The Self Learner's Checklist (work in progress)
polycounter lvl 18
Self Learner's check list
Hello dear polcounteneers!
I'm making this thread to asses what it is someone teaching themselves needs to know In order to land their first job, and because I want to set myself some guidelines for myself. I think this could become a good reference for anybody teaching themselves. (but mainly this is for me lol)
To anybody that wants to help with this badboy of a list by adding goals, go ahead and post it so I can copy and paste it in, as I'm lazy.
Here's my list so far, I need to know what I'm missing.
Things to insert into my brain/have on my portfolio:
3d Stuff
low poly modeling --- (show competence in building models for handheld/low tech games)
In game range model ---(show competence in building models for Current gen game consoles)
high poly model
(show competence in building models for Cinematics and movies )
2d stuff
Concepting
(be able to make an image that communicates ideas for character/scenery/props clearly to others)
Color
(learn how to not suck so bad at choosing color schemes to
make your work easy on the eyes and be well balanced)
Texturing
I don't know much about texturing still running through tutorials. I need to figure baking, bump mapping and all that jazz and what that stuff actually does.
3D Lighting
Um.... I don't know anything about this yet either....
Stuff that I think would be good to have on my portfolio
********************************************
3D model of realistic human female and male
(they want to know you can make something
people will recognize as human)
3D model of an enviorment
( make a scene with some buildings,
greenery,rocks and stuff)
3D model of a vehicle
( vroom vroom, but in 3D)
3D Toony Character
(lots of games are filled with toon like
characters)
3D Big monster/ alien thing
(show you can make something that's not real)
All textured and shown in some kind of engine like Unreal
2d version of above things.
As always thank you for your time
Hello dear polcounteneers!
I'm making this thread to asses what it is someone teaching themselves needs to know In order to land their first job, and because I want to set myself some guidelines for myself. I think this could become a good reference for anybody teaching themselves. (but mainly this is for me lol)
To anybody that wants to help with this badboy of a list by adding goals, go ahead and post it so I can copy and paste it in, as I'm lazy.
Here's my list so far, I need to know what I'm missing.
Things to insert into my brain/have on my portfolio:
3d Stuff
low poly modeling --- (show competence in building models for handheld/low tech games)
In game range model ---(show competence in building models for Current gen game consoles)
high poly model
(show competence in building models for Cinematics and movies )
2d stuff
Concepting
(be able to make an image that communicates ideas for character/scenery/props clearly to others)
Color
(learn how to not suck so bad at choosing color schemes to
make your work easy on the eyes and be well balanced)
Texturing
I don't know much about texturing still running through tutorials. I need to figure baking, bump mapping and all that jazz and what that stuff actually does.
3D Lighting
Um.... I don't know anything about this yet either....
Stuff that I think would be good to have on my portfolio
********************************************
3D model of realistic human female and male
(they want to know you can make something
people will recognize as human)
3D model of an enviorment
( make a scene with some buildings,
greenery,rocks and stuff)
3D model of a vehicle
( vroom vroom, but in 3D)
3D Toony Character
(lots of games are filled with toon like
characters)
3D Big monster/ alien thing
(show you can make something that's not real)
All textured and shown in some kind of engine like Unreal
2d version of above things.
As always thank you for your time
Replies
well, I am also going to the polycount school right now as well. What I have found is that instead of making a christmas list of what I want for a portfolio, which is fine in and of itself,.. I have learnd'ed much more from this forum by grabbing a hot piece of concept that I want to be able to model and turning out some screenshots. Dont spend time refreshing this post and waiting for more text to appear from people, alt-tab into your modeling app, get up some concept reference towards the style of game you want to work for, and when you have spent ~10hrs on it, post your progress. You will learn so much more, and be so much closer to your goal no matter what the hell people write here about what they think you need to know. Nobody knows where your skill level is because you name comes with zero images. So I think its hard to say what you need to do.
Start an online portfolio, keep choosing concepts you like, keep modeling and texturing, and posting screenshots, as far as im concerned it will just fall into place after that.
Thats my advice for myself, Ive learned a ton here. And now that I think back, if someone had written down on fullscap the things ive learned long hand, it would not have helped me at all compared to just trying to make game art from a great concept. That I believe is the key. 10hrs of hard work a day. forever. :poly128:
Really, if you want to be a character artist, focus on creating characters, create 15 of them before you even think about showing one on a portfolio, because really you aren't going to get hired showing off your first ever character, or 2nd, etc.
I would try and break it down to one of these three disciplines:
1. Characters
2. Props(vehicles, guns, etc)
3. Environments(buildings, entire scenes, etc)
Pick one of these, and focus most of your energy toward it, pick the one you think your current skills would be most suited towards, which you think you have the best reasonable chance to be successful at, and which you enjoy most. Now you may not fit all of those into one of these choices, so you may have to compromise, really the main thing is doing something that you're confident you can do well, not just doing the one you think is cool or that you will be a cool guy when you do.
Focusing on any of those will still give you the general skills that you will need to learn, to eventually branch out and do different types of things too. Once you know how to make a solid, detailed, complicated sub-d model, you can apply those principles to all sorts of things, once you know how to make a proper, optimized low poly with good uvs, once you know how to do good normal map bakes etc, these are all general skills you will learn no matter what you do, the important thing is just that you have focus, and a clear goal.
[edit] Do you want to work on hand-held games? If so focus towards that, if not, i wouldn't spend too much time dedicated to that spec level.
You should never put anything in your portfolio, just for the sake of covering all of your basis, your portfolio should show what you excell at, and more importantly only the type of work you want to actually do. You shouldn't put work in your portfolio that you do not enjoy doing. If you dont actually want to work on DS games or whatever, dont even bother with this, its only going to impede your progress attaining goals that are more important to you.
[edit][edit] and yeah, the most important thing of all, work, work, WORK! every day! do something every single day, weather its 1 hour or 10 hours, dont be lazy.
doh! EQ pretty much sums up my post, I type too slow lol
I guess I was going off porfolios I'd seen.
Very well, I'm off to do some character models... WOOSH! RENDERING AWAY!
I've known guys who have gotten jobs with 3-6 well executed props or environments.
In this economy you have a lot more competition than you think, and it would be best for you to really focus your time and energy towards one of the specific fields as EQ suggested.
If you are going specifically for "This-Gen" then you should do that and figure out what it is you want to do in your daily life as a game artist and be as good as you possibly can at that specific area.