A Brief Look at Jobs in the UK

To get the ideas flowing, our entire group searched the internet for game related jobs in the Uk, posting the job titles and links on the website;

http://padlet.com/CGMA/UK_jobs

This was a fantastic idea as it allowed us to research and then present enough job opportunities throughout the industry for the entire class to further look in to. With then entire website functioning as a digital post-it board, navigating through to each job that interests you is a complete breeze.

As I wish to go down the route of "Vehicle Artist", it limited my selection greatly, especially with most of the current job listings asking for experienced artists or temporary contract work within the London area.


Group Job Requirement Breakdown

Before exploring the vehicle only job listings, as a group we broke down the experience requirements for a "Environment Artist (Intermediate)" at the Creative Assembly. Being probably the tamest list of qualification requirements i have ever seen in a game related job roll, we still couldn't tick off all the boxes.

-The job required us to be educated to degree level in 2D and 3D art production. This should be a given due to our university attendance.

-Experience as a 3D artist within the gaming or similar industries would be a problem as this would require employment before even applying for, well... employment. This could be obtained by contacting a company for work experience but wouldn't be financially viable. They do state that if you're "extremely talented" they may overlook this point but being entirely opinion based, it's impossible to judge what work quality they class as "talented".

-Have a good understanding of PBR, lighting and shading techniques. This is a work in progress until we finish the course but due to our transition to Unreal Engine 4, it shouldn't be too much of a stretch.

-Eagerness to learn new tools and technologies. This seems like quite a general question, simply asking if you're willing to adapt your work flow to the companies needs and shouldn't be a problem for most people.

-The ability to work under deadlines and constraints. We've been doing this since first year so i can't see it becoming an issue.

-Expertise in 3Ds Max, Photoshop and other technologies utilized in the production cycle. These are all skills we've been learning since day one on the course so there should be no issues there.

-Substance designer would be a bonus. As I'm currently learning the substance suite, this shouldn't be an issue for me by graduation.

-Strong visual awareness and artistic ability. These should be a base line for anyone wanting to be a 3D or 2D artist.

-Expert knowledge of Max/ Maya. As the foundation software for all our work, we should all have mastered the software by the time graduation approaches.

-Developed communication skills. This should also be a baseline for anyone looking for employing as it would make it impossible to work as a team otherwise.

-Experience of working in a professional creative environment. This is pushed quite heavily by our lecturers but none of us other than those that had placements can truly have the experience at this stage.

-Love of games. I don't agree you need a love of games to work in the game industry but I understand that the requirement allowed them to route out only the passionate of artists.



 

Show-reels to Aim For

After a lot of research, I found these to be the best two show-reels to borrow presentation ideas from. They have been professionally made and complement the work perfectly.

Alexandre Giguere 3D Artist | Demo Reel 2012

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

-Not a huge fan of the fade to sheer white as it hurts your eyes.

-Why do you need two intros? The first one is a simple text overlay and very poorly represents the rest of the show reel. The second one is done fantastically, being plastered over the side of a bus, making you believe it's a static image until the vehicle drives away, revealing the rest of the scene.

T-he first scene is full of life, the leaves are animated and the rush of wind, pushing papers across the floor creates a fantastic sense of atmosphere.

-The camera is never stationary, it's always moving in multiple directions. It's never boring.

-A bus passing in the background once again makes the scene seem busy without being distracting.

-The lighting and very light depth of field makes it look and feel very natural.

-The camera is only paused to show a real-time breakdown of low poly, high poly, wireframes and texture sheets used. It's accomplished in such a clean way by sliding small versions of the texture sheets in to the scene and blending the background imagine in to untextured and wire-frame variants.

-I could attempt to re-create this with my work using Sony Vegas 12 and my three vehicles. ^

Texture resolutions and poly-counts are clearly displayed in a custom font, making every last feature easy on the eyes.

Even with static images, a very slow camera zoom and depth of field is used to create motion. I believe this is a must-have for any work to prevent boredom.

Even singular models are showcased with a slow upwards pan as the object completes a single rotation. You can tell that the show-reel creator has a lot of pride in his/ her work.

Lighting is next to perfect throughout with multiple examples.

Beyond the first 6 seconds and the bright flashes of white, i can't pick a fault with the show-reel.

Sperasoft Demoreel Keyframe Animation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYFrBg1yb6g

-A perfect example of how to showcase individual animations.

-The animations are expertly made but could still be quite hard to fully represent due to the textureless models and single tone background. The show-reel creator managed to use this all to his/her advantage with clever camera work and music choice, making the viewer focus exclusively on his/her animation skill.

-The camera is angled and positioned at the height of the intended scale, giving the viewer a perfect sense of scale. To further simulate the player's perspective, the camera shakes gradually as if being held without a tri-pod, even increasing the camera shake in relation to the character's fear/ panic.

-The hardest part of any animation is to add weight to the character's movement and actions, especially without props or an environment to interactive with. To combat this, every step, roar, jump or heavy movement is reflected with the appropriate amount of camera shake, for example; with the dragon's roar, the camera violently moved in every direction, creating an earthquake effect, blurring the imagine beyond recognition for a split second. 

-Each animation is set-up to make eye-contact with the camera point, even turning to adjust to new angles. This, alongside the camera shake helps greatly to add life to each animation.

-It may be very minimalistic in appearance but the cinematography is excellently done. 

What is PPD? Student Show-reel breakdowns

What is PPD?

This unit is designed to teach us as third years, how to display our work in an interesting and captivating way to employers. Starting with an overview of current show-reels, I will plan and then develop my own to showcase my abilities as a vehicle artist, utilising software packages such as Sony Vegas and adobe after-effects.

Show-reel Examples

As these first examples are from ex-students, I don't believe I can provide a direct link to each video although they are listed in the order displayed within course resources.

1. Animator Showreel

-At 6 seconds, the text intro seemed far too long, especially with such a bleak background, this text could very be easily be an overlay for the starting cinematic and could have looks wonderful in my opinion.

-I understand it was a shared project between animator and environment artist but a full 20 seconds without any animation beyond a low-poly bird seems a little lack-luster.

-The depth of field may create a cinematic feel at times but it seems pretty overused, blurring the character and environment without any logical reasoning at times.

-What I quite like is that the structure of the environment allows many, very expressive animations to be used and blended together without ever looking out of place, especially with the character's interactivity with the environmental cloth.

-As the character running through the block-out is a great way to showcase the smooth running cycle and controls but this runs on for far too long, taking up almost half of the video length. A good 20 seconds could have probably been cut out of this.

-I quite like how the reference for character movement was shown through the run cycle but these could have been displayed much faster.

All in all, the cinematic was enjoyable to watch, showing both the environment artist and animator's skills but the last segment lost my attention due to its sheer length.

2. Environmental Showcase

-Same as the previous show-reel, why not use the 6 second text intro as a text overlay?

-The environment could have greatly benefit from a bit more light as some texture work was made especially difficult to see. 

-The starting pan seemed a little odd coming from the pillar and zooming backwards, i would have personally tried this in reverse order.

-I very much like the use of animated textures for the fireflies and movement within the foliage as this gives the scene a lot more life.

-It did seem like there was far too much focus on the first environment. I feel like this was probably done to extend the overall show-reel length but it made the show-reel drag on quite considerably. 

-I really like how the trees came out but i don't believe this justified as many camera pans as they received.

-It did seem a little strange putting a rotating marmoset gun render in there but if the artist wishes to be a generalist, I can see how it fits.

-The ending ideas concepts seemed once again like they dragged on that little bit extra to buff the show-reel length.

-Overall, 2 minutes seems far too long for one environment, one gun and a few ideas. It could have probably been compressed into a rather entertaining minute.

3. Architecture Show-reel

-Will return to this once I can get the link working again-

4. Environment and Prop Show-reel

-This show-reel made quite nice use of depth of field but i still think its pretty un-necessary in most cases. 

-Brief coverage over the first environment seemed very nicely done although, the second pan could have included the third pan content. There was no real need to add an awkward jump.

-"Simulated pan of a Sci-fi scene, looking through the outside window." I believe a slow pan down the hallway, slowly turning the camera could have made a better showcase of the modular assets but timing wise, these really didn't drag on.

-A close up of the mortar shells may not be the best idea due to the relatively low poly-count and depth of field seemed entirely un-necessary with a single rotating object.

-The generator pans still wouldn't require depth of field. Our eyes do this naturally, all it accomplishes is hiding the texture and model work when it comes to single objects.

-The "sci-fi prop with simulated camera spinning around the object". Works quite nicely for an object like this. The artist seems very set on un-necessary depth of field effects though.

-Reference imagery of what would be done to showcase the construction of a modular store front, could work very nicely although a few quick examples could have been nice to further get the idea across.

-It was a 1 minute show-reel. Shows all the content of previous reels but at a much nicer pace. Stops the viewer from becoming bored.

5. Concept Show-reel

-Intro text used as an overlay. Really like this technique. Could do with a slow pan of the opening scene to make it less static.

-No need for the black fade, it just seems strange starting on a static environment before transitioning to concept art.

-The camera zoom across and in on the concept art shows the great detail went to by the artist. No reason to stop the pan and fade to black again, just transition to the next piece of work.

-Zbrush work didn't need to be a static side/ front/ back image. Slowly panning the camera up as it completes a single spin, ending on the face could have been nicer but the ideas still get across quite well.

-Nice showcase of 2D portrait work but once again, why just freeze the camera and transition to black, it looks sloppy.

-Showing how concepts in 2D become concepts in zbrush is great but the head rotates far too quickly.

-I like how the 2D robot concept starts with close-ups of the face detail before zooming out on the rest of the scene, once again showing the artists attention to detail. Still annoys me that the camera just stops and fades to black.

-N3-rd concept shows nice perspective drawing skills but panning seems un-necessary and far too fast. It still has random pauses without reason.

-Character concept to 3D application is very nicely done with the overlay, it shows the artist is fully able to work with hand drawn concepts, producing a 1-1 product. The character spin seems a little too fast and zoomed out again. (common problem)

-Lots of very nice concept art, showing both organic and mechanic objects/ characters. A very slow sideways pan could do wonders though.

-Grey backgrounds are fairly lacklustre, at least use something that complements the colour schemes of the concepts.

-Black borders seem rather unprofessional. Try to keep the same aspect ratio between images.

-Persian soldier progress from thumbnails to finished product don't fit the overall style of the show-reel and the showcase seem a little rushed.

-The monster zoom-out is done nicely UNTIL the ending, once again jerking the camera, leaving black borders and stopping abruptly.

-League of legends artwork looks good but drags on a little too much with the second image.

Overall the work and content within the show-reel is nice but it uses incredibly basic Sony Vegas transitions and a lot of these need some work. 

-My favourite one so-far. The huge amount of content really sticks in your mind.