Y2 S2 T24 - Personal review of the second year: Where do you want to go, and how do you get there?

Universities are for those that feel they have strong passion about something and come to further their knowledge and build up more skills in a specific area their own choice. In our case it's gaming and art, it's a unique course as we don't just learn about art but video games in general, it's like combining art and IT together to create something that sounds really awesome with things like digital art work etc, but I think it's interesting and games are something I love and want to learn further. I think Universities are made for those who have a dream and to get the huge step closer to realising it.

Universities came from the medieval times and around Europe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University#Definition

'An educational institution designed for instruction, examination, or both, of students in many branches of advanced learning, conferring degrees in various faculties, and often embodying colleges and similar institutions'

If you could imagine a society of people that research and build up their knowledge and understanding of what is recognised as educational subject, then they can teach this (or pass down their knowledge to others). Universities have developed into something  where they teach very specific things, like we study fine art and ways to apply it into a game engine for example and understand things like elements of game design etc. They don't teach them kind of things in school or college (much) and so the educational structure is built so that you understand how things work first before you go off for a degree in a specific areas. For example studying fine art or doing a foundation course will give you the skills required to meet the demands of the University to take you on board. Our course is still relatively new and therefore it's starting to become something much bigger where people from all over come to study, just look at what they do now trying to bring students in from as many countries all over the world. I guess Universities compete against each other in terms of looking for more and more applicants and teaching their knowledge thus building a reputation in their valued methods of teaching the subjects they do.

I would expect by the end of University I would have a great knowledge of the work that is produced in the gaming industry. Better my understanding of game and level design, the management behind those processes and fundamental skills that are required for the job for by the time I'm finished I will be prepared to go out into the big wide world, so far it looks as if that will happen because I've studied hard and been told that I have improved in areas.

I always write in my blog about my work, how things could be improved, what would I do differently in design documents if I were to do a project again. I look at how I achieved something and the steps I took to getting there, you might say that I over analyse too much, but is that really a bad thing? No it's good. I set my self my own projects and reflected upon what I did to achieve my final outcome, University is all about being taught and guided by our tutors to do something but the other half of it is teaching yourself, working and solving problems and building up your own knowledge and understanding of how something is done. We're just expected to crack on with it and not ask questions which is a good thing, throwing in at the deep end means you learn faster to cope with all the pressures of the work load.

I can say that over the past two years I've been able to produce work that I never thought  imaginable in a million years. It's amazing how much I've learnt in such a short amount of time, I've improved but there's quite a long road still ahead.

Then 2010

Now 2012:

Personal Year 2 Review

When I think back to the first year, I know for a fact I didn't do enough as it reflected in my grades. This year has been an interesting year, to start off my knowledge about the game industry has improved. I think one major thing that helped was the group project. It basically got me thinking more about how levels are made and how to get them working in engine to play. Looking at this, this year I've realised that Art is now for me, I'm interested in the management side of things within games, as I've said before within game design and level design it requires excellent organisational skills and planning.

I think I showed my ability to organise things by doing and completing a lot more work this year and actually not forgetting files that are needed.

This year has really bought the work out of me, I think I originally said that I wanted to do at least about 3-10 times the amount of work that I produced last year and I can happily say that I have.

(building/toy model)

I was able to set myself my own personal projects in 3D and complete them drawing up my own plans and taking my own texture images to apply to them. It proves that I can do it, though the quality of my work may not be the best I know how to get it done, in example:

·         Have a neat folder structure

·         Make sure the scene opens with texture paths set and loaded

·         Put everything in its own uniquely named folder

·         Make sure everything is named (objects, textures, lights and cameras etc)

·         Make sure the pivots are reset and the asset is set to world 0,0,0

and so on...

In 2D this year I was able to plan my time well. I remember back in October we discussed time management and worked out how many hours we had worked each week. I was able to make extra time throughout in my schedule to draw still life objects and make contour work out of them, this improved my ability to draw objects without having to keep applying the long process of working out the perspective first, I think life drawing definitely helped me improve with this.

I bought and drew about 10 tons of fruit (not seriously that much) and made digital work out of them, at least one for each week and I think I can gladly say that I definitely improved on drawing organic objects and render them.

Also traditionally.

I've built a basic understanding of UDK.

Due to circumstances that have arisen in m personal life, I felt unable to take much part in the group project, now I don't want to talk about this much and I don't want to think about the so called 'FMP' or the third year yet as I don't know what I'm doing. I was able to see how levels are built piece by piece but that's about as far as I got, I never got to see them built in production or learn UDK further.

I'm hoping that it would be possible to retake the second year so I can do the group project properly next time, I wouldn't mind spending an extra year to do it as I feel it may affect my performance at job interviews when an interviewer would ask for evidence or group work and then I have none. Game industry is all about working in a team and I feel this would affect my potential to impress potential future employers.

Also I was quite upset at the fact that all the ideas to the group project were decided on the first day without me and thus was unable to take more of a management role which caused a bit of controversy. Let's just say I got an early taste of industry...

Overall it's been a successful year I would say. Even in my blog, I've done a lot more work and added a lot of images and links in my entries to support what I'm talking about, which was something I lost marks on last year. I've looked into a lot more things, researching about games online etc but there is so much more I wanted to talk about eventually.

I'm happy with what I've achieved in all modules of the course but I still want to give the group project a try if it's possible, I'm very eager to sit it again properly.

Game Production Year 2

In Game Production this year I've made more time to set my own briefs and complete work. I'm happy with the outcome of the projects I did. I wanted to do more but it's been a difficult year for me.

I was able to plan out what I set out to achieve. Not long ago I talked about solving problems that occur during production of a 3D asset or texturing and how solve them along the way. In Game Production it's important to have a good knowledge of the software you are using so when problems occur in building a game/level you can solve them immediately. the technical artist role is very significant if you ask me, because they are the ones you go to when you've got a problem because they should know the programs better than anyone.

Understanding the user interface is important as anything. I've basically had to follow tutorials on how to use UDK and persevere in trying to use and understand it. Just like in the making of Crash Bandicoot  when they were trying to create and animate water waves etc that was never seen before in the PS1, and I'll quote 'it took a lot of time and effort and a lot of preserving to achieve what we intended to create' (or something along those lines). Sometimes this is just the case, not just in creating game art assets but animation and programming too, Re-writing codes to gain what you want to achieve etc, even sometimes you may have to just restart from scratch as your ideas seem to not come to anything. A lot of testing and trial and error is involved, it's basically man vs machine when it comes to creating a game. You must crack the code that makes your ideas come to life.

Basically planning and concepting, I was able to first create my own concept images and follow them accurately.

We view the world in perspective, not orthographic.

Almost... but not quite.

As said before having a good plan is the key to developing and realising your ideas. I remember a story about a guy back in my old college who spent most of his exam planning what he was going to write, with about 10 minutes to go he writ up all his plans and passed with an A grade.

The Final Outcome.

If you can't quite wrap your head around how something works, write it down, in our case we draw it down so we can show how things work visually (I personally learn better visually), once drawn them ideas now exist. If you were to write a book you'd write the thing out but only the reader can visualise what you've wrote in their own unique way, whereas when you draw it, you immediately get the idea and thus words are not required because the image tells the story without explaining it to you. I think conveying your ideas visually is the key to creating a good game, if there's a story line and script the artist can produce and render what is written (illustrating it) and then eventually bring it to life in 3D.

Video games are one big process from point A (having the idea) to point B selling it (and making tons of cash 'haha'). I've learn that in this process the deadlines are very important and that you should not take them lightly, do the work as fast as possible and then spend your spare time tweaking it and improving it.

Looking good?

Technical Art

If someone mentions technical art, the first thing that comes to mind is something like this:

Though that maybe just one part of it, basically technical artist job within the games industry requires a good understanding of tools like 3D programs and packages, 2D like Photoshop programs for painting and manipulating images and others like UDK for putting together 3D assets in a game engine.

http://www.creativeskillset.org/games/careers/profiles/article_5287_1.asp

I've talked before how it is important to keep updated with the latest hardware and software, not only to keep up with improving technology but to keep up with making games better with them and being able to produce them on the current generation consoles that play them.

At the same time this type of job develops your own understanding of game technology as you work strongly with the artists and programmers. It can help when it will eventually be time to move on for the next generation of gaming. One thing in industry is that every time a new console is being planned and going into production is that whatever console it is will have games available on for it for users to play. Not just game consoles specifically but even add-ons such as the Xbox Kinect for an already existing console, even things like mobile phones, iPads, that have touch screen capabilities and much more. Gaming gets around a lot in today's world and just about every piece of hardware has some way of playing a game.

The point being when these things are in production everyone wants to be there first to produce a game because the hardware makes the most money within the first few weeks of its release and also the games designed for it to. So knowing the new technology and the way it's programmed can be very challenging thing, but as we all know games are made to make money.

Technical artists decide upon the way characters and assets should be made, how they should be rigged, know about things like scripts, how to render in software package and but have a detailed knowledge of how things work and can be put together to help support other artists and programmers.

Having a lot of detailed knowledge for this job and working long hours, I would say that it's only fair you get a higher pay. I wouldn't say it's something for me though but it's interesting to see how this job is becoming increasingly important within the industry.