Second Year review

Well... so that's it. End of the second year. It's been so long and so short at the same time. For sure, It's been much more intensive then the first year (especially with the group project), yet I feel like I could've done a bit more. Regardless, I feel really exhausted. Both physically and mentally. I haven't slept properly for a long time trying to prepare everything for the final hand-in, so now I should fall asleep and wake up in September... 

But  I'm not going to repeat my last year's mistakes of not doing anything game art-related for the whole summer. I have so much to catch up on, especially with 3d... I have to learn zBrush and CryEngine which I had really no time to learn being busy with other things. I'm aware that I'm going to need those skills in 3rd year. So in order to acquire them I'm thinking about setting up myself a personal project for this holiday. I've got few ideas and I still have to decide on which one I'll bring to life, but I'm already pretty excited about it. Beside of concepting, modelling and putting it into the engine I thought about documenting it on this blog, so I would (hopefully) get into the habit of regular writing (which I brutally failed at this year). I imagine this project to be a good warm up before the third year FMP.

But anyway, it is supposed to be a review of this year. As I mentioned before, this year was totally different from the first year. New place, new tutors, but also new challenges, more difficult and complex from those in the first year. Nevertheless, I learned a lot from them. I enjoyed most of the VD projects, especially those literature-related. They showed me the difference between drawing my own ideas from drawing things that were created in someone else's head. 

My interpretation of a character from The Witcher book

The game production projects were pretty fun too (well, they were not back then, but now with a smile on my face I recall how frustrated I was when I couldn't get the bin bag to look right). The biggest challenge of all was the group project. It showed me pros and cons of working on game related things in group. However, the overall experience was great, I was in an awesome group in which everyone was hard working but chilled out at the same time. We had no problem to get along and we had similar visions on how to make this project to work. 

Critical studies lectures this year were great too. The ones on writing cover notes, preparing portfolios etc. were really helpful and guest lectures were just priceless. They helped me to realize that these game makers are just humans like myself and if I work hard enough there's no reason why I could not work in a game company too. 

Also I believe that my time management this year was much better in comparison to the first year. I still need to learn how to be better organized though. Sometimes I had pretty hard time trying to find some of my files. I guess it would be easier if I wouldn't name my files like final, final_final, final1a, last_final, new_final etc...

Overall I'm happy with my progress in this year and I already I'm looking forward to the next one.     

Education

I remember my first Game Production class in the first year as if it was yesterday. I was really stressed, I knew no one there and I didn't know what to expect. Of course, I realized that it wasn't high school anymore and teachers (I mean tutors) won't pat us on heads and spoon-feed us with information we needed to know. But still, I didn't expect what was coming...

After brief tutorial that was an introduction to 3ds max (which I haven't use before) we were given a task - to model a Dalek. Wait... what? What do you mean by 'build a Dalek'? How? I've never used this strange program and now you expect me to model this elaborate robot with it? Is that some kind of sophisticated joke that tutors have came up with to have fun of scared and helpless first years?

But that wasn't the worst. The most terrifying thought was: what if the whole university is going to be like that? What if we get projects to do but no one is going to guide us, tell us how to do them? Well those nightmares eventually came to life, but they weren't so scary as I thought. 

But let's get back to the Dalek task first. So, after the first shock, with all of those visions in my head I thought 'aaa... fuck it. I'll do my best and even if I fail, it will only mean that I wasn't the right person for this course anyway'. So, with that in my mind I started modelling. I don't know how exactly did that happen but after few hours I end up with this:

And I was so happy and proud with it! I felt so excited that I learnt this new the thing and I wanted to know more, learn more and become better at it. I even decided to have a second go and I modelled this one:

If Heather would, back then, walked us by hand through this project and told us step by step how to do it I would not be even in a small part that happy with it. I would not be so excited about learning those new skills. And every project since then was like that - was a challenge. Every tutorial we had was on how to use program, not how to model specific things. I really like that because each new project requires me to research and learn new things. And I believe that it prepares us to work in the industry better than if we were lead step by step on how to do specific things. If I work in a game studio in the future and art director asks me to model a horse I can't say 'I don't know how to do that but hey, I can model tree instead!'. Even if I have never modelled a horse before and I don't know how to do that I was prepared to deal with similar problems. 

So, to conclude, despite of the big shock of my first contact with it I believe that our course structure is extremely efficient and it prepares us to work in the industry very well.   

 

Talent

I hate word 'talent'. Well, ok, I don't hate the actual word but the general misconception connected with it. Every time when, after seeing my drawings, someone tells me 'oh, you're so talented!' something brakes inside me. Why?

In his article 'Art is work' artist Jed Alexander writes: 'People who don't practice art as discipline tend to romanticize the artists they admire. Rather than seeing art as a work - like any work, like the work they do - they see it as some kind of magical process'. And I can totally relate to that. I've heard the opinion of talent being a gift from god way too many times... But don't get me wrong, I DO believe in talent. Just different definition of it. For me it's not a mystical power nor gift from god; I think of it as a set of inborn characteristics and predispositions that allow one to be better at something than an average person. Therefore, everyone has some kind of talent. But:

“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”

- Stephen King

Let me give you an example. Let's imagine two guys: one of them is 215cm tall and the other one is 165cm tall. They both been training basketball for one year. It's obvious that the taller guy is going to be better at it because of his height (which is his talent - it allows him to perform better at specific task). But now, let's imagine a bit different scenario - let's say that the shorter guy have been training basketball for last few years, whereas the taller guy have played it only a couple of times in his life. Who is going to be better now? Obviously, the shorter guy, even despite his 'lack of talent'. It's just like in above S. King's quote - you can be talented, but that's not what makes you a good artist. Determination and hard work does.

So what are the predispositions that could be considered as a talent in terms of drawing/painting? One of the biggest, I think, is imagination. As an artist, you have to constantly imagine things, even if you draw only from life. What's behind this tree? What composition is going to work the best? What colour is going to look good against this vivid green? Attention to detail is really important too, because that's what makes paintings more realistic and believable. Also, to become a good artist you have to be patient. You're not getting better at painting from one picture to another and creating a good painting requires a lot of preparation. It takes time. So if you're not patient you'll probably be disappointed with lack of immediate progress and you will quit drawing and you'll never get good at it. So, patience is a part of 'talent' too. These are only few examples of things that compose talent and of course every one has a different set of those characteristics.    

some of my preparation sketches for War of The Worlds sketches

   

So that's what I think about talent and why it irritates me when people talk about it as a gift and they don't see the hard work behind it. On the other hand artists themselves are to be blamed - they tend to show only beautiful, polished paintings, hiding not-so-pretty preparation sketches - the evidence of hard work. So no wonder that people seeing an artist who can paint amazing paintings just-like-that consider it as a mystical power. Well, maybe next time someone says 'you are so talented!' I'll just nod my head and say 'yup, I was chosen by god'. Hmm...    

From generalist to specialist

Before I started this course I had no idea how the game industry actually works. I was aware that there are people that are responsible for 2d work, 3d work, programming and producers.. But that was it. 

Only thanks to those Critical Studies tasks I started to research this subject more and I realized how big and complex game developing companies are. It was also interesting to learn how the industry has changed in last 25 years. Back then games were created by single or small group of people having some knowledge about coding. No artistic skills were needed whatsoever. As time went by technology has evolved. It created new possibilities by also new demands. When 3D technology has arose game developers were no longer limited to graphic build  from only a few pixels. They became able to show to the player fantastic creatures, fancy heroes and complex environments. However, someone has to design all of these first, and then build actual 3d models. Game artists were at high demand. 

Nowadays, when technology is even more advanced and games are more complex, most roles in the industry are increasingly specialized. For example, now you would find jobs like an environment artist, creature artist, vehicle artist, as well as texture artist and GUI artist. In the past it was all done by one person. 

As for me, I always knew what I want to do for living - draw monsters and robots. So, ever since I found out about existence of a job called Concept Artist it was clear to me that it's exactly the career path I want to pursue. Obviously, concept artist jobs do not consist drawing robots and monsters only. It requires to design things that don't exist yet. It's about imagining and that's what  I think I'm good at and what I like to do. 

Nevertheless, just like any other job, in gaming industry concept artist jobs have also became more and more specialized. I know artists who draw characters or vehicles only. There are also artists who draw monsters and robots only. So should I leave characters, environments and vehicles to focus on drawing monsters and robots to be more specialized and in that area, so that then I could try to become, for example a creature artist? Well, following Feng Zhu advice - no, I shouldn't.

In his video tutorials series called Design Cinema, he said many times that it's very unlikely for someone who is new to the industry to find job as a specialist. Moreover, he stressed it that being a specialist doesn't mean that you can draw only one subject. It means that you are good at drawing everything and you are excellent in drawing particular subject . If company would hire me as  a concept artist and asked me to draw concepts for a heroe's vehicle I couldn't just say ''Oh, sorry I draw monsters and robots only''. In that scenario the employer would get rid of me straight away, because they could hire in my place someone who can draw everything. 

So, to sum this up, if you want to become a specialist, better start as a generalist. That way you can do more things = you are more useful.   

Interaction design

Some people, particularly non-gamers may think that interaction with games is something new and that it wasn't possible before we had Wii, Kinect and Move. They may think that before we could play games only with gamepads and joysticks or mouse and keyboard in case of computers. Well, they are wrong.

I remember that even when I was a child there were some additional controllers available that you could use to play video games. Personally I only owned one, which was a gun that I used to shoot ducks in the game called Duck Hunt.

I remember it quite well because it was  the only video game that I could persuade any family member to play with me. Why was that? Why this game and not any other? Thanks to this controller. It was really fun and it allowed to interact with game in interesting way. Also it was very intuitive. When you grabbed this controller you instantly knew how to play this game. You didn't need to learn which button does what, you only had to aim and push the trigger! simple as that, even my grandparents played it. I believe that if they were younger now they would enjoy playing kinect games too. 

Because that's the main feature of games with additional controllers: they are simple and intuitive. I love the possibilities that motion sensors like Kinect, Move and Wii gives to the player. Now you're not bound to the couch, you can actively play tennis, football, learn how to dance and even destroy armies of robots as a Jedi Knight.

That said, my favourite interactive device is not used for playing games. For me, as an artist, graphic tablets are one of the mankind greatest inventions (along with computer that you plug this tablet into). Even in 1000 years I would not be able to draw picture like this with just a mouse.

Actually, sometimes I even use my tablet for playing games. It's extra handy when I play Pictionary online.

As a last thing I only say that it's really interesting to see how technology evolves and I'm looking forward to see how gaming is going to look in the future.