. There is not much I can really say about the feedback. In the game production feedback, it says that I lack confidence, which is very true. Visual Design I seem to be making progress as well.

The visual design project have been fun this year for the most part. We've got to do a lot more Imagineering. I kind of missed the going to different places and drawing part though, although it sure is nice not be out in the cold all the time. I really need to work on this over the summer though. I don't feel very confident with my work in general. The piece that I felt the least happy with actual turned out to be one of my better pictures, possibly because I spent so long trying not to make it not suck.

In game production, it was good to work as a team in this last semester. I got some good feedback, so I'm guessing my team mates thought I did alright. It was good to see our assets actually go into a game level, and to be able to interact with them. Its helped me see the bigger picture, and to realise that spending also much time on one asset is just silly.

So next year, need to gain more confidence, get good at using udk and also make some nice portfolio pieces.

Kumo Lumo

Yesterday we had a guest lecture. They said that they didn't want their name mentioned as they had not announced that it's their game yet (or something along those lines). It was a bit different from our usual guest lectures, as it was focused on an IOS game.

The project was called Kumo Lumo. It was developed in only 8 weeks. Its target audience was men aged 25 to 34, as this was the group that spent the most on IOS games, so it had large market potential. Making it for the iphone meant that it had low production costs (although later in the lecture they told us that it had cost them 40-60 thousand pounds). It was also made to test out their new engine.

Because of the relatively low production costs, they could be a bit more creative with the game and its art style. They didn't want it to become a vanity project though. They wanted it to be visually distinctive, so it could stand out in the crowd.

In the game, you play as a cloud. You rain on good things to make them grow, and you rain on bad things to make them go away. Pretty simple. 

First off they started with mood boards. Then they progressed onto thumbnails of how the game should look. After that, they had a rethink. Before they were trying for a kind of fuzzy felt style. After the rethink, they changed it to more of a sticker style. This was all after a week and a half. After that they worked on making the game and also they established the brand.

Marketing way really important. Mostly they used guerrilla marketing. This meant they started up profiles on facebook and twitter, and started to get people interested in the project. This is a really good way for small games like this to gain interest. Here's the link to the blog they set up:

http://kumolumo.com/blog/

It was really interesting to see the development process of a different type of game.

 

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.