Need your advice !
polycounter lvl 6
Hello all,
I had an accident at my work two years ago a fork lift drove into me and my big toe was cut in half and I had a few broken bones in the foot due to the weight of the truck. To cut a long story short I have permanent damage to the foot and the job that I used to do (warehouse maintenance) is too heavy so I have been cleaning toilets & offices for almost two years now. This work is melting my head and it is also causing many problems with the foot.
The insurance company who has accepted liability along with my lawyer want to get me out of this line of work and I had a meeting with them last Friday which was very positive. The bottom line was What do you want to do and what can you do? So I told them what I have been doing in the 3D world and they want me to make a plan for them and I also told them that I dont have enough experience yet to feel confident enough to start a portfolio of my work. The way things are moving it will be at least until the end of 2014 before I can say confidently that I can do A and B efficiently because I work five days and only have about 4 hours a day during the week and about 26 hours combined on Saturday & Sunday for 3D work.
I spent the last five months trying my utmost to get a work flow between modo and CE3 and I had no choice but to move to UDK (no problem just a different engine). My main plan has been to just start building my game idea and take it from there and that means I am doing the complete process on my own, level design, environment art, texture work, audio score etc.
The insurance company are willing to provide me with training (in combination with my current work) and any software I need and I feel it is a golden opportunity that I have to seize but I need a proper plan that they can work with and that plan is the big question for me.
How do I go about planning this ?
Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated !!!
Pete
I had an accident at my work two years ago a fork lift drove into me and my big toe was cut in half and I had a few broken bones in the foot due to the weight of the truck. To cut a long story short I have permanent damage to the foot and the job that I used to do (warehouse maintenance) is too heavy so I have been cleaning toilets & offices for almost two years now. This work is melting my head and it is also causing many problems with the foot.
The insurance company who has accepted liability along with my lawyer want to get me out of this line of work and I had a meeting with them last Friday which was very positive. The bottom line was What do you want to do and what can you do? So I told them what I have been doing in the 3D world and they want me to make a plan for them and I also told them that I dont have enough experience yet to feel confident enough to start a portfolio of my work. The way things are moving it will be at least until the end of 2014 before I can say confidently that I can do A and B efficiently because I work five days and only have about 4 hours a day during the week and about 26 hours combined on Saturday & Sunday for 3D work.
I spent the last five months trying my utmost to get a work flow between modo and CE3 and I had no choice but to move to UDK (no problem just a different engine). My main plan has been to just start building my game idea and take it from there and that means I am doing the complete process on my own, level design, environment art, texture work, audio score etc.
The insurance company are willing to provide me with training (in combination with my current work) and any software I need and I feel it is a golden opportunity that I have to seize but I need a proper plan that they can work with and that plan is the big question for me.
How do I go about planning this ?
Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated !!!
Pete
Replies
Since you say "Any advice"...
I'd max insurance money and get a killer rig-software combo for archi-visual, lawyer pre-viz, e-learning, motiongraphics work.
Why?
Even if you manage to ship your game, profits could still be small and can take years to realize (see one man dev for game "Dust: Elysian Tail").
With acrhi or motiongraphic work, it's possible and more realistic to get a faster return on investment. Soon as you've lined up regular clients that can keep you busy (busy enough so you don't have to clean toilets again), do your game on the side.
You're right, this is a golden opportunity. I say decide what you want to do, code or art, and focus on just that one thing. Get your training for that, build your portfolio for that, and then go from there.
As Magic Sugar said, there are other fields in which you can apply your art skills that could offer a faster return on your investment, but motion graphics and archvis don't operate under the same constraints that game assets do. (Unless the archvis project uses a game engine, which they sometimes do.) Just make sure that if games are where you want to go, that you keep moving in that direction without getting too side tracked.
your right Equanim I should knuckle down and get good at one area, probably level design and asset creation because I do enjoy the process.
@ MagicSugar
Never thought about pre-viz, I do have some experience with AE so I will look into this.
Feels like I am about to be given a large bunch of keys to open one door, I better get it right !!!