USC Games Team looking for artists!
Hi everyone! I'm the project lead on Core Overload and we're seeking some 3D artists from Polycount to help us make Core Overload as awesome as possible!
A little bit of background:
The University of Southern California's Games program is a world-ranked game development program (We've been #1 for 3 years now). In the students' last year of school, they take a class known as 'Final Games'. The class is a yearlong game development class, spanning 2 semesters. Teams usually range from 12-20 people, so they're fairly massive. Every year, the class receives a lot of pitches that are judged by a panel of industry judges, who then narrows those down to 6 pitches that are green-lit for the Final Games year. Our project, Core Overload, is one of them.
What is Core Overload?
To put it simply, Core Overload is a crazy awesome, online multiplayer experience, built in UDK from the ground-up for robust online play. Players are able to build their space ships using an intuitive drag-and-drop customization system (no EVE online excel sheets). Each ship is composed of various ship parts, including Weapons, Wings, Chassis, Engines, and Cores. Each of these parts provides different stats and abilities. After building their ships, players can connect online and play others in team-based PvP combat.
One unique feature in Core Overload is dynamic destruction. What this means is that you're able to target individual parts on your opponent's ships (like their wings or engine) and shoot them down. Destroying a part will cause the enemy ship to lose the bonuses that part provides. Of course, this is all taking place during real time, fast-paced space battle, so it'll take some skill to pinpoint the part you want gone.
Our Team
We have a very strong team going into this project. As of now, we have 13 programmers (both undergrad seniors and masters in comp sci), 1 composer, 1 sound engineer, 3 designers, and 4 artists. We're looking to expand our art talent, and polycounters have such amazing talent that we couldn't resist posting here! Our team has worked or interned at places like Activision, Sony Santa Monica, Microsoft, Superbot Entertainment, Ubisoft, and Heavy Iron Studios.
So what do you get out of this:
- A guarantee that your artwork will appear in a shipped game
- We have to finish the game by the end of the year, or we won't graduate!
- Huge industry exposure
- At the end of every semester, there's a "Demo Day" that's attended by industry professionals looking to recruit people. Final Games are the main show at this event, and most Final Games graduates have gotten their jobs directly from these events.
- Industry connections
- Every Final Games project has multiple industry mentors. We're honored to have great people from companies like Blizzard, Treyarch, Sony Santa Monica, EA, Intel, Riot Games, and others!
- Every Final Games project has multiple industry mentors. We're honored to have great people from companies like Blizzard, Treyarch, Sony Santa Monica, EA, Intel, Riot Games, and others!
- Huge creative freedom when it comes to your artwork.
- Since our game is based on a modular, parts-based system, your artwork has a huge degree of flexibility.
- Since our game is based on a modular, parts-based system, your artwork has a huge degree of flexibility.
We're looking for 2D/3D artists. Your roles as a 3D artist would be modeling individual ship parts for our ship builder system, as well as possibly creating obstacles for our PVP map like satellites, asteroids, etc. The workload can be as heavy or as light as you want--as long as you're timely with your submissions, we're very flexible.
We have preference to those in the greater Los Angeles Area (since you'll also be able to physically attend demo day), but are open to having remote artists drop us assets as well. Last year, I was on a Final Games team that worked with a bunch of fantastic artists in Puerto Rico!
Past Final Games Projects
To show the quality that's come out of these projects in the past, check out the links below:
http://www.blinkthegame.com/
http://www.unchainedgame.com/
http://www.theminuslab.com/
http://forestwalkerapp.com/
Demo Day site: http://gamepipe.usc.edu/usc_gamepipe_laboratory/DemoDay.html
What's next?
Please contact me at emoryArt@gmail.com with any questions or your portfolio! This is an unpaid position (we're poor college students), but is once again, a great chance for exposure in the industry.