Getting into the Art Biz

jaybcorreia

did anyone start off as not likeing art then saw how cool it was and went into it, or were you always the artist in school and was an art major in college. the reason why I am asking is because I like art but not as much as you polycounters here but its sumthing that I am considering trying to do . the closest I have done for drawing was I get comic books I look at a picture and I try to draw it just like it looks I can do that pretty good but cannot draw a character out of the blue or any other stuff. would anyone have advice for me. and also any booksand dev tools to help me out as well.

Thanks
Jason

RageUnleashed

I started off breezing through art classes doing the bare minimum with a little drawing on the side since I had worked on some already. That was at the beginning of my college tenure, now I'm at the end and wish I had gotten my head out of my ass a hell of a lot sooner, doing lots of studies (anatomy, lighting, texturing, etc etc), working on photoshop and using different media...now things just tend to click better when drawing, doing 3d work, and so on.

Yea I did the whole trying to copy drawings thing and it ended up hurting me because I went about it the wrong way. I would just make arbitrary lines that later when doing my own work would not help flesh out what I was drawing to really give it form. Now when I draw from reference I start off trying to simplify the forms and try to copy the artist's technique rather than just copying the drawing itself.

It certainly has caused my technique to improve immensely in a much shorter period of time, I'm still a total n00b compared to some of the extremely talented folks here, but I certainly feel like gaining such talent is a lot more within my grasp now.

adam

This is pretty funny, I just read a book that'll help you out tremendously. It talkes about starting a career as a game artist and what you need to know, etc. Also teaches you techniques with hands-on tutorials. www.AdamBromell.com, check it out.

As for myself, I always saw games when I was younger and thought "How cool would it be to do this stuff?" And thats basically it. I started to play CS and met someone from RiotSoftware, who then brought me on as a texture artist. The rest is history.

I was always in to art, but not until I was 8 or 9 did I become interested in game art. I got honours in school from the art department and attended an art college.

If you're interested in doing game art professionally, this place will put you in the right direction.