The 2018 Greentooth Awards Announcement and Call for Nominations
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The Greentooth Awards
After a brief 20 years of being a community, we here at Polycount are pleased to kick off this year's year-end community awards.We last awarded trophies for 2016, but then we skipped a year, because we'll just say 2017 was a bit odd. Har har.
We want to take a moment and celebrate the people, studios, games and tools that we all love as a community. We know of no better way than to vote here as a community.
We are going to start a poll for everyone to vote on winners in their respective categories. This will start in one week, December 28th. 2018. The voting will go on for 1 week after that to make sure everyone has a chance to vote if they have been away from their normal routine with the holidays.
Nominations!
But before we can vote, we need some nominations. We'd like to community to source this so we're asking you for your nominations. We're going to ask you to respond to this post with your ideas on who you'd like to see be on those voting pamphlets.One rule on who is eligible to vote: You must have been a member here for at least 3 months, and have posted at least 10 times. This is to help encourage nominations from people engaged in the community. We love you silent watchers and skulking lurkers, but these are our community awards and those engaged are the ones that we'd like to hear from. Sorry, no ballot stuffing.
Nomination Categories:
People / Individuals: Who would you nominate for this? Individuals in the community that you believe have been awesome? Has someone written a tutorial that changed your life? They might be a good nomination for you. We'd like to see nominations for all the sorts of artists out there: enviro, concept, tech, animators, fx, characters... all of them. They do not have to be in Polycount or a Polycounter. Someone who has been awesome in game art and or development would be our strictest rule. Based on how you nominate; this will influence how we structure this part of the vote.Studios: What studios out there are making great games and treating their people properly? Making great things with great people in a great environment is really the end goal for most of us. Who is out there doing it properly now? Our goal is to celebrate a company or studio that's doing more than just making a game. Do they go out of the norm to work with their community? Do they seem like a place you want to work? Are they unique in some positive way? Then that might make them a nomination choice.
Tools: Our electric flavored paintbrushes! Without the tools to push the math around on the screen, we'd all be making cardboard game pieces for a hobby. The tools and engines to build our games are always important around Polycount and we are going to reflect that with a category built for them. We'd like to see 2d tools, shader editors, 3d tools, animation tools, whatever you'd been using to to work on your projects. What's the tool, new or old, that you make happy smiley faces at as you work? Nominate it!
Games: This one is simple: Which game that shipped in 2018 had the best game art? We are all engaged in this endeavor, I would like to think that of all our awards, this will be a honor for the games chosen as nominations. The winner should be a game that sets a great visual example for all of us. VR, 3d, 2d and whatever else is valid. Just a published game. No vaporware or just trailers.
When nominating try to use the following template to help make it easier on us to grab your choices:
People: Notbob Ross, Ronald McFlavortown
Studios: Awesomeville LLC, Panky Productions
Tools: Vertwelder 2.1, Makeartbutton
Games: Sidney Taxi Simulator '67, Turkey Trot VI
- One post per member please.
- You can nominate up to 3 items in any category.
- You don't need to nominate in every category.
r13
Replies
Studios: Techland (Has nice policies to keep people happy)
Tools: Substance Painter 2018 (I learned working in it this year)
Games: Battlefield V, Forza Horizon 4, Hitman 2 (These games look amazing)
Studios : Marmoset. I know this isn't a "studio," but I don't mean the software. Marmoset has been putting out a ton of artist interview/breakdowns and they are super helpful. And free!
Tools: Marmoset Toolbag 3 - does all the texture baking I could ask for, and is my go-to program for lighting and presenting characters; Substance Painter 2 - for similar reasons with Toolbag. I'll do 85% of my texturing in this program before adjusting a few things in Photoshop.
Games: Monster Hunter World - brought back an iconic franchise and introduced a new audience to an updated and polished game that is still releasing new content on the regular; Overcooked 2 - a good ol' couch co-op style game that could be enjoyed with friends in the same room. Doesn't hurt that it was really fun and easy to get into with a friendly learning curve.
Game: Spyro Reignited.
And because 2017 was skipped, Godot 3.0 has my special mention, it was originally a 2D game engine and has improved a lot in the 3D field and now has a modern real time engine and is now very popular in Ludum Dare game jams.
Studios:
Tools: Substance Designer's Flood Fill node
Games: God of War 4
Tim did an amazing job with his ArtStation contest breakdown. I even contacted him for advice a few times and he was more than helpful. He's chilled out on the forum offering tons of critique and is always uplifting and positive. Harley has done an awesome job going into so much detail on his lighting thread, and has also been in contact with me giving me tips on lighting. Bigtimemaster seems like he's in every single thread offering compliments and critiques, I'm not sure about anybody else who has commented so much on my work.
Studios: Fatshark Games, Hello Games and Red Barrels
Tools: Pixologic Zbrush's Sculptris Pro, Pureref and Substance Painter
Games: Warhammer: Vermintide 2, God of War 4 and Red Dead Redemption 2
These people up there are only three of the many that made my jaw drop when seeing their artwork. Same goes for the games. Therefor those people or games made me want to work even harder. Those tools are the ones I love the most, even though it isn't limited to this list.
Thank you for everyone creating, inspiring and keeping me going. 2018 was a great year, I wish everyone an even better 2019!
People: Jonas Ronnegard for his awesome tools/resources , Eric Chadwick for his constant moderation and all the work he puts in here on PC.
Studios: Sony Santa monica , Insomniac, Artstation (i guess they are kinda a studio?! either way, pillar of the community)
Tools: Substance, Megascans/quixel suite, UE4
Games: God of War, BFV, Red Dead 2
Tools: Substance Painter, Substance Designer, UE4
Studios: DICE, Blender Foundation
Tools: Blender 2.8
Games: BFV, CoD "Black Ops 4", Forza Horizon 4
These nominees, define an underlying conviction why I'd initially chose this medium too express myself creatively via technology.
Tools: UE4, Blender 2.8
Games: Red Dead Redemption 2, Dragon Ball FighterZ, Octopath Traveler
-Magdalena Dadela is a fantastic artist, but I specially like her sort-of-scholarly approach to some famous-or-overlooked sculptors of our history. I feel like I grow more as an artist each time I research some of the leads she gives in her Tweets.
-Nominating Knut because of his extensive work on his Advanced Turn-Based Tile Toolkit in the UE Marketplace. Not only it's the product of years of work he's done and shares with the community at a good price, but the support he gives to his customers to this day is still top notch. And all of this work while he has a PhD to work on and shit, this guy is an outstanding mind in the dev community.
-UE4 is the engine I've been working on for the past months and I am so glad I was able to switch to it. It's a modern piece of techonology tailored towards multiple artists and programmers. I've been using it to import 3D art at work and exploring its programming side in my free-time and it is rewarding and exciting. The community is big as fuck and only seems to be growing with the Fortnite boom.
-Blender 2.8 is a package I have not yet tried myself, but from seeing the new videos, modeling plugins and feedback from polycount artists I'm just drooling over and dreaming of being able to drop Max & Maya and jump over to the Blender community.
As for games, all three are games I do not particularly care about gameplay-wise, but since the criteria is game art, these are the ones that caught my eye the most when watching playthroughs in YT. RDR2 is an achievement and raises the bar on high-end open-world imagery and character art; DBFZ is the result of Arc System Works refining and polishing the techniques they developed for their last Guilty Gear game, achieving something that looks like no other game out there; and Octopath Traveler is one of the first titles I've seen that embraces the chaos of sprite-work with modern graphics so openly - the heavy use of post process effects and VFX while recreating this old-school rpg makes it stand out, and I wouldn't be surprised if this style of visuals sets a model that will be looked at for reference in future indie or smaller games.
Because he is very helpful giving me feedback and critique to my work which helped me alot. This community is awesome and guys like this make it what it is.
Games: Guild III Even though it's still very buggy and they recently had a dev change, I have high hopes for this game.
Tools: Quad Chamfer. I know it's not new, but it really made high poly hard surface work so much more fun!
Games: New Tomb Raider. Somehow I spent most of this year playing games from last year, but the new Tomb Raider was the most fun I had with games from this year.
Josh Lynch - His Substance Designer Mentorship, leading to the Mentorship Collective with several artists. This is a neat idea altogether.
Javier Perez - Substance Designer. Did a talk at Gnomon. A judge on one of the ArtStation Challenges. On one of the 3D Artist magazines? I think. He's been keeping himself busy.
Jeryce Dianingana - I don't know if he's on Polycount, but he's been around. I think he won one of the ArtStation Challenges, and did a portfolio review? I've been noticing a lot from his since earlier this year.
Studios: Insomniac Games - seeing them hype up Spiderman on Twitter, before and after the release of the game was neat. That and it felt like the Polycounters at the studio we're still pretty active on the art side, either here or on social media.
System Era Works - They have an office here in Seattle! The Astroneer game is pretty neat, and overall, it was great seeing it grow to what it is now, coming from 2 Polycounters.
Games: Red Dead Redemption 2 - I never played the game, but I thought it was interesting how one week, the buzz hits social media about over time and crunch at Rockstar Games, with some employees even getting the go ahead to talk about their experiences there, and then the game comes out the next week, and it turns into like, one of the greatest games of the year, everyone's all talking about it, and the talk about over time/crunch just fades off.
Tool: Blender 2.8 Eevee
Games: Spyro Reignited Trilogy
What was the best looking game of 2018?
Which dev studio was the most awesome, sought-after place to work??
Who in the Polycount community was really awesome last year???
We want to hear from you, our community members! You are the backbone, the core, the root of all things Polycount!
Awesome tutorials, and recently made them all free to the community.
Studios: Intrepid Studios, Currently working on a new MMO Ashes of Creation
Tools: Substance Designer
Games: God of War, Read dead redemption 2
2018 was the Blender 2.8 year for me.
Except for Games, I would put God of War.
Clinton Crumpler - Dekogon
Clinton is always releasing amazing work, he has done tutorials, CGMA classes, and is a big part of the community.
Javier Perez - Mesh Modeler.
He's been stepping up his Substance game a ton and it's amazing to see the progress over the years. As well as releasing breakdowns for his work and doing talks
Daniel Thiger- Always an inspiration, incredible artist and has lots of resources to learn from
Studios:
Sony Santa Monica
Insomniac Games
Rockstar Games
Tools: Substance Designer and Megascans. Both have been huge for development over the past couple years.
and UE4
Games: Read Dead Redemption 2, God of War, Spider-man
Studios: That Game Company, love the look of all their games.
Tools:
Allegorithmic, everything they do is amazing, great tutorial content on their website and its free for students.
Unreal, again everything they do is amazing, great tutorial content on their website and its free for students and education and always has been.
Q - What was the best looking game of 2018?
A - Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - Great party game, full of gaming icons clashing in the ultimate showdown, you can play anytime, anywhere with the portable console thus making it 100% better then PC and standard consoles - fact.
Q - Who in the Polycount community was really awesome last year???
A - Marks -Senior Technical Artist at Rocksteady Studios, top guy, knows his stuff, very helpful, likes a pint and likes to save drowning rats in London but I can not back that last statement up so that might be fake news.