I recently saw an interview with Orson Welles in which he said that he tried to watch as few movies as he could so that he couldn't copy them — and that man made the Citizen Kane of movies.
I really agree with what Nbha said. Spending an hour playing a game or reading a book is no different. Just have to manage your time between work and hobbies. Some artists prefer to go home and do more art others might want to watch a tv show or play a game. Neither is better than the other as long as they both produce good art.
Just because you spend an hour or two a day playing a game does not mean you will be a average artist as long as you know when to buckle down and practice your craft. Can all we all at least agree on that?
Yeah, I never accused gamers of wasting their time. It's interesting how angry & defensive a lot of people get when they find out I'm taking a year off of games. I consider it a waste of MY time, I'm sorry it upsets you but no need to toss barbs my way.
A little bit every day doesn't hurt, it should be a matter of organization and discipline. Let's say an average of half an hour, for example... few but enough.
You don't need to play all the good games in the market, just one that grabs your attention, one that's interesting enough and not too repetitive. With the rest of the good ones, stay tuned and be curious with the info shown in vids, screens and articles.
Personally, i play games very few and always from a technical point of view. They're full of inspiration and good ideas if you inspect them from the microscope. Also, we artists can create universes and it's logic that some of us want to experience them in such immersive way as the real-time graphics technology can be.
Yeah don't worry too much about it, what you do or don't do during your free time shouldn't matter so much, I rarely play games and never owned an xbox or a ps3, but I do look at a lot of gameplay videos while i work, keeps me up to date and I can have some fun as I work
I really try to spend a lot of time playing games when I get the chance, because more than often I've encountered far too many people completely out of touch with current gaming trends in this industry, and I find it kind of disturbing.
If anything I try to rent and play games causing a buzz for a few hours to get the feel of what's hot, but I usually don't finish them with some exceptions. When you're trained to see all the flaws, it's a little hard to enjoy the games sometimes.
I still play games, but I'm very selective and dedicate time to games that I find interesting for some reason or another. It's natural when you start working in games and making art you start playing less and less games than before, hell I used to play every new release back in the day but nowadays I play very few and I rarely finish a game.
However, I think it's important you keep up and be aware of the latest games, in terms of staying in touch with current techniques and what visuals the standard is. Don't lose your love of games though, it seems counter-intuitive to the essence of what we do to be working in the games industry yet don't like games.
Yeah...I'm sure guys who spend most of their time freelancing game art paycheck to paycheck just to make enough money for rent have loads of time to kick back and get stuck into a 50+ hour RPG. :poly141:
As a freelancer i work more than 8 hours a day, and too many weekends included sundays for certain projects, but i still have time to play games for 2-4 hours as much (instead of watching the tv news, or a film, i prefer to play a good game). And i have not so much free time as many may think. Being freelancer does not equal to loads of free time, and that would be the case for a bad freelancer without success.
A freelancer works more than a guy working in a company (they are assigned a task and that's all). I need to do all the other things related to work like contability, searching for projects, promotion, etc. I don't have the tech guy to solve too many problems like in a studio, for example. I need to cook all by myself.
But one thing is true, sometimes i can say myself, "i don't work this whole month". But that's a deserved right after working insanely .
We can make the comparison between those workers that after the work, they still do 3d because they love what they do, and those that not. I only know a few ones that are still passionate, the others only goes for the money, and it's totally comprehensible.
I'm kinda unsure what you are getting at with your last post. Are you implying that if you don't play many games, that will make you an inferior artist compared to those that do?
For some people its a case of getting away from staring at a screen which I can totally understand. Reading, excercise, even going to a museum to check out non-digital art would be beneficial
As a freelancer i work more than 8 hours a day, and too many weekends included sundays for certain projects, but i still have time to play games for 2-4 hours as much (instead of watching the tv news, or a film, i prefer to play a good game). And i have not so much free time as many may think. Being freelancer does not equal to loads of free time, and that would be the case for a bad freelancer without success.
A freelancer works more than a guy working in a company (they are assigned a task and that's all). I need to do all the other things related to work like contability, searching for projects, promotion, etc. I don't have the tech guy to solve too many problems like in a studio, for example. I need to cook all by myself.
But one thing is true, sometimes i can say myself, "i don't work this whole month". But that's a deserved right after working insanely .
We can make the comparison between those workers that after the work, they still do 3d because they love what they do, and those that not. I only know a few ones that are still passionate, the others only goes for the money, and it's totally comprehensible.
to be honest, you could easily turn that around, a good and successfull freelancer, never needs to work more than 8 hrs a day, doesn't have to take care of his taxes or legal stuff, can hire specialized people for solving tech issues and doesn't need special promotion stuff to aquire new clients.
I wouldn't call it a sucess to work my ass off, for weeks or months with ~100hrs a week like some inhouse people have. This is never healthy and never a sign of success OR good work, its always a sign of bad planning.
I don't mind crunches and they happen, but i chose to become a freelancer to not be part of the regular crunches one has inhouse.
I haven't read the thread so most of this might already be covered, but incase it hasn't, here it is...
1) You end up being good at whatever you do the most.
If you spend the majority of your time playing games instead of building them don't be surprised if your game making skills are lackluster.
2) You're focus won't always be the same.
Once you have a great set of skills and manage to land a job it takes a lot less effort to maintain and grow your skills, most of which happens on the job. This gives you time outside of work to focus on other things, exercise, family, photography, gaming whatever...
3) Time management and prioritization are critical skills to have.
Learn to focus on the things you really need to focus on when you need to focus on them. A lot of people are mono-focused, usually because that's how most schools operate, do the task in front of you until the bell rings then switch. Not everyone is "born with" the ability to manage their time and prioritize but almost everyone who ends up successful at something, needs to figure it out at some point.
whenever I see studios talking about art direction or see the inspirational art used at the beginning of a project - it's typically made up of real photographs and fine art. When we were starting a new zone at Mythic the inspiration was 17th century Dutch landscapes, the whole art team took a day trip down to the Smithsonian Museum of Art.
If you draw too much inspiration from other games or current pop culture the fans get angry and accuse you of ripping off another game or movie.
Really, everyone in this thread knows who Mario is, if you didn't play games at all you wouldn't be here. Continuing to play is not a requirement, suggesting that someone isn't passionate about their work or isn't living up to their potential as an artist is just plain silly.
whenever I see studios talking about art direction or see the inspirational art used at the beginning of a project - it's typically made up of real photographs and fine art. When we were starting a new zone at Mythic the inspiration was 17th century Dutch landscapes, the whole art team took a day trip down to the Smithsonian Museum of Art.
If you draw too much inspiration from other games or current pop culture the fans get angry and accuse you of ripping off another game or movie.
Really, everyone in this thread knows who Mario is, if you didn't play games at all you wouldn't be here. Continuing to play is not a requirement, suggesting that someone isn't passionate about their work or isn't living up to their potential as an artist is just plain silly.
I completely agree.
In a way its like trying to do "life drawing" while only looking at life drawings other people have done. You can copy the copy and add their observations (good bad or missing) but you won't have the freedom to learn and grow in ways that you WILL need to, to make it unique. So while it's important to check the pulse of games to see where they are at. It's not necessary that you use them strictly as reference.
If you're going to make some pillars check out all types of pillars wherever they are. Don't limit yourself just to reinterpretations of pillars. Sure you should check out what other people are doing it might give you some good tech tips to follow but don't limit your ref to only that, set your sights higher, push yourself.
Gamers like to complain that games look the same, but then when they start making their own content they rush to copy. If you're one of those people its time to deepen your pool of reference. (Talking in general to the forum not to you Justin)
As a freelancer i work more than 8 hours a day, and too many weekends included sundays for certain projects, but i still have time to play games for 2-4 hours as much (instead of watching the tv news, or a film, i prefer to play a good game). And i have not so much free time as many may think. Being freelancer does not equal to loads of free time, and that would be the case for a bad freelancer without success.
If you bill for your time (and not per asset), you will have a lot more free time.
3) Time management and prioritization are critical skills to have.
Learn to focus on the things you really need to focus on when you need to focus on them. A lot of people are mono-focused, usually because that's how most schools operate, do the task in front of you until the bell rings then switch. Not everyone is "born with" the ability to manage their time and prioritize but almost everyone who ends up successful at something, needs to figure it out at some point.
It's not just in school, as far as I can remember, I've been the kind to swing from freakishly intense focus on just one thing that has my interest, or really fidgety and scatted-focus when I can't get interested. Multi-tasking has never been successful, and I end up with too little progress on everything for that bit of progress to hold themselves up against natural erosion. It's really amazing for me to see other people multi-task.
I think there is also a lot to be said for playing games to examine how they work. I don't just make game art, I make games. I am responsible for getting a design brief and figuring out how we are going to make it. I'm pretty good at it (better than I am at art, but I hire good guys to do that!) and I spend quite a lot of time in games figuring out how and why they have done what they have done.
A lot of artists make the art and don't spend enough time on the implementation, that's great in a large company where you have 'hero' artists sculpting amazing pieces and letting some one else get them in engine but as some one who is more in the 'trenches' of game art looking at how other games fit together is really important. At least 2 hours a week trying out interesting games is really important to my career but if you are a character artist working to set specs it would be less important.
I agree that you shouldn't play games to get inspiration for another game, you end up just cloning, even if it's subconscious! On the other hand, to beat the competition you have to know what they are up to!
I play games because i love them. I love how they work, i love how they come together, and that is the main reason i wanted to make art for games. To make something that works with code and design. So like Easter said, i disect how games work, i find interest in how they solve problems, or approach art in code and design. Its awesome to see them all working together. Also... games should be fun, so i want to make sure that i know what is out there, what is getting attention and for what reasons. So i dunno... when we hire here, we consider a plus someone that plays games but is dedicated to the trade they will go into.
Bottom line for anyone wanting to work in the industry is if you spend a lot of time playing games then how can you possibly keep up with the people that spend most of their time making art? You can't.
Don't get me wrong, I do play the occasional game, but I don't take risks on games. I only buy the ones I'm certain I'll enjoy, and I don't play them terribly often. I also only play games with a very finite cap on the hours you'll need to invest into it. So I stay away from multi-player and open world games, as I see them as major time sucks. Single player, on a rail, 30hrs max to finish. That's usually what I go for. I might squeeze in a couple hours of gaming a week, tops. And when I do, I usually feel guilty for not spending that time working on art.
you nailed it down, the ideal game I can finish on the weekend, time limits is also good, I dont play shogun 2 multiplayer everyday with my best friend but when I do we will only play after 7pm.
But you really only have so much time, the moment I started getting serious I ceased to be a hardcore gamer, I prefer to acomplish something other than a game, once you wrap your head around the concept that you can game as a reward, a hard days modeling , but if you want to be good you have to put in the work above all, Cant just put in a hour a day and think you are going to progress at a rate a guy is putting 10 hrs into.
If you find yourself growing bored, might I recommend supplementing your entertainment section of the brain with a podcast, dan carlins hardcore history for instance, you can do modeling and listen to a podcast, can even half watch a show I find.
And one last thing, Avoid MMOs at all cost, MMOs can be the spiritual death of a dev.
You do have to invest time and money into games. And then of course if its a multiplayer game theres a period where you suck ass and get owned over and over. Its an investment. Not a wise one IMO.
The amount of time you spend playing games is irrelevant, really.. Having life experiences and imagination is where every ounce comes from. But when you start spouting stuff like "The industry is filled up with people who's art isn't as inspired as a 'true' gamer". Then you've crossed the line.
I don't get the either/or equation of you either play games or you become a great artist. I mean, it's fine if people don't want to play games; I don't know that it really matters. But, you don't have to "waste" all of your time playing video games to play a game. I play a lot of games. I just play them in smaller increments (with some exceptions). I mean, as Vig was talking about before, it comes down to time management. I'm not saying I'm a great artist, but I do think I spend a lot of time trying to become a better artist, and I don't feel like the time I spend playing games impedes that progress.
I don't get the either/or equation of you either play games or you become a great artist. ... I mean, as Vig was talking about before, it comes down to time management. ...
Playing game is like a major boss for Time Management. It's really easy to go over.
It's not just in school, as far as I can remember, I've been the kind to swing from freakishly intense focus on just one thing that has my interest, or really fidgety and scatted-focus when I can't get interested. Multi-tasking has never been successful, and I end up with too little progress on everything for that bit of progress to hold themselves up against natural erosion. It's really amazing for me to see other people multi-task.
I wasn't so much talking about multi-tasking (even though that works for some people) you can still be pin-point focused on singular tasks but you need to be able estimate how long the tasks will take you, then stack those tasks in an order and get it done. This is really important if you end up wearing a few hats, like most people who start out end up doing.
If you only focus on modeling you might not leave enough time for unwrapping and materials.
If you get wrapped up in painting a diffuse you might not check the whole material in engine.
Keeping the overall picture in mind, not only of what the player will see but of how long it should take you.
Overestimate your time and finish early instead of underestimating (to impress) and then looking bad when you need more time.
You might need to work in smaller goals so instead of "get a model done by 6pm" you break it up into smaller chunks. "By 11am it should be modeled.
By 12pm it should be unwrapped.
By 4:30pm the materials should be done."
If you only focus on finishing the task right in front of you whenever its done, then you could spend a bunch of time tweaking and refining tiny things that don't really affect much.
Another polycounter once said (I think it was Perna) something to the effect of...
"I can get a model up to 95% pretty quickly but getting that last 5% can easily take longer than getting the model up to 95%"
If the client would have been happy at 82% you've successfully shot your productivity in the foot, especially if you put in 22hr days trying to go from 95% to 98%.
Be mindful of where you spend your time and if it is actually having a significant impact on the overall goal.
Are you sculpting in such fine detail that it won't be captured?
Are you obsessing over your UV layout to the point you've done it 4 times and the results are pretty much the same as the first?
Are you focused on materials and ignoring topology and deformation?
Are you spending most of your time on the back side of a dumpster material instead of building the final scene and seeing what needs work from where the player will see it?
It's a bit like having a big pile of blocks, in school they order the blocks for you and you really don't need to worry about which should come first or how long it will take, you can focus on just getting it done, they already figured out how long it should take and what order it should go in. They dish out the tasks in a specific order and set the dealines, you either put the blocks where they expect them to go or you don't.
Outside of school the bricks might not be as neatly organized. You can blame management, you can blame design, but not every game goes according to plan. Some of the best games that have come out rely on a lot of quick iteration. In the end those people that seem to stick around are the ones that can fit the blocks together and make it work in the time they have, that doesn't always mean working longer, sometimes it means working smarter by focusing on the right thing at the right time.
Being able to take a big pile of blocks and sort them, will give you the freedom to focus on each task like a laser beam.
Funny thing is sometimes whenever I play a new game right after a very grueling workday what I can only see is some errors on the game. When I was working in Motion Capture Animation all I can see is footslides and armlocks, then when I moved on to 3d Modeling I can only spot texture seams etc...Its sucks the fun out of playing it at first but its really educational, learning how to deconstruct the whole game level. You can understand the threshold more in terms of what you can and cannot do to you game art. And oftentimes, an optimized (ie. lowpoly) model is very different as game-ready model.
100% agree on ExcessiveZero, I stick to singleplayer with a bit multiplayer here and there. Playing MMOs can lead to idleness for me LOL.
Playing games is an important part of being a good artist.
I play roughly 6 hours of BF3 and 6 hours of Destiny a week sometimes more but I try not to play less. I try to get in some RPG time as well as keep up on the latest hotness but my focus is shooters. I think being able to carry on a good conversation about the current state of the industry and looking at our competition makes me more valuable.
My job is pretty focused on weaponry. If I didn't play games I could still make a gun look good in 3rd person and first person however as a gamer I have better awareness of what will make a scope or weapon play as well as it looks. For environment art I think this is even more important.
If you are working freelance or have no impact on gameplay not playing games wont really make a difference but for me that would take quite a bit of the enjoyment of my job away.
The thing is there are a dozen guys who are better than you and unemployed at any given moment. If you're not moving forward and pushing yourself to improve, then what's the incentive for your employer to keep you around? You have friction on your side since you're already in the door but if you're just idling (skills wise) that won't last forever...
Replies
Just because you spend an hour or two a day playing a game does not mean you will be a average artist as long as you know when to buckle down and practice your craft. Can all we all at least agree on that?
You don't need to play all the good games in the market, just one that grabs your attention, one that's interesting enough and not too repetitive. With the rest of the good ones, stay tuned and be curious with the info shown in vids, screens and articles.
Personally, i play games very few and always from a technical point of view. They're full of inspiration and good ideas if you inspect them from the microscope. Also, we artists can create universes and it's logic that some of us want to experience them in such immersive way as the real-time graphics technology can be.
If anything I try to rent and play games causing a buzz for a few hours to get the feel of what's hot, but I usually don't finish them with some exceptions. When you're trained to see all the flaws, it's a little hard to enjoy the games sometimes.
However, I think it's important you keep up and be aware of the latest games, in terms of staying in touch with current techniques and what visuals the standard is. Don't lose your love of games though, it seems counter-intuitive to the essence of what we do to be working in the games industry yet don't like games.
As a freelancer i work more than 8 hours a day, and too many weekends included sundays for certain projects, but i still have time to play games for 2-4 hours as much (instead of watching the tv news, or a film, i prefer to play a good game). And i have not so much free time as many may think. Being freelancer does not equal to loads of free time, and that would be the case for a bad freelancer without success.
A freelancer works more than a guy working in a company (they are assigned a task and that's all). I need to do all the other things related to work like contability, searching for projects, promotion, etc. I don't have the tech guy to solve too many problems like in a studio, for example. I need to cook all by myself.
But one thing is true, sometimes i can say myself, "i don't work this whole month". But that's a deserved right after working insanely
We can make the comparison between those workers that after the work, they still do 3d because they love what they do, and those that not. I only know a few ones that are still passionate, the others only goes for the money, and it's totally comprehensible.
For some people its a case of getting away from staring at a screen which I can totally understand. Reading, excercise, even going to a museum to check out non-digital art would be beneficial
to be honest, you could easily turn that around, a good and successfull freelancer, never needs to work more than 8 hrs a day, doesn't have to take care of his taxes or legal stuff, can hire specialized people for solving tech issues and doesn't need special promotion stuff to aquire new clients.
I wouldn't call it a sucess to work my ass off, for weeks or months with ~100hrs a week like some inhouse people have. This is never healthy and never a sign of success OR good work, its always a sign of bad planning.
I don't mind crunches and they happen, but i chose to become a freelancer to not be part of the regular crunches one has inhouse.
1) You end up being good at whatever you do the most.
If you spend the majority of your time playing games instead of building them don't be surprised if your game making skills are lackluster.
2) You're focus won't always be the same.
Once you have a great set of skills and manage to land a job it takes a lot less effort to maintain and grow your skills, most of which happens on the job. This gives you time outside of work to focus on other things, exercise, family, photography, gaming whatever...
3) Time management and prioritization are critical skills to have.
Learn to focus on the things you really need to focus on when you need to focus on them. A lot of people are mono-focused, usually because that's how most schools operate, do the task in front of you until the bell rings then switch. Not everyone is "born with" the ability to manage their time and prioritize but almost everyone who ends up successful at something, needs to figure it out at some point.
this,
In a way its like trying to do "life drawing" while only looking at life drawings other people have done. You can copy the copy and add their observations (good bad or missing) but you won't have the freedom to learn and grow in ways that you WILL need to, to make it unique. So while it's important to check the pulse of games to see where they are at. It's not necessary that you use them strictly as reference.
If you're going to make some pillars check out all types of pillars wherever they are. Don't limit yourself just to reinterpretations of pillars. Sure you should check out what other people are doing it might give you some good tech tips to follow but don't limit your ref to only that, set your sights higher, push yourself.
Gamers like to complain that games look the same, but then when they start making their own content they rush to copy. If you're one of those people its time to deepen your pool of reference.
(Talking in general to the forum not to you Justin)
and... this ->
[ame="
If you bill for your time (and not per asset), you will have a lot more free time.
It's not just in school, as far as I can remember, I've been the kind to swing from freakishly intense focus on just one thing that has my interest, or really fidgety and scatted-focus when I can't get interested. Multi-tasking has never been successful, and I end up with too little progress on everything for that bit of progress to hold themselves up against natural erosion. It's really amazing for me to see other people multi-task.
A lot of artists make the art and don't spend enough time on the implementation, that's great in a large company where you have 'hero' artists sculpting amazing pieces and letting some one else get them in engine but as some one who is more in the 'trenches' of game art looking at how other games fit together is really important. At least 2 hours a week trying out interesting games is really important to my career but if you are a character artist working to set specs it would be less important.
I agree that you shouldn't play games to get inspiration for another game, you end up just cloning, even if it's subconscious! On the other hand, to beat the competition you have to know what they are up to!
But you really only have so much time, the moment I started getting serious I ceased to be a hardcore gamer, I prefer to acomplish something other than a game, once you wrap your head around the concept that you can game as a reward, a hard days modeling , but if you want to be good you have to put in the work above all, Cant just put in a hour a day and think you are going to progress at a rate a guy is putting 10 hrs into.
If you find yourself growing bored, might I recommend supplementing your entertainment section of the brain with a podcast, dan carlins hardcore history for instance, you can do modeling and listen to a podcast, can even half watch a show I find.
And one last thing, Avoid MMOs at all cost, MMOs can be the spiritual death of a dev.
Playing game is like a major boss for Time Management. It's really easy to go over.
If you only focus on modeling you might not leave enough time for unwrapping and materials.
If you get wrapped up in painting a diffuse you might not check the whole material in engine.
Keeping the overall picture in mind, not only of what the player will see but of how long it should take you.
Overestimate your time and finish early instead of underestimating (to impress) and then looking bad when you need more time.
You might need to work in smaller goals so instead of "get a model done by 6pm" you break it up into smaller chunks.
"By 11am it should be modeled.
By 12pm it should be unwrapped.
By 4:30pm the materials should be done."
If you only focus on finishing the task right in front of you whenever its done, then you could spend a bunch of time tweaking and refining tiny things that don't really affect much.
Another polycounter once said (I think it was Perna) something to the effect of... If the client would have been happy at 82% you've successfully shot your productivity in the foot, especially if you put in 22hr days trying to go from 95% to 98%.
Be mindful of where you spend your time and if it is actually having a significant impact on the overall goal.
Are you sculpting in such fine detail that it won't be captured?
Are you obsessing over your UV layout to the point you've done it 4 times and the results are pretty much the same as the first?
Are you focused on materials and ignoring topology and deformation?
Are you spending most of your time on the back side of a dumpster material instead of building the final scene and seeing what needs work from where the player will see it?
It's a bit like having a big pile of blocks, in school they order the blocks for you and you really don't need to worry about which should come first or how long it will take, you can focus on just getting it done, they already figured out how long it should take and what order it should go in. They dish out the tasks in a specific order and set the dealines, you either put the blocks where they expect them to go or you don't.
Outside of school the bricks might not be as neatly organized. You can blame management, you can blame design, but not every game goes according to plan. Some of the best games that have come out rely on a lot of quick iteration. In the end those people that seem to stick around are the ones that can fit the blocks together and make it work in the time they have, that doesn't always mean working longer, sometimes it means working smarter by focusing on the right thing at the right time.
Being able to take a big pile of blocks and sort them, will give you the freedom to focus on each task like a laser beam.
100% agree on ExcessiveZero, I stick to singleplayer with a bit multiplayer here and there. Playing MMOs can lead to idleness for me LOL.
I play roughly 6 hours of BF3 and 6 hours of Destiny a week sometimes more but I try not to play less. I try to get in some RPG time as well as keep up on the latest hotness but my focus is shooters. I think being able to carry on a good conversation about the current state of the industry and looking at our competition makes me more valuable.
My job is pretty focused on weaponry. If I didn't play games I could still make a gun look good in 3rd person and first person however as a gamer I have better awareness of what will make a scope or weapon play as well as it looks. For environment art I think this is even more important.
If you are working freelance or have no impact on gameplay not playing games wont really make a difference but for me that would take quite a bit of the enjoyment of my job away.