51 things every game student should know
polycounter lvl 14
Found this on my facebook feed earlier and found it humorous since I'm guilty of a few; Wish I had this 5 years ago ha :poly142:
http://k0k0k0.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/51-things-every-game-student-should-know.pdf
http://k0k0k0.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/51-things-every-game-student-should-know.pdf
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Of course, this is my current WIP and I've been worrying that it might be a little too much for a portfolio piece. My wife says it's fine, but I've been starting to wonder if it's just too much.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=120297
I guess the rest of it is common sense.
I felt the same way. It should just say, if you are doing anything edgy or potentially offensive, make sure it is tasteful. It'd also be a good idea to be aware of the studio you are applying to when sending your portfolio out. I don't think a Disney studio would appreciate a portfolio full of busty women. But if a studio is known for work like that, I wouldn't even worry about it for a second, even if you are interviewing with a female lead.
You'd honestly need to be living in a cave for the last year to not have picked up on the trend of what happens to people who design skimpy clothing.
As always though its best to tailor your portfolio to where you're applying.
1 - The argument is that these kind of pieces (black men as thugs, asian men as Yakuza, women with scratches as 'abused' women, should be avoided because you "don't know who you'll offend".
What are the chances that a person will be offended by an asian being portrayed as Yakuza? Almost none. Maybe sub %.05 of people would find that offensive.
So to me, what that is is JUST PLAIN BAD ADVICE couched inside of a thought terminating cliche: "Well, don't question me, because really you don't know who it will offend."
Well, yes we do: a very small minority of overly offended people unlikely to be working in an HR environment. Sure, don't model a woman being raped or abused. Don't model an Asian person as a WWII propaganda cartoon with the buck-teeth and the yellow skin. Don't model a native american getting drunk. But that's all common sense. The rest of it, to me, seems to be a silly fear leading to overly PC sensibility. Hell, pretty much all of these minus the female example can be seen in modern games, so we KNOW that there is a market for cliches. How many games have Yakuza? Ignorant southerners with missing teeth? Black men in gangs? If your job is going to be to model these (admittedly boring) cliches, why would modeling them for your portfolio exclude you from getting that same job? In %99.95 of circumstances, it wont, and it probably wont serve you to tailor your portfolio to %.05 of the population.
2 - Fair enough, but consider that there are a good number of artists out there who make all their money doing these kinds of things, because there is a massive market. Hazardous, for example. I'm sure the man (unfairly) gets a certain amount of hate mail for his portrayal of women, but the truth is that it's an employable skill. Know your market, sure, but don't discount it. Hell, go to CGHUB and look at the thumbnail gallery. More than half is nothing but thumbnails of tits, ass and pretty faces, because it's a major (like it or not) component of the CG world, and it attracts people to your work, and can help you get known, and in many cases gets you employed.
So just as good advice it is to say 'don't do unrealistic women because you might not get hired', it is equally good to say 'if that's your skill, that's a market, so have at it.' It just depends on if that's a skill you want to be known for.
What people are deriving from subject matter like this is more than just your skills of an artist, they're making assumptions about the type of person you might be to work with or have around based on the content you fill your portfolio with.
2 - I am aware of Hazardous, I'd have linked to the brief pissing match people had going in WAYWO over his work but the moderators were on top of it and edited the posts. The difference is that Hazardous is not just starting his career, he has extensive industry experience and contacts and his work is at a caliber which he has the freedom to pick and choose who he really wants to work for.
People just launching their careers (those for whom this slide deck was intended) do not have those luxuries, they don't have industry experience, probably have little in the way of contacts, and quite frankly it's likely their work is no where near the quality of Hazardous work. Lots of them will be applying en masse to anyone who will hire them and won't have the benefit of being picky about who they work for.
Again, better advice would have been to tailor your portfolio to where you are applying. That slide reeks, but it has merits and people usually profit from self-censorship in a professional environment no matter what their point of view is.
Rule 0: Backup everything
and Rule 52: Backup everything again.
Haha yeah. I'll never forget that one girl from my 3d animation class who was crying in front of the teacher how her only zip disc died with all her work on it. Lots of tears there. I think she really never made a backup.
This is a great read, by the way.
Not sure if there's much to say. In a good pipeline you have a document you can follow and a checklist, and in film you rarely name stuff yourself, and that's how it should be in games too.
In a bad pipeline anyone can name anything, files, objects, textures, any way they like. There's no guidelines and no checks for conflicting names (ouch!). There's no automated checks making sure naming is okay.
There are only few universal things that can be applied to ANY project: Any name is better than no name. Check for spelling mistakes in your names. Do not use unicode (like japanese or chinese) because it breaks many tools. Names should be unique and unambiguous. The rest seems to vary quite a bit.
I mean that in a positive way.
I'm currently killing myself over projects and somehow reading this list makes it feel a little less like I'm doing everything wrong. At least it feels that way.
Thanks.
The stereotype thing is good advice imho as unless you can own it then you will get looked down on, especially by studios, recruiters and HR peeps. Maybe not looked down on but more forgotten. Theres alot of ladies in the recruitment phase now aswell and the industry itself, so yea, think on that.
best advice is the get some sleep though, dont wanna burn out or make bad design decisions due to tiredness.
my advice additions would be;
- if you are painting out mistakes in your normal maps you are doing it wrong!!!
- dissect your reference and everything you do, learn at every point in your development. Whether it be life drawing, observational drawing, cloth ref, anatomy ref, architecture, theres always something to learn. Last year I focused on this and it felt like starting over! I wish I could tell the 16 year old me to do this, you soon realise you know nothing about anatomy, about cloth dynamics, about design etc.
- stand out, make it interesting.
- get used to moving around in the early days, studios won't move for you
- learn to spell
Polycount: best game art community in the world. :poly124:
Oh, and;
53: Name your objects, layers and files such that anyone else could work out what they are. Every single one of them.
But overall, it's great that someone has done something like this and put it out there. As someone who spends alot of time in front of developers and also students, I see alot from both sides.
If anyone has seen any of my Uni/College presentations, then I also allocate a good amount of time to this type of thing, essentially dispelling some myths and presenting the reality of the world you're about to enter.
Some of what I say/present might not be easy reading for some and I was worried about that, but actually students and lecturers have welcomed the honesty and I often get invited back to present.
I even have a long list of actual quotes from devs under the title of "Don't take my word for it...the most common mistakes a rookie makes". I frequently add to this list and refine it each year.
Some points I make that you could also add to the list:
Sure why not! But the name should be really "Things every game artist should know".
Made me think I'm probably not ready for the industry yet though
Well, back to work it is.
Adam if you don't get it started today I'll kick it off later tomorrow.
I don't recommend doing this in the life drawing class. the rest is spot on though
coming off a confirmed grammar nazi's presentation in an unironic manner is very qt
gr8 read btw
one thing that bothers me is that I can find her twitter much quicker than any samples of her actual work (which is odd, given she's been a lead artist at some point)
she's currently employed at one.
pass ur lolcats onto the cueen
Haha. yeah. this slide is wrong in so many ways. I wonder, what would Steve Meretzky say to this?
regulate their bodily functions in hectic times without horrible repercussions?
It's training more so than anything.
I can go for 30 hours and still be cool if I have to.
(I never really had to because I am one who usually plans ahead)
One must figure out how to activate one's "power save" and "survival mode"
functions.
The only roundabout thing i could add right now would be;
Think big
Start small
How about this?
http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryGameIndustry#Industry_Insight
For one of the most boring sounding subjects, it's totally worth it when people are so amazed that you stay on top of your work that they offer you food, companionship, and games.
Not good for your health - you'll find that ability will disappear as you get older.
Also, 51 is a lie. PEople talk about porn all the time. The girls usually start it.
Which is ironic, because the author was female and was probably one of the females that was severely bothered by it. Some guys are bothered by it too. Everyone is different. Err on the side of caution I say.
If you've been in a studio for a long time and you know the people around you very well, then yeah you can talk about bad shit all day. For a college student, though, which this is directed to, you should be chill for a while.
This. I can't tell you how silly it makes you look when you pull all nighters and turn in work that shows no marked improvement over those that did their work on a reasonable timetable. I saw this all the time at school, so frustrating.
In response to the entire presentation, I wish someone had showed this to me when I started at college. Alas, it took me until AFTER I graduated to wise up. I have polycount to thank for that.
It was just fun to work alongside those who had to do all nighters, because I got extra portfolio stuff done.
Remove the slides where the teacher seems to have some sort of beside-the-point semantics issues and I think it's pretty solid though.
This is just anecdotal patterns I've noticed with artists I know, it is not true to everyone. I do think that your life do reflect in your art in some way and if you're not successful with art a poor social and active life might be the source of the problem.
I personally have been socially awkward and a downright computer hermit most of my life, I have never truly gained traction with my art and programming. I have however noticed in late years, when I dropped the ambition of becoming a good artist and instead let art be a hobby, I have improved passively as an artist while trying to live a more fulfilling life. I doubt I'm alone experiencing a similar improvement.
So students, get to know your classmates and do fun things together! You can do art and be social too. Start a sketch group at a local subway or street. I don't think being a hermit working on the 'folio all day works for everyone.
I think most students and juniors will agree with many of the statements when they think about them, or have a discussion with their teacher about some of the finer points being made.
she's offering some legit reality cheque kind of advice early in the presentation and quickly descends into a hypocritical asshole realness later
the positives is that you generally work with nice(r) people once you settle in this industry & you are not constrained to game art only when working as an artist.
she's British, which might explain the whole eye-roll over litteracy and gremmar, but the verts/vertic
True I wasn't really thinking of it in context of a presentation. Don't know what kind of speech went along with it. Reading it as one big block just made it sound like the kind of reality cheque some people just wouldn't want to cash.