Promoting My Work

I will need to use various methods to show off my work to potential employers, in my hunt for a job in the games industry. One of the most important things to consider when showing people my work is the style in which it will be shown. As a games artist, it is imperative that I am able to show my work in real-time, and a good way to do this is via the use of a showreel.

Not all the work I plan to apply for jobs with is finished yet, however, I have created a plan for my showreel, to give an outline of what it will eventually look like. It is also a good thing to look at myself, in order to see how much work I have left to do before my showreel is completed, so that I can plan my work over the next few months accordingly.

As most of my work is organic prop or character modelling, I will be showing my work mostly through the use of turntables, which are easy to set up using the Marmoset Toolbag, and show each model from all angles.

Another thing to consider in the promotion of my work is how it will be displayed on my portfolio website. This is especially important for me, as through my research I have found out that many character and prop artists prefer this approach to self-promotion rather than the use of a showreel. I have developed a presentation sheet for displaying my work, shown below. I kept the colours of this very neutral, as this way I can use the same sheet to show any model I want to, without having to change the colours. This uniform presentation will hopefully help to give an air of professionalism to the work I show.

During the next four months, the rest of the work required for my showreel will be completed, and I will create presentation sheets for any models I think should be shown in detail. I may also create separate turntable videos for some of these, to be presented alongside the presentation sheets. I will complete my website, and upload my work for presentation on there, ready to be sent to potential employers.

Once my showreel is nearing completion, I will begin to search for job vacancies in appropriate areas of work. I will use websites such as gamesindustry.biz, alongside the websites of games companies, to find such vacancies. This will include any junior 3D artist roles I find, plus any other 3D artist job I believe that I am capable of doing.

Another route to finding myself a job will be via networking. Over the next few months I aim to use modelling forums and LinkedIn much more than I have done in the past, in order to make more contacts within the games industry. In the long run, this will help my chances of finding a place in the games industry.

Creating a Website

As I come closer to applying for jobs in the games industry, I need to begin to market myself as a 3D artist. As well as using networking sites such as LinkedIn, and modelling forums, both of which are useful to make contacts, I will need a portfolio website and showreel to send to potential employers. I have begun to develop my own website for this purpose; however, I will not buy hosting for the site yet, until I have more finished work to put on it.

The website has a simple layout, using picture links on a scrolling sidebar to switch between pages. These pages will each be used for a different presentation sheet or video, as necessary. I may display multiple images from one link, for example, a character presentation sheet and turntable video would be one link.

In order to get the website up and running for applying for jobs, it obviously needs filling with work. I also need to create a contact page, using a link at the top of the page. Eventually I would also like to include a blog in the website, to show my current work in progress.

A Visit from Sony

Employees from Sony Liverpool looking at your work isn’t an opportunity you get every week, and there were definite benefits to showing them my Advanced Rendering Techniques work. They suggested some improvements to my work, which wouldn’t take too long to implement, and would help to make my overall scene more realistic.

The improvement suggested to me which I will most likely use was to change the way in which I created the floor. At the moment, the floor of my scene is a normal-mapped plane, baked down from some slabs i created in Maya, and a tiled detail map. While this is moderately successful, it has been suggested to me that a better way to create the flooring would be to make a tiling texture using ZBrush. I have looked into some ZBrush tiling texture tutorials, and it does not seem like this would take a large amount of my time, for a large improvement to the look of my scene.

Having people with industry experience looking at my work has helped to give me more of an idea of what is expected of an artist working on a game. While I know I need to improve, it is confidence-boosting to hear from industry professionals that my work isn’t too far away from being good enough to present to a company.

The Future of CGMA

The degree I am studying is changing a lot next year, and so after being shown the new modules for next year’s first, second, and third years, we were given the opportunity to suggest changes and improvements. The benefits of hindsight that somebody who has already studied the course has can help to give a different viewpoint on things than a lecturer might have.

One of the changes to the course I was most pleased with was the change to the first semester of second year. Studying a character modelling, environment art and animation module at the same time allows a student to decide which of these main disciplines most interests them, at a relatively early stage in the course. This gives the student more time to explore and practice the specific skills they will need for their chosen career. In turn, graduates from the course will already have more specialized skills which will help them to find employment.

Although my education has mostly been of a good standard, there have been modules which I have had issues with. The main one of these was Drawing and Visualization. I felt that a lot of this module was too seperate from other modules – for example, we spent almost an entire semester studying storyboarding and animatics, which won’t be used in other modules, whereas we had only a few weeks of character or environment design; the main focus of a lot of the course. I felt that the module would have been more useful with more emphasis on concepting, including things like character and environment design, prop design and lighting. Making the module more relevant to what most students will be creating in other modules will, I think, make more people understand the benefits of being able to visualize an idea in 2D.

AMA Brief

Below is the project brief for my customisable character project:

Project Brief

I aim to make a few variations for each section of the character, as detailed in the brief.

Advanced Tools and Technologies

Technology in the games industry is constantly evolving, and so to prepare for a job in the industry I need to make sure that I keep up with the new trends in games art technology. As an eventual applicant for character art jobs, there are certain new shading techniques which I will need to learn about in order to make sure that I have all the skills I need for my career.

DirectX 11 has affected the way that characters can be created, and the amount of realism and detail that can be produced in real-time. One thing that DX11 does is Tessellation. This works by splitting a mesh further into triangles to create a smooth mesh, and then using a displacement map to move the vertices on the model. Compared to a bump map, using tessellation gives a more detailed model which which light more realistically, and which have a better silhouette – one of the big problems with a bump map is that as it doesn’t actually change the mesh, shading near the edge of a model can spoil the effect of the bump map.

(Image from http://www.nvidia.com/docs/IO/91797/coarse_model.jpg)

Another feature which will help me as a character artist is DX11′s subsurface scattering features. Subsurface scattering allows a model’s shader to simulate light passes through semitransparent surfaces; among other things, this is a massive help in creating realistic skin shaders:

(Image from http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v666/Oniram/SSS-ex1.jpg)

As you can see from the image above, tessellation and subsurface scattering help to create much more detailed, realistically shaded character models. In the process of creating character models, I will research how to use these features in a game engine such as UDK, and implement them into future work. As well as improving my work, it will prove to future employers that I work at keeping up to date with new technologies as they come out, and understand how to use them.

Character animation processes have changed a lot in the past few years, and these days more and more companies are using motion capture animation in order to create realistic animations. As a character artist, this will affect the way in which I have to work. Motion capture software usually uses a very specific rig setup, and so meshes have to be made in specific ways so that they animate and deform correctly. For example, some companies use a specific base mesh with vertices ordered in specific ways, to make sure that the motion capture animation rig works in the way it is supposed to. It would be useful for me to learn about the ways in which character artists deal with the limitations set upon them by such workflow setups, so that if I am asked to do such a thing in the industry then I would already understand the process, saving both me and the company I work for time.

My Past Work

Over the next few weeks I will begin to create my portfolio website and showreel; therefore it is a good idea for me to look at work I have made in the past, to see if any of it is good enough to show to the industry.

The first major piece of work I did in a game engine was my CAT scanner prop, from my first year Computer Games Modelling module. While I was pleased with how this turned out at the time, the quality of texturing and baking on the model isn’t up to the quality I would want to show to someone I was applying to for a job. There are a lot of texture seams, and the materials don’t quite look like they should. On top of reworking the textures, I would have to remodel and relight the scene the model is placed in, which is a lot of work. On that basis, this piece will not go into my portfolio:

Another piece of work I spent quite a lot of time on was the spaceship I made for my Applied Game Art Development module in second year. This served the purposes it was required to adequately, however, it was to be seen from quite far away in the game it was placed in. From close up, and as a show of detailed modelling work, it is not a great example. I am not very experienced with high-poly, hard surface modelling, and so this ship’s normal map isn’t as high quality as a hard-surface model’s should be. As well as this, most of the rest of my portfolio is likely to be organic modelling, and so this model would stand as an ‘odd one out’ in the midst of my current work. For those reasons, my ship will not go into my showreel or portfolio:

Finally, a model I am quite pleased with the outcome of was the dinosaur I sculpted for my Real-Time Rendering module last year. There are some problems with seams on the specular map for the model, which I would need to fix in order to be able to create a turntable for the model, and I would need to create a scene or background to show it on. However, with a small amount of work I believe that I could make this piece of work presentable in a portfolio or showreel. When I have the time, I will fix the problems with this model and make it ready to show in my portfolio or showreel, if it is needed.

Showreels and Portfolios

This week I watched a lot of showreels, and looked at some portfolios, that other people had found in their searches. Many of these were about environments, which for the type of career I want to pursue aren’t that relevant to me. However, there were some useful tips I picked up from other people’s experiences looking for work, nonetheless.

One main thing that I learned was about timing in a showreel. It is easy to spend a lot of time showing off your best piece of work, and not as much on the others, but if you spend too long on one piece of work, the showreel ends up unbalanced. With enough of a disproportionate time spent showing one model, it seems to a viewer like you have nothing else of worth showing, or that you are skipping over other work in order to hide problems with it. It is much better to give each piece of work about the same amount of time for turntables and close ups, unless there is a good reason for showing off extra details or spending extra time showing it. this is only needed if there is something very important to make the viewer see, though.

Another thing I learned through the work other people showed is the importance of a good showreel soundtrack. The right music can make a showreel seem a lot better, especially if it fits thematically with the work you are displaying. However, a bad soundtrack can make a viewer instantly think less of the work, or even worse, stop watching completely.

With the things I have learned about creating showreels and portfolios, I believe that I should be capable of making my own show my work at its best, and help me pursue my career.

Showreel Research

After being tasked with researching showreels for my chosen profession, I looked at a lot of good and bad character and prop showreels. The main discovery I made during this time was that the majority of successful 3D character and prop artists don’t actually have showreels. Most just show their work from various angles in still images on a portfolio, and use that to demonstrate their work, along with turntables of their models embedded into the sites when necessary.

Still, I persevered in finding good and bad showreels to analyse, and found some examples. The first of these, as showreels go, has a lot of problems:

While the work in this showreel is actually quite good, until almost 50 seconds in there are only still images shown. As well as this, there is no information at all about how anything was made, how many triangles anything is, or texture sizes. For all a viewer knows, all of the models shown are too high-resolution and high-poly to ever be put in a game anyway – and optimization and edge flow is an important part of being a successful character artist.

The following showreel is a better example, but it still has its share of problems:

Four seconds into the showreel, the artist begins showing their best piece of work. Showing a character in a situation like this helps put them in context, and show off the artist’s work. Having the best piece of work at the start also makes the viewer continue to watch, rather than just turning off the showreel or moving on to another one. The showreel also shows turntables of other models, and displays their ability to work to a poly count by showing the amount of textures and triangles in some models.

However, the animation in the middle of the showreel seems completely out of place, and the artist doesn’t end the reel on a memorable piece of work. Removing the animation would make everything relevant to a potential job application, and putting a memorable piece of work at the end would in my opinion improve the artist’s chances of being offered a job.

Below is an example of a character artist I found who doesn’t have a showreel at all, but who is still successful and has a job in the games industry. They show off everything you would need to in a showreel; different model angles, textures, poly counts, wireframes, and a variety of work, but in an online portfolio rather than a showreel.

http://www.artpanda.co.uk/3dpages/earthgolem.htm

Finally, here is an example of a web-based turntable which can be manipulated by the viewer; in my opinion an effective way to show a model from different angles when showing off prop or character modelling:

http://turntables.stepanchikov.com/meshes/8

Advanced Modelling and Animation – an Introduction

As the third year of my degree dawns, I am required to pick a 3D art project to complete over the next year. The area I wanted to base this project in was actually a very easy decision for me, as I have known for a while now that I eventually want to become an organic modeller. Due to this fact, I created a character art project for myself.

As my Advanced Modelling and Animation module is a year long, I knew that a single character wouldn’t be enough . Therefore, I decided that instead of creating multiple characters, I would make a customisable character set. In order to achieve this I plan to split a base mesh I will create into different sections, then create different variations for each section along a similar art style or theme. Being all based on an identical base mesh, the seams for all of my character pieces will fit beside any of the others, therefore making a set of assets which could be used to create multiple different characters.

After researching different art styles and time periods, I decided on a medieval fantasy setting for my character, with a darker twist. References for this include Van Helsing, Warhammer, the Castlevania series and a host of other games, movies and concept artists’ work which I have found. Based on these reference images, I will begin to create concepts over the next few weeks, in order to create enough content to pick and choose the best parts to make for my customisable character.