Tuesday 3 May 2011

Follow the f*cking yellow brick road ...


I have been asking myself this question since the beginning of year 1. Although my artistic judgement and the way I look at things has changed big time. My main goal still stays the same. Work in the game industry and try to reach the top developers. Minor changes have occured also. In the Beginning of year 1 I had no clue about what kind of artist I would like to be. By trying different routes, starting from 2d through props, vehicles, environments and finishing on characters I have clearly setteled on the thing I love to do.


Researching alot of things and techniques has strongly influenced that decision. Without improving my artistic judgement I wouldn't know what is good or wrong. Environments, buildings and Architecture. Mostly historicaly based. Medieval, Reneisance and Baroque are the one that interest me the most, which is why I will fill my graduate portfolio with that stuff. As I always said. Why search for so far away ideas when history itself has great solutions. Or something like that :P ... (don't mind my poor polish translation).


Ok! Enough about the ideas. So how do I get "There" ? The answer is easy. Hard work. As an environment artist I need to focus more on 3D. By any means that doesen't mean abandoning 2D. Using it as quick paintovers to solve problems or sketching up quickly environments is a skill that every environment artist should have. Artistic judgement is more important than technical skill but I think you need to keep up with both in order to land your first job. Showing good artistic decisions is half of the success but knowing how to execute them properly with visual and technical skills is also very important. This is why I need to spend my whole summer and 3rd year trying to keep up with today's visual standards. Next-Gen environments require alot more work than old or current gen. It involves alot of sculpting and high poly modeling which takes time. Another feature I need to improve is my workflow and speed. Getting used to createing simple props for next gen games in one day would be a huge success. By creating I mean modeling, sculpting and texturing all of it in one day. At the end of the day it comes down to how fast can you produce good art. The industry deadlines give us no time to contemplate on what we will be creating.

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