King of the Dead

Yesterday we handed in our first little project, it was a group project titled 'King of the Dead.'
The brief was to produce quality work and original ideas in a short amount of time. We were to make a character on a throne, a wall behind the character and a floor below. This was to be compiled in UE4, be visually striking and encompassed a unique idea based around 'King of the Dead.'

We started our project by establishing what we would like and what we wouldn’t like to have in the project. As we were encouraged to think outside the box and come up with a unique idea we decided it would be best to avoid typical themes like the grim reaper, excessive black, day of the dead etc. So after putting a general pinterest board together we narrowed our ideas down to two main starting points. The first idea was that of somewhat different, a mouse surrounded by cat skins, The roles reversed to create a comical dynamic. The second idea being based on the idea of a lake that is deathly (based on a lake in Tunisia that kills any birds that land on it) and the film Under the Skin where the main character tempt men to their death. Our visual cues for this idea were mainly like a white beacon in a dark environment, main focus on the character, the contrast drawing the eye.
We decided to go with the second idea and focus on it being very ethereal and almost enchanting.

Style Inspiration - Otto Schmidt

Style Inspiration - Otto Schmidt

I started with a few concepts to establish mood and think about composition, after meeting with the rest of the team we decided that one of us should see whether our base idea would work in engine. So while the others finalised concepts I started setting up placeholders in engine and working out how to create a convincing water texture, particle effects, etc.

My mood thumbs

Final Concept by Finn

After setting up a basic place holder level I created a water material, atmospheric particle effect, atmospheric fog, first pass of lighting.
Once we had the concepts finalised I went on to add more accurate placeholders, closer to the concept, so we had the composition we were after. I also added the planes around the placeholders for the fog alphas, and applied Finns textures once he had painted them.

Paint over of Chelsea's throne concept to decide the pose

Progression of the placeholder level to the final level

With the placeholder level set up we could move onto assigning jobs from the asset list. I was assigned the character body. Using Ed, Rachel’s and Chelsea’s concept I did a quick visualisation on the throne to decide the pose. With the pose established I could jump into zbrush, get the sculpt down, retop and get it all baked and textured.
In regards to the texture I kept it pretty simple as I knew I would be using emmisives on the character as it will be the main focus of them image. 

Once I had finished up the character I moved back to the engine, getting the lighting sorted once everyone had dropped their assets in, quickly modelling the boat and polishing the finished look. 

Overall this project went really well, we quickly managed to unify an idea that we were all happy with and we managed to organise our time so that we finished in advance of the deadline, giving us time to meet some stretch goals. 

My only concern about the project is that I ended up doing the majority of the engine work. I tried to encourage others to have a go but I think because we encountered a lot of problems trying to move the project from computer to computer it meant that people didn’t get to use the engine as much as they would liked to have. 

We managed to stick very closely to our key concept and create our own unique stylisation inspired by the source artwork by Otto Schmidt. As much as we would have liked to get it closer to the art style, I think in the time we had it was not completely realistic. Being able to create material shaders and other technical things to get it to fit the style exactly would take longer as we would have to work out how to do it, which would be quite complex. I feel we created a great interpretation on the style which is still ethereal but stylised. In the future I would like to spend more time working on the technical side of creating a stylised look in engine. 

Back to uni from a valuable summer.

I'm back in Leicester, commencing my final year of uni... oh dear, final year eekkk.

So, it's coming to the close of the second week back and it already feels like we have been here for ages. Been great catching up with everybody and with a fair few of us off working in industry over summer there has been lots to talk about.

Speaking of working over the summer I had an amazing chance to go work at Exient in Leamington Spa for 3 months.
Exient are a mobile games developer, past titles being Angry Birds Go, Angry Birds Star Wars and Diggs Nightcrawler (full list on the website.) I had the opportunity to work on the latest mobile title and given the opportunity to work on concepts, models and other art jobs.
My time was really great there as I learnt so much about the working environment and the games pipeline. My design and concepting skills improved thanks to my time there, but I think the most valuable thing for me was actually learning how to function as part of a games development team, learning to adapt.

My style of working changed so much from the way I work in uni, any sense of preciousness over work goes out the window and a sense of the end product as the ultimate goal becomes prominent. It's about working efficiently and to a good quality in a decent amount of time.
Within my two weeks back I can already tell that my work ethic has been changed for the better, albeit I don't always like working after 6pm anymore, but I now can properly focus 9-6 and feel a lot more productive.
It really has been an invaluable experience and the team there are a genuinely amazing bunch of people, I found it easy just to fit into the team and get on with work, it was sad to leave so soon.

I'm fully back into the swing of things with uni work, first weeks task to create materials in Unreal Engine 4 (which is super awesome by the way!) so playing in engine has been a nice warm up. And straight onto a small group project and getting to do some character work.

Kat

Year 2 Review - Self doubt and Crazy talk

So, we have just come to a close on our 2nd year at De Montfort University.
This sure has been a big year, I feel I have developed so much. Just putting our final submission disk together was making me really see how far I have come. Looking back at our very first projects, I am crying to myself, thinking ' what the hell was I doing??'
My artistic judgement has come on in leaps and bounds, and with Mitch joining the teaching staff, we have been learning techniques I never thought even existed.

This year has been so exciting, yet at the same time very sobering. It seems that everybody has had their little epiphanies, realising that actually, what we are doing is freaking hard.
We called it the 'mid game art crisis' after the first term, a lot of us became very existential and were strongly questioning whether this is what we should be doing.
Am I good enough? Is this what I really want? How much work can I put in without killing myself?
After watching John Cleese's talk on creativity I have realised we were all very stuck in the closed mind mode, especially as we were all in the same place, it was hard to get out of.
The way I looked at it was; what else am I passionate about?
Turns out, this is the only subject that I truly care about. I question myself daily on whether or not I am crazy for wanting to pursue Character Art; Watching Rich (last years graduate) struggling for some time, and seeing the standard I am expecting to get up to is absolutely terrifying.
But Rich made it, he worked his ass off and he is now in a position he wanted to be. It give me hope, after speaking to some character artist's and receiving some feedback and helpful tips, it started bringing me out of my closed state of mind.
Gradually we all relaxed a bit and managed to get back to our open minded state.
Once we got there, the rate of our development rocketed, we were all at full steam, pushing each other to achieve more than we ever thought we could. I am so thankful for what we have here at uni.

Yet, with people I am close to getting jobs, and the potential of me doing some internships (possibly a year long) I am starting to feel myself slip back into that closed minded state. I don't feel am I ready to go out into the big bad world yet. I mean, I am still in my safe game art bubble, the majority of it got popped compared to my euphoric mind set in first year, but I still have the stability of the people I trust and the creative environment we thrive in.
Luckily I am looking to do internships with my close friend Ben, so I am not completely alone, but I am still so afraid that my skills still aren't good enough. One of Emma's feedback for us when we presented our work, was that our confidence doesn't show. I agree, I say I have started to relax to feedback, which I certainly have, but I still find myself making excuses all over the place. I talk my work down, it is silly really as when you are in the presence of somebody working in industry you sort of automatically put yourself lower than them. Which isn't completely bad, but it is hard to over come that lack of confidence in your own work. It is something I need to work on.

As John Cleese said, confidence is one of the keys to getting to that open minded state. Not ego stroking, but just believing in yourself a bit. I guess it stems from education on the whole. My entire educational career (up to uni) has been people telling me that I should be doing something sensible like maths or science, that I will never make a living out of Art, what I love. It is not that I want to prove them wrong, I am purely following this path as it is what I care about, it is my passion, but the implications of that are that sense of self doubt. With opportunities presented to me like this, it seems that maybe I may be able to make it, that I do have potential.

Either way, I still feel I have matured in my outlook on things, as Anna often says what seems to keep getting us down is that fact that we can now see the bigger picture. That hill called university we have to climb seems minuscule compared to the mountain that is the games industry. I do have more confidence in my abilities, but I also doubt myself regularly. While this can be bad, I do not see it is a completely awful thing. For every time I doubt myself I remind myself why I am doing this and I tell myself that I am doing the right thing. That keeps me going, along with all the amazing people that I surround myself with.

On the whole, this year has been very 'eye opening' I feel I am developing my work ethic as well as my artistic judgement. I am happy with my progress, but I know I still have a long way to go. Pray it never ends as I don't know what I would do if I was not constantly trying to better myself.

From Generalist to Specialist?

One of the main things that has been introduced to us as we progress through the course is that often you are required to specialize to get a job in industry. After having more of an understanding of how big AAA companies work, it is clear why this is the case. In some companies your job role may be so specific that you may only be creating armor plates for a character or are in charge of only the foliage of a level. Yet, because the industry has developed to this point of such specialization, it seems that now it is starting to reverse slightly.

With a wave of new small companies opening, particularly with the growth of the mobile games industry, it is again seeming more like being a generalist is not exactly a bad thing. I keep hearing the phrase of 'T shaped' workers floating about, with a little bit of research it comes from the Valve Employer's handbook. The 'T shaped' worker is described as having a broad range of skills and deep expertise in one area. So for a character artist, you have a deep understanding of creating characters, but also a sound understanding of rigging, rendering, animation, etc.

Even to get into the AAA development, I still feel that it is important to keep up with lots of different skills. After speaking to past graduates who are in industry they still work on a variety of things, be that bug fixing, texturing, learning in-house engines, or just learning new programs in general. I think that one should stay flexible and keep an open mind to a variety of skills. What happens when you have done everything you can do? If they employee has other skills, they can go help in another area, someone without those skills can not. So surely the employer would see the person with more general skills as a better investment?

So as well all struggle on deciding where we want to specialize our skills, maybe it is better to stay a bit more general.

I'm Back....

Soooo, back to Leicester! I'm glad to be back! I mean I love being at home, I love seeing my family and friends, but I've been struggling without some sort of routine. This summer has consisted mainly of me hesitating to leave Leicester (I stayed in my halls until the 22^nd of July, due to work), going on holiday for two weeks, then having a month at home where I felt somewhat at a loose end as to what to do with myself.

I had planned to do a bit of a mini group project with a few of my class mates. Before leaving to go home we had decided our project, put together some mood boards, started concepting and white boxing a little tavern scene. Somehow, although I am not surprised at myself, nothing much really came of it. I did some concepts but I never really got much further past that stage. I feel a bit bad for not chasing it up, but on the other hand I found myself getting quite a lot into my digital painting. While I was in Spain for those two weeks, I found myself dying to do some work, whether that was modelling or painting. I put the main reasoning down to the fact that the place I was staying was so beautiful.

Some Summer work....

We stayed in a little village called Frigiliana. It is situated in the hills and the buildings have red tile roofs and white bricks, the pavements are all cobbled in swirly patterns, very idealistic. But, another factor is that when I go on holiday with my parents they don’t like to do much apart from sit around the garden area and read books all day. This is all well and good and I appreciate relaxing for a short amount of time, but when it was getting on the 6 day mark and we were doing exactly the same thing that the days started dragging. As I mentioned before one of the main thing I established last year was that I am pretty crap at doing nothing, after being used to the constant list of things I need to do for uni, having absolutely nothing to do was an alien concept to me.

Me, Ben and Anna all got back right at the beginning of September so, after moving into our new houses (which are super awesome) we were excited to get back to the uni timetable and start doing some work.
This year I am super excited to start the character project and the group project. I think I am looking forward to being given a little more freedom on our briefs, with us having larger budgets and more artistic choices. I am mainly hoping to improve on my speed of work and managed to get more personal projects in on the side.
I have come to the realisation that the amount of work we do for the course, isn't even close to the amount we need to be doing if we realistically want a job when we graduate.  Also this is the year that we will be applying for internships, so it is very important to start putting a portfolio together as we will need them to apply.

I am excited about this year, but also very very scared. I kind of feel like I can see the scale of things a little clearer now, and that mountain I thought I had climbed last year was merely a small hill.