End of chapter

So this is it…three years of university gone in what feels like the blink of an eye. There was so much I’ve learnt, but not just about the subject I studied, but also about myself and how I want to progress in the world. Independent living has really been a boost to my confidence and making so many new friends was a big help with that also. My communication skills with people are way beyond what I ever thought I could handle, and this is crucial throughout life, professionally as well as socially.

Choosing to study game art was, in all honesty, a decision made a little lightly. I had an interest and felt university was what I needed to push me just that little bit further out the door. Yet I’ve found myself learning so much more about this industry and I honestly feel it will be such a fin yet challenging career to be a part of. I’ve learnt a lot about general business and extended my knowledge of subjects I thought I had a near firm grasp upon. I’m so glad I made this choice and I hope I can start on my career path in this industry in the near future. I understand it will take just a little more time, but I feel I’m prepared for this. Independent living has taught me this perspective of life. Things sometimes need to take time, and that is okay.

When I first started to approach the end of my time at uni, I began to worry about work. ‘What next?’ I’d say to myself, over and over again. I’ve learnt this industry is touch and that did shake my nerve when it came to my hopes of finding work. I know now, that if I put the effort in, I will see the benefit and opportunities will appear. This has helped me with coping with my ‘what next?’ thoughts. All I need to do is keep working. Keep improving on my art, keep improving my online presence, keep in contact with all those important people I’ve met along the way, and eventually, I will reap the benefits.

Above all, I feel genuinely proud of what I have accomplished during my time at university. I feel it has been one of the most important chapters of my life thus far. It has given me direction in life and taught me to always work hard and always keep busy. I think students do tend to get a bad reputation. They fall under the clichéd notion that they are highly irresponsible when it comes to taking care of themselves. They are generally considered lazy and still highly dependent on hand outs from parents etc. Of course there is a lot of truth in that. I find that thast the case with the more, tradition style courses. Courses which entail rigid lecture structures, with essays and exams that don’t seem to truly engage the student. A lot of the friends I met along the way that studied on these kinds of courses, did actually tend to fall into that student trap. I was happy to see that it isn’t always the case, when it came to my course. The majority seemed so dedicated to the work they were producing, and I found that to be contagious.

Towards the end of second year and throughout the whole of third year, despite what my timetable said, I’d be in every day of the week working on my projects. To think back to first year, when I would stay at home at all times to do work, I can see how far I’ve come. I’ve grown as a person, professionally as well as socially. I’d recommend it to anybody as a great way to get out of normality and challenge yourself. Being home now makes me realise how much I appreciate my own space. I feel this will push me to work hard in getting that first job. I want to thank everybody I’ve met along the way, every person has been a positive influence, I hope to stay in touch with many of my friends. I wish them all the best for the future and maybe, one day, we’ll cross paths again.

Lucy...signing off. 

Industry Advice

With Final Major Project finished early, I decided to get in contact with some people in industry to ask for their advice on my portfolio. I wanted to ask them what they would be looking for when hiring somebody applying for the position of concept artist.

I emailed four people, ranging from fairly well-known names, to smaller indie style companies. I heard replies from three of them and two of them gave me great feedback so far.

Andy Gibson from 'Team Pesky' the makers of the up and coming Super Little Acorns game, gave me some very good crit on my portfolio work. He said he would like to keep in touch for further advice and inquiries.

I also spoke to Oliver Clarke from Modern Dream at ARCH Creatives, and he really liked the art book I worked on for Final Major Project. He's yet to give me the feedback, but the is also very busy. So far he's told me he can see how much work and effort i've put into my contribution to the book. I ook forward to hearing his full feedback.

They both seemed positive about my work and it gave me confidence to hear what they had to say. I found the constructive criticism very helpful. To have fresh eyes look at them and pick out mistakes that I missed, really helped me gain perspective and see my images in a new way.

However as helpful as the advice is, they made no mention to offering work, which obviously understanding, and very optimistic of me to think that. However, I see it as making connections and getting my name out there. I think I’ll continue to do this, the more names I come across, as its just more publicity for my portfolio.

With the advice they've given me, I feel I can improve my portfolio with 2 – 3 months whilst constantly asking for advice and job offers. I’m prepared that it will take time and I’m glad that I no longer have to worry about uni deadline and set my own projects. I will still set myself deadlines and use what I have learnt at university to time manage efficiently.

I’m so glad I made these connections, and it’s inspired me to make more. There is always that fear that you’re being a pain or a bother to busy industry people. Yet the majority are so willing to give advice despite their busy schedule and it’s always indisputably great advice to take on board. I hope that eventually, one of these connection will become a real career opportunity for the future, or at the very least lead to one.     

Professional Brief - Re-submission

I received some feedback for my Professional brief, on how to improve my work. Seeing as I have finished FMP early, I thought I’d use this time wisely and make these improvements, if anything, to improve my grade.

I was told that the lighting was confusing in that certain things were lit one way and the shadows didn’t correspond to that lighting. Below describes what I mean.

Also, due to this long lighting the time of day would be near sunset. Therefor the colour palette should be a warmer tone. Oranges, pinks and reds. I also added more detail to the sky above the train. I felt this would add a bit more much needed realism to the piece.

Another improvement to make, were more detailed studies of the key assets. This includes more orthographic studies in order for 3D modellers to use as reference when it comes to modelling them.

I also decided to do some main character orthographics too, for modelling purposes.

I think these improvements really did make this a stronger project. It had more to it for others to work with, if this were a live project. The orthographics instruct 3D modellers and just give better information about the elements of the scene.

I hope these improvement have a good impact on my grade for this project. I’m really pleased with the results and decided to put this project on my portfolio. (Link down below)

http://lucyfreemanart.weebly.com/

I hope this showcases my concepting ability, as well as my understanding of the steps that would be to follow in the games industry. It shows logic and deep thinking behind the assets I’m including in the scene, as well as showing my general art skills through the improved lighting in the final scene.

ARCH Creatives Talk

Today we had a talk from a couple of people from a studio called ARCH Creatives. They are a studio in Leamington Spa that house a number of different games developers working on several different projects at once.

I was intrigued at this idea of having several developers, in one space. They seemed very focus on the quality of their games and how the audience will respond to them. They mentioned that the purpose of their games is to make the audience feel d=something. They need to connect with audience. They achieve this by creating unique visuals and thinking up new and interesting ways to shake up what we think of games.

Below is the trailer for Modern dreams latest release, I developer based at ARCH creative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P80tyd0nZ1g

                

The visual style is fairly simple but reflect the era of the time this game is set. It’s very 70’s cop drama style, obviously with the name LA Cops. It’s being released for several platform which I was pleased to hear, this will make it accessible to more people and I really hope it does well.

There was talk of them taking on graduates for work and I really would consider doing this if that was the case. Its sounds like a great new studio to work for, and I shall be keeping my ears open for any opportunities. 

Easter Break

For the Easter break, I mainly did well…exactly that. As we were given an extension for Our FMP, I saw this as an opportunity to have a rest. However, I still managed to get some work done and I mainly was working on The Inventors laboratory part of my project.

I don’t have a good work space at home, so I decided to join my local library so I could make use of their studying facilities. This really helped with focusing on my work. Despite wanting to rest, it felt weird doing so. Being in uni and in your term time environment, its hard to switch off your student brain, as you current environment links to university, as you wouldn’t be here, in this town without it. For me, this puts my brain into 24/7 mode, it’s always whirring with ideas, and ‘what nows?’ So taking time to do nothing, does feel a little awkward.

I mainly did photo-bashes and worked on improving some pieces I already have. Below is what I mainly did over Easter.

With this extension to our FMP deadline, I feel I can really up the quality of my work as I now have the time to work on it further.

FMP Blog:

http://metropolisfmp.blogspot.co.uk/

FMP - Change of Plans!

After speaking with a fellow team of two that are working together on an art book. I told them about my ideas and they strongly suggest I either team up with somebody to pull it off, or reign in the scope to make it more manageable just for myself. A fellow student, Georgina also known as Ed, overheard my idea and really liked the sound of what I was proposing. She seemed keen to team up with me so this is what we decided to do.

She gave me some ideas and we started a Pinterest board, to start gathering reference images.

https://www.pinterest.com/ThomasJDixon/fmpminers/

After a couple of weeks, Ed suggested that to save time, maybe we should base the book off an existing story and just re-imagine the designs of all the elements that make up the story. She suggested a couple of fairly unknown fairy-tale stories, and these seemed like a potential idea.

However, I was home for Christmas and just so happened a film called Metropolis was on TV. I thought this was Osamu Tezuka’s anime film, which I’d seen before in passing. What I was met with was an old black and white silent film. I read the description and saw it was from 1927 and the plot read as something near exact to my original Miners idea. I looked into it further and realised the anime film metropolis was based off of this silent film.

I thought this story help great potential for our art book. I told Ed and she looked into It too. I thought seeing as there had been 2 versions, we’d have even more reference for when it came to designing.

We both agreed that this could work really well. Next on our list is to organise what we’re going to include in the book. We’re writing another blog that follows FMP’s progress. You can find that here:

http://metropolisfmp.blogspot.co.uk/

INSOMNIA 53

On April 22^nd I had the chance to go to INSOMNIA 53 in Coventry. INSOMIA is a games festival where Indie companies showcase their new games. Youtube gaming channels put on shows and also games are set up everywhere for people to play and enjoy. Thanks to a friend I got a free guest pass and was able to access the VIP area and to wander round freely. My main purpose of going was to meet some indie developers and just get some advice and contacts on how to make it in the industry. I also saw this as an opportunity to job hunt and I made a few connections.

There were a couple things that struck me first, the variety of games and different platforms. The Indie boom is strong and there is so much noise when it comes to modern gaming. Festivals like this need to exist for people to get that feedback and get their games out there. I spoke to several people and they all said the same that things. The game industry moves so fast you have to keep up. You’ll get knocked down and there’ll be a lot of failures but this shouldn’t stop you and you should always strive to improve and learn from the things that didn’t quite go to plan.

Another thing I noticed was just how young some of these gamers were. Maybe I’m just getting on in years, (cries) but the amount of a very young gamers blew my mind. It really did put things into perspective for me. My friend who got me the guest pass is part of a youtube channel that hosts Minecraft tournaments for kids to take part and compete in assault courses they built. The idea was to replicate those old kids TV shows like ‘50/50’, ‘Get your own Back’ etc. It was then I realised that Sonic the Hedgehog won’t be their nostalgia, Minecraft will. A game I know very little about to be honest and kind of ‘Don’t get’ the appeal, really proved to me, that again, the industry really does move fast. Which is exciting yet means the need to adapt is crucial to survive. This is something I hope to work on, to really increase my chances of employment.

Below are business cards of some of the people I spoke to.

It was such a fun experience and I hope to go to more festivals/conventions like this.

Final Major Project...it is time

So here it is, Final Major Project. My whole University career has lead to this moment. I’ve always been concerned with what I would do, mainly because of the 3D element. The Course is predominantly 3D work based and yet I feel my strengths lie in visual design. I’ve heard of purely 2D FMPs before, but they seemed to be frowned upon. Yet now that I’m here it seems possible.

My initial idea was something I’ve had for a while. I wanted to create an art book filled with images showing a world and the characters within it. This would be a made up world and the book would follow and show the story of this world and how it came to be. The working title so far, is ‘The Miners’.

I've been told that my project will need some 3D element to it, in order to gain better marks. I feel if I can really push myself, I may be able to model a small scene, possibly a diorama of an element from the book. Yet if i am pushed for time, maybe model a key asset from the story.

My main inspiration for this is a film called ‘Sky Blue’/’A Wonderful Days’ It has 2 English titles as it is originally a Korean anime film. below is a brief synopsis.

"Wonderful Days is set in 2142. Environmental pollution has lead to a breakdown of human civilization. A technologically advanced city named Ecoban was built and it harvests energy from the DELOS System, which uses pollution in a carbonite catalyzed reaction to generate power, Carbonite extraction is carried out by people who live outside the city in the surrounding wasteland. Among them is an enigmatic young man known as Shia (Marc Worden). He ends up in a love triangle with his childhood friend, Jay (Cathy Cavadini), and her superior, Ecoban security commander Cade (Kirk Thornton).

Jay chooses Shia over Cade and destroys the thick clouds over Ecoban, allowing blue sky to show through over the city.

The movie deals with environmental destruction, pollution and class struggle."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kuSBLYfwco

(apologies for the terrible video quality, was the best i could find)

The imagery in this film is rather beautiful yet quite dark and looming. The soundtrack aslo really contribiutes to the atmosphere. The film is rather slow in parts but its makes up for it in mood and atmosphere. It really succeeds and taking you to this place. This is something i really want to replicate in my art book. 

To achieve this, the images i produce will have to be, highly visually stimulating. I’m going to do some very basic concepts and see what I come up with.

Gurus and Grasshoppers

As 3^rd years, we have been given the task to help the new first years with some side line projects. This is to help really throw them into learning these new skills and putting them to the test. We are in charge of setting them projects and we write up the brief and requirements ourselves. We hold meetings too however the turn out hasn’t been too great. I

We set a couple of brief’s, and marked the first one. However, the turn out of the first years work handed in wasn’t 100%. The actual turn out to meetings was less than a quarter of the group. We tried

our best to make them understand how valuable extra tuition from 3^rd years would benefit them, yet for the majority it fell on deaf ears.

Here is the first page of my brief. We each took a turn in writing a brief up.

We asked them to make a simple c;aw machine, We gave them additional tris, to make one of the toys you'd win in the machine, just to try and tie them together and give the project a theme. The student that did take part seemed enthusiastic about the project and I did see some of their progress. 

Later on in the year I had a first year ask for some tips on digital panting. I decided to put a PhotoShop file together that took them through a step by step guide, for the basics of painting in PhotoShop. Below are the pages, I also gave them a couple of simple tasks to do.

Unfortunately, nobody showed me any work based from this. However is wasn’t compulsory, but I felt my efforts were a little wasted, but I do remember being in first year and avoiding grasshopper projects like the plague. I think that’s hindsight right there.

If anything, being a guru helped with reassuring myself of the knowledge I've learnt during my time at De Montfort myself. This was always a good thing for me to do, as you can easily get caught up in where you're at now in the 3rd year. So looking back and being around first years really helps with realising your own progress as a game artist. 

Portfolio brief (FINALLY CONCEPT ART!!)

For this brief I was asked to create a realistic concept art scene that tells a story. Focusing on story telling props and atmosphere.

I started by trying to thinking of a story/subject matter that could be shown visually. I wanted the image to be visually strong, using high contrast and an interesting composition.  I listed a bunch of life events that different people go through day to day, some more mundane then others. I also split them into good and bad; happy and not so happy moments. I oddly found the more negative choices more interesting (I’m not that morbid honest) So I selected 4 scenarios that I saw working as a story telling image. Below are the 3 first thumbnails I came up with.

Out of those I personally preferred the empty flat thumb, as I felt it had the most atmosphere and felt rather haunting. The story behind it was a man that committed suicide by jumping off his balcony after his partner left him. (please keep reading, it gets chirpier honest) After getting some feedback and trying out new compositions. I began to lean more towards the train station scenes. The story of a couple saying goodbye at a train station. Below are the further compositions based on this theme.

After more feedback I decided on the second thumbnail and began to flesh out the scene. I decided to make it more populated to make the scene seem a little less alien, but had to keep in mind that it mustn’t distract attention from the couple who are the main subject matter. For me adding colour is the most difficult part of this piece. The real world is too full of greys!! So going a little bit abstract with the colour is something I felt was necessary for this scene.

The main story telling elements are the train and the backpack. It was hard to think of other assets to add to the scene that would drive the story, but the characters I feel make the story most prominent. This was something I really wanted to try to avoid and let the scene/props do the story telling, but I feel the final outcome worked well. Below are the props in more detail and a 3D layout which would be used to help the environment artist model the scene.  

In conclusion, yes, this scene is still on the sad side, but I find it more profound than anything else as I can relate a lot to the scene I’ve created. I may go into this more to make it portfolio standard, possibly adjust the colour and add even more detail and more props such as posters, rubbish bins, more luggage etc. but for hand in I feel it answers the brief, its realistic in style and it tells a story through its visuals.

Making a Game...

Well my god, this project is epic! We have been given the task, as a year group, to design and make a 3D side scroller game. It will consist of 4 levels, 2 main characters and 4 NPC characters. We’ve been given the theme of fantasy, and each level has a buzzword to help shape the design of each level. We were given this layout to work from and set up into teams.

There is a team of 4 for each level which includes 3 environment artists and 1 concept artist. Then there is a team of 5 character artists, and finally there is the engine team consisting of 2 members. This project will require concrete communication between groups and all taking part in this project.


I was part of the team working on the first level, which was given the buzzword hot. I was given the role of concept artist for the team and was very excited about this job role. I want to go into concept art for my career, so this was a good opportunity to live out this role and see how I would fair in a group, almost industry like environment and setting. In the beginning, the whole team had a hand at what is considered the concept artists role. We all had to produce design and concept work to help form ideas. As time went on and the momentum picked up, 3D modelling could be done. From here, my role was to produce design work for assets, paint overs of the whitebox screenshots and general concept work for the level.  

As a team, I felt we all worked well together and were not shy to crit and open up about ideas. We all understood our job roles but were also willing to help out with each other’s work if needed. We had a lot of ideas and brainstormed things that related to hot. We also used side scroller games we knew of as reference to help work out what our level should actually be. We had a range of ideas, some fairly specific to games we knew of and some more general in terms of the fantasy theme. A theme we thought of was a hot kitchen and have a game very much like micro machines, a tiny character in oversized surroundings. However we needed to keep in with what the other teams were doing; as we all decided that we wanted the game to flow and that each level should look part of the same world. The main inspiration for our level was the trine series. We wanted to produce something fairly similar, but toning down the saturation of the colours. Once we had ideas in place, we worked well and at a reasonable place to keep momentum going. We were also constantly changing ideas which kept the project fresh and interesting to us. We all had great enthusiasm for one another’s ideas and every person’s input is shown in the final result.  

There were a few complications and the layout changed several times. First of all we did struggle to work out how the level layout would look originally. This meant a lot of research into existing side scroller games that have solved these problems before. Looking at puzzles, what could be used for platforms, traps etc. Doing all this but making fun and interesting with the limitations we had, in terms of whether the engine team could pull off all the events we were wanting. Below is a couple of early ideas we had for our level layout. We felt after time and after discussing our layout with others, it felt almost empty and that the level lacked structure. I came up with the idea of basing the platforms around a large tree, situated in the centre of the vertical section of our level.

This later turned into another issue. We ended up basing our level on the upright L shape, when actually our level was a laying down L shape. This meant a slight reshuffle of how the platforms would work in the level, especially in the beginning section. This, however, turned out a lot better and actually helped the final design of our level.

Another problem we encountered was, again, the beginning sections of the level; In which the player travels down the tree. We originally intended to have the player travel down the outside of the tree, down branches, vines and bridges. One of the engine artists pointed out that there was nothing to stop the player from running off the end of the branches. So to fix this problem, we decided to make it so the player travelled down the inside of the tree. This made for a more linear approach to this section of the level, which I feel didn’t hinder the fun in the level.

A large problem with the project was that we had little time to make this project from scratch. This issue was discussed with the tutors in charge who were playing the role of art director. As we are Game Art designers rather than game designers, we ended up taking on many more job roles then what were originally intended for us. I think we did well despite this. We were organised, held regular meetings to keep track of everybody’s progress and had shared folders which we could all access in order to share assets, to speed up production time. More of this is always a good way to improve and I think that’s what we could’ve done. Also, we could have possibly put together a timescale to show what needed to be done by when. This may have helped with leaving us more time to polish the levels.

In conclusion this project was a good experience of working on team effort with a large group. I felt it really did emulate an industry setting, working collectively on a single project. To also be working the job role I intend to pursue, was eye opening and I really enjoyed being able to fully embody this role. I think our final game turned out really well despite the rocky patches and feeling lost for reasons out of our control. I can’t help but feel with more organisation by the tutors, the project would’ve run much more smoothly and this wouldn’t have disheartening all of us at that certain point. With more time (as always) we could’ve put more effort into the after affects and possibly added more threats such as enemies that require animations. For what it is, I think the level answers the project brief, it’s a fantasy side scroller that’s family friendly. It has a story and flows between levels with a consistent high quality style. I feel we worked really well as a team and I am greater for the experience.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25bQnu5LoH0&list=FLqEoY0yw_IvFsfjLQhusMeA&index=1

King of the Dead

So, for this brief we were asked, to put together a scene including a character, throne and backdrop related to theme ‘King of The Dead’ We were in teams  of 5 and given  weeks to complete the project.

To start we brainstormed ideas and put together a Pinterest board full of images. We came to the conclusion that we wanted to be original and steer clear of the typical perceptions of death. We originally began to look at very dark, earthy ideas, full of dirt and grunge. After asking round and getting second opinions, it was suggested to us that we explore the complete opposite and have a very clinical, clean, almost sci-fi feel. 

http://www.pinterest.com/lucytstm/king-of-the-dead/

We looked into the idea of a cult and possibly give the scene some back story, as to how it came to be. We thought of a futuristic world, where people are living longer due to highly sophisticated medicine giving people an infinite life-span. We liked the idea to base our scene around a cult that resides in this world. Worshiping the dead as people are put through long empty lives. They choose to join the cult and worship a cryogenically frozen being, to whom they give offerings to, in the hopes of him granting death upon them. Below are some of my concepts that explore this idea.

As well as this idea. We also explored one of our brainstormed ideas of parasites. The idea of a being that feasts off of other beings, taking all of their life source, essentially killing so it could live. As well as residing thing the host. Below is some more work exploring this idea by Katie.

As the project continued we gathered reference from many areas. We all decided we liked the idea of an ancient culture mixed in with the sci-fi theme. We began to look at a lot of Egyptian and Mayan imagery. This helped us shape our own designs for the culture we wanted to portray in our scene.

We split the team up into, 2 people working on the character, 2 people working on the throne and the remaining person working on the backdrop. I was given the task of designing the characters head. Below are some of the initial concepts I came up with.

The overall shape of the thrown was decided early on. Below is the original design by Rebecca. It replicates the idea of a mouth and this related back to our parasite concept. With this we decided to combine the 2 ideas, making an ancient sci-fi looking scene, whereby the ‘king’ sits in the frozen chamber which resides in a mouth shaped tomb/throne. Also here are some of the modelled ideas by Tom.

The first few passes of the throne helped us understand what materials we needed to use. I was given the task of designing the character with the help of another team member. The character by far went through the most iteration out of all the assets in the scene. We went through many ideas and looked at how the characters presence in the scene could be portrayed. Below are some poses that katie came up with.

After gathering more reference and discussing ideas within the group, we decided to try taking our character appear more mutant like. Below are some explorations of this theme and the reference I gathered.

This allowed me to explore more with the face of the character, here are some examples.

Comparing these with the costume design, they both helped fuel and form ideas for each other. We continued to work on each other’s work and eventually we started to form a look of which we all liked the look of. It helped influence the rest of the scene, and I feel the style ties the objects together well. Below is the images in order as they were being produced by both me and Katie.

Alongside this, a motif for the backdrop was being designed. Hal took a lot of inspiration for the Egyptian hieroglyphics. He tried to put our own sci-fi unique cultural twist onto the design with the symbolism. Below are some of his designs.

We were also exploring colour and whether a strongly saturated colour would work well within the scene. Below are some variations. We eventually decided a more neutral colour would work best, as it was hard to situate a stronger colour to match the desired mood and feel we were looking for.

My personal experience of this project was an interesting one. From looking at our final outcome, I feel that we lost sight of what w originally set out to create. I feel possibly, by combining the 2 ideas, it made the whole project and idea generation very bland. I feel we were trying to tick too many boxes with our final.

I feel that our original very sci-fi idea would have come off much stronger and had a much clearer back story to the scene. It also would have made for some interesting designs and created great opportunities for high quality engine work. The final render of the scene however, is something I am happy with. It’s interesting, unique and shows innovative design, strongly showcasing our take on the reference we used for inspiration. I just feel it could’ve been stronger if we had elaborated more on the sci-fi cult idea. I think with more communication amongst the team, and stronger crit we may have sculpted our idea to be more refined.

The team worked well together and I felt we had a strong work ethic amongst ourselves. We did communicate well but more of this I think would’ve really benefitted the final scene. I enjoyed the experience of working as a team, and I feel it has made me more aware of my own work ethic. I learnt to show work for crit more and to try and produce work fast in order to show as many ideas as possible. This will help me to fit into a team more and make more of a contribution to help form ideas.