I'm going to try to change the tone here and say that the character model looks decent considering it's made by a freshly graduated college kid with no industry experience.
Hey guys, sorry for spotting this thread so late...I was curious to see how far Jim has gotten on this "PoS" game and stumbled across this thread in amusement. This is the real Ryan Fissenwert, yes the artist seen in the breakfast television video and the artist who made literally 90% of the art assets that you see in his screenshots/videos.
although i am super happy to also see people agreeing that Jim is a completely unprofessional joke...i also see a lot of speculation and assumptions going down here. I feel it's neccessary for me to elaborate on my experiences on the team and clear some things up; how i got onto the team, and how Jim treated me from my time there.
...gah i really wish i had caught this thread sooner as many posters may not be around to catch this, well hopefully they will anyway some time.
prepare for a read! this will get interesting!
The beginning...(of the end) lol jk jk lame joke...terrible game too -_-
So it all started back around 2010 i believe, I was currently jobless and freshly graduated from college and just came back from thailand after visiting my mom for a month. I graduated from AiV in the 3d modeling for animation and games diploma in '09. I was desperate here living in Edmonton, AB Canada, where there's not too much opportunity within the gaming industry. So out of the blue one friday morning, I recieve an email from Mr.Yake. He pretty much said he was interested in me blah blah garble garble you know the rest. Being excited of my opportunity I called him up that day for more information, found out he lived about 10 minutes down the street from me. He gave me this wonderful 2-3 hour speech (OVER THE PHONE FFS!) about the game and how the demo is practically finished; investors are "lining up" and all that other BS. Having never been in the industry before, I was excited, eager and ready to work. Unfortunately the work was not paid, it was a simple team project that "could" lead to success based off effort and determination, I took the gamble...my brother had agreed to help me pay my bills every month along with my student loan and such (great bro i know).
So as I practically was jobless and still jobless (not getting paid), I had nothing to do other than work on this project. He liked to connect through MSN, at first things were very relaxed in terms of what work i should be doing and how long per day, though this quickly changed. Being the manipulative and exploitive person Jim is he learned and got to know me personally and my living situation and exploited me for it over time.
Because I believe myself to be a hard worker for what I believe is right for myself, I found myself after about 1 month working 8-12 hour days 5 days a week, I did this because i really wanted this project to succeed and i wanted something better for myself, but FOR NO PAY I was expected to be on at certain times of the day, work for certain amount of hours, get certain things done on time all while he spoonfed me bullshit through msn and over the phone (i didn't realize all this yet though). He had me practically doing everything art/design related on the project...I was doing all the models, environments, characters, animations, textures, UVing, Normals, Speculars, Materials, UDK work, etc...
every screenshot you see on his website (not really anymore) 90% of the work is practically my models all done by myself within 5-6 hard months with individual strict deadlines per assets, deadlines that didn't make sense because he obviously had no clue how to model with high quality so obviously his 6 polygon car is gonna take 5 mins to him, but my car can take up to 1-2 days but he would never understand that, he expected me to do that city level in practically 2 weeks BY MYSELF and guess what? I DID...and guess what!? IT LOOKS LIKE GARBAGE, i wonder why JIM?
I wasn't given time to polish and give high quality and detail to my models or textures, he had no proper pipelines or way of handling assets and textures within the game engine which made all my models look like shite, he did all the lighting, UI, etc... and it clearly shows. I'm not saying i'm the best digital artist out there...but the work seen here is not something i want others to see as my best as it's all rushed poorly made low quality work for an uneducated in the field type of guy...unfortunately he now owns all of my work, and it does kinda hurt when people slam my artwork even though he deserves it, because really...I was just under pressure the whole time and i don't think it's fair for me. In the end of everything, 8 months have passed me by...I was not getting paid, my brother was starting to get worried and frustrated why jim kept giving me false hopes and i'm sorry but no demo should take 8 months to complete to show to investors.
He claimed to have the best laptop "in the world", and it ran his game at like what...5 frames per second? ON NATIONAL TELEVISION! and the game looked like it was made in the n64 days, god how i wish i can erase that video of me even sitting beside that fool of a man or even touching that horrible game. What's even worse...is all the things he talks about and says. he has a dirty mouth, swears, insults people, is very demeaning and is mr.knowitall. I have all the chatlogs of him being crude and abusive on MSN and emails still backed up. If he reads this, and tried again to sue me for defamation, I'll tell him the same thing i did before, This is all fact and truth, you won't win.
I had to teach him about ZBrush...and i barely knew it myself having just graduated knowing only the basics of the software, those 8 months was all about me teaching myself and spoon feeding them. But what really pissed me off was that i soon came to realize just how unorganized he was about well...everything!
every month he seemed to change his mind of how he wanted this demo created, he wanted more and more and more and more and more! I kept asking when is this demo going to be done. he kept telling me a couple more months...and a couple more and a couple more...until i was 8 months in. Nothing but false hopes and lies. even what i'm saying right now doesn't cover hardly anything in detail of things he's said onto me and done throughout those 8 months.
Guess what else is amazing? his best friend whom lives in calgary was supposed to be the character artist...i showed them zbrush and they made me REDO the main character...you know what he told me to do? a nano tech suit...LIKE FROM CRYSIS! i told him the next day that i didn't feel comfortable imitating a crysis nanosuit because that would brand me terribly bad as an artist and make him look incredibly stupid in the end, but of course he wouldn't listen to little young naive me. He told me to pretty much make it as close as possible to a nano suit like from crysis...and i barely knew how to use zbrush...so i woke up one day, learned zspheres all day, then proceeded to try and create a character out of zspheres and utilizing zbrush...my result after being rushed to complete this in 12 hours?
that picture all of you are hating on!
(LOL i'm not proud of it either so don't worry)
I made two full staged levels for this guy, character models of the main character and enemies, all props and models seen in the boat and container area and city are mine all designed by me...even though i'm just a 3d artist right? f'ing ridiculous...but anyways, i eventually started to get tired of all this sh*t and started fighting back. I knew this was a dead end project, he treated it like a job even though i was unpaid, he expected models out of me of high quality and detail in like 20 minutes bragging that he can do it, then when i told him "to do it then"...he said ok how much time do you need? (caved like a little b*tch).
I'll put it simply, Jim Yake doesn't know what the f*ck he's doing when it comes to games, 3d modeling, or game design. in fact he even admitted to me he was more of a movie buff and yea that skyline apparently copied his game, i almost barffed in my mouth the morning he told me that over the phone... i knew more about video games than him cuz that's my number one hobby! but in the end, things ended very sour between he and I.
I was at my wits end, he had taken advantage and used abused and exploited me enough, I was sick and tired of hearing the demo being pushed further back and back and back to the point where i just left the team with no regrets. i sent him an email of resignation without any vulgarity and kept it professional. I would post his email here but that could be bad for me...so in short, he practically tore into me saying how my work sucked, and how everyone (all two of them) thought it was terrible etc etc. then he closes with "I'll see you when our game is on the shelves and making it big, loser!"...hmmm it's been about 2 years now? and they've made about 3 updates on their website?
I made that team. when i was on the team, things were moving quickly. after i left, it all fell apart and the website shows clear as day. he even said he won't be using any of my assets in the game since it's so terrible to him. but then he sends me another email saying he changed his mind and will be using my assets LOL what a nub. but you know...after those hellish 8 months, i've never felt more relief and stress taken off my shoulders when i quit. to finally put that dick in his place and tear away from the team, it shows how much i meant to the team considering the demo still isn't completed and get this... I further did some research and i found out that he's been trying to complete this demo since....don't laugh seriously......don't you do it.....2004. BWAHAHAHA! but dam i felt like a fool after researching all this, i'm like why didn't i do this BEFORE i said yes to joining this god awful team. lesson learned though, and i did come out of it learning a lot about my 3d skills and much more which i personally think has improved me greatly as a 3d artist. But reading all the posts in this thread does hurt me a little bit, but at the same time i can't blame the harsh criticisms, i will be the first one to say the game was horrible and looked horrible in all aspects...and still does, my 3d assets were force rushed and also look terrible, i shouldn't of even let crap like this export from maya to his grubby hands...
but...this is long in the past now, oh did i mention that he tried to sue me with a defamation suit? but never came through because i straight up told him he's got no proof of anything and that telling the truth isn't defamation?...and he didn't come through with it so it was just another lame threat of many he's made onto me throughout.
to sum Jim up, he's a lying conceided demeaning false hope giver, he'll exploit you and tell you what you want to hear, and when things dont go his way...he's right and your wrong no arguing that. all in all, a big friggin joke. my time there was terrible, the people were terrible, I did all the hard work, and gained nothing.
the end
I'm sorry that so many of you think my 3d work sucks lol. if you visit my portfolio page maybe you can see a little more updated work i've done within the year, But i'm actually now working on projects for the iphone/android with a buddy i graduated college with who is much more organized, we get paid and am doing very very well!!! so i guess there's always a greener side to things.
sorry for the huge wall of text, I just felt this was very needed and also needs to be heard. if you go to his youtube page, all his videos have comments and ratings disabled LOL watch me get another defamation attempt here...
I forgot to also mention, everything he wrote on the website, was him. that 10,000 man hours? i don't know where they hell that came from. when i first read it i'm like...so...people are gonna think it took 10,000 hours for me to model this? thanks asshole. maybe it's just taken you 10,000 hours to get your demo 1% completed.
and the render:complete thing was just retarded lol, so meme worthy! LOL! I rendered that in maya in like 5 minutes with 3 point lighting and mental ray and he almost exploded in his pants so he was all like "RENDER:COMPLETE" lololol. ok next thing is, I don't think i've ever laughed so hard reading a thread before on the internet, some of you guys are downright hilarious, those pictures man...dem pictures lol. even if most of it is making fun of me, still funny
ok i thought of more to add to answer some of your guys concerns. he went all crazy on the lens flare and light shafts because he "just" literally figured out how to do it by tutorial one day, and he went...well, overboard i would say?
also apparently i contacted some of my friends and he pretty much has a terrible reputation with some people that worked at EA in vancouver, they all say the same thing, demeaning, rude, doesn't want to listen. the usual. so now he can't get back into the game industry, so what does he do? start his own game company but the funny thing is, he calls it "studio", by which he means his small townhouse. he works from home. apparently he had an IT job that paid him well prior to sit at home in his underwear and help helpless people doing IT crap. all those logo's he slaps on his images, yea i don't think they were legit. he always bragged he had EA, Konami, investors, etc. asking him if they can be the first one's to see his game when the demo is complete, but little did he know...that's what businesses do! find potential and get first dibs! but he used that as a hook for new people like myself, but now i know better!
but yea, practically everything that was written on that website was exaggerated and an utter lie.
hope i cleared up some of the confusions in here lol.
Wow, just...wow. It's refreshing to be able to hear your side of the story, hopefully you've learned a lot with this, even if what things NOT to do. I've been through similar situations and IMHO this knowledge is also very valuable.
wow dude. sorry you had to go through all that. it does really suck for the recent grads who get lured in to these companies trying to make it big with promises of getting their name and work out there and being part of the next big thing. glad you finally wised up and left. lol. let this be a lesson to everyone i guess.
Thanks for the kind words guys. If i could change back time i would never of made this mistake and been so foolish to myself. Though shortly after my leave with that team i started doing some work with a friend where he concepts and i model and texture then bring it into UDK. One good example is a fridge we did up for a sci-fi setting seen on my portfolio webpage. http://ryanfissenwert.tumblr.com/image/6310129674
Here is a prop i was able to do on my own pipeline and time with quality in mind, i think its clear as day just how much Jim hindered the potential of my art and assets through his pipelines.
But yea huge lesson learned and i only hope this thread will help prevent other new grads from making the same mistakes i did.
thanks a lot guys, that means a lot to me! things are working out very well for me right now, i'm so glad to be past that episode in my life though, and i really hope others don't fall for the same mistakes i did...
Dang, crazy to see you stick your head out and tell your side of the story.
It can be tough for a bright-eyed graduate...especially with so many deceitful "idea men" out there pulling crap like this.
Unfortunately its not uncommon for this to happen...you see projects looking for people to do royalty work or to work for free "but get portfolio experience." when really, they just want to capitalize on the fact that your eager to do work and inexperienced so you might do it for free.
Sucks you had to learn the hard way...but...don't ever work for free. If your not getting paid, you should only be doing art for yourself/portfolio, or a project that you genuinely enjoy....not for people pretending to be a legit business.
I'm getting quite a sense of deja vu from your story. I went through situation with a very similar character a few years back on a film project. Things were a bit more tolerable as it was a small group of folks working on the doomed projects, most of whom were grizzled and cynical vets slumming while they waited for something better to come along.
Still, working under someone so narcissistic and unstable, one who'll turn around and completely change the project, start an entirely project, or fire an employee completely on a whim starts to wear on your pretty quickly.
If you survived a trial by fire like that as a newbie and haven't thrown in the towel on the game art thing (and lord knows, I probably would have in your position) the experience is only going to make you a stronger worker and artist.
This Jim guy sounds like a petulant child who didn't get his way - glad to hear you got out and you're doing well for yourself. I think any artist who hasn't had this experience (I've had to deal with a couple of douches as well) should count themselves lucky!
Ryan, Its great to see you posting here. Your story is unfortunately all to common in the games industry, abusive incompetent "idea guys" fooling young artists/programmers into working for free on thier never ending ego projects. The more word we can get out about these sort of situations so people know what to look for and avoid the better!
I also have to commend you for taking the collective polycount comments and being a good sport about it all.
I hope you stick around polycount and even post some of your own work for feedback in the pimping section, I think you'll find in a more normal situation you'll get more constructive feedback than you have in this thread. =P
I was desperate here living in Edmonton, AB Canada, where there's not too much opportunity within the gaming industry.
Overhaul: Baldur's Gate Enhanced
Fluik: ios games
xgen: casual games
pixelstorm: hidden object games
Bioware is looking for local people right now for QA.
These studios would hire artists on occassion. Tip is...you have to check their twitter or site job section on a regular basis.
There also Gauge, but I don't know if they pay. (LinkedIn to see who works there)
Soft Reset (I think a one man operation) was hiring for animator/rigger recently.
Some other startups and one man operations that offer paid work if you just search on a daily basis.
That's not even from "hitting the streets". You want to do the old school networking, sign up for the local gamecamp activity alert.
The other Edmonton wannabe dev running on freebie labor is Burning Dog's mmo. They seem a bit better than Snake Takes in terms of getting shit done.
If you have the heart for local indie team, I recommend volunteering for the Star Forge guys. There's also Syndicate Alpha, but my impression is they're just another Snake Takes.
Lots of wannabe devs in this town working hard to look legit online (via fancy websites, for example).
If you want to get into feature film, there's a Winnepeg studio that's ramping up right now. I think if you're a noob you have a better chance getting hired there than competing in Vancouver.
Good luck.
PS. 3di...they don't do games but e-learning for the oil industry. They do sims. It's boring and dry work, but they've been around many years. They have an ex Bioware guy in there if you're looking for some mentoring (assuming they'll hire you in the first place). Just don't expect high salary, they look cheap.
Thanks for the great advice MagicSugar! I'll definitely keep all that in mind, you really seem to know what's going on within the industry, that's great and a huge help, thank you! and thanks EarthQuake for the uplifting words!
edit:
Forgot to mention I actually just passed up an opportunity with Bioware recently due to my current work situation and schedule (kinda working two jobs), but it's good to know i have the opportunities now then before and haven't lost them either for any future changes or so. But the advice is still very valuable and helpful to me and you guys seem like a really well put together professional community with an awesome sense of humour, thank you for all the kindness.
Replies
Yeah, a little something I brought to the party....you can thank me later
"because i can't be bothered to look after them any more"
I couldn't disagree more.
although i am super happy to also see people agreeing that Jim is a completely unprofessional joke...i also see a lot of speculation and assumptions going down here. I feel it's neccessary for me to elaborate on my experiences on the team and clear some things up; how i got onto the team, and how Jim treated me from my time there.
...gah i really wish i had caught this thread sooner as many posters may not be around to catch this, well hopefully they will anyway some time.
prepare for a read! this will get interesting!
The beginning...(of the end) lol jk jk lame joke...terrible game too -_-
So it all started back around 2010 i believe, I was currently jobless and freshly graduated from college and just came back from thailand after visiting my mom for a month. I graduated from AiV in the 3d modeling for animation and games diploma in '09. I was desperate here living in Edmonton, AB Canada, where there's not too much opportunity within the gaming industry. So out of the blue one friday morning, I recieve an email from Mr.Yake. He pretty much said he was interested in me blah blah garble garble you know the rest. Being excited of my opportunity I called him up that day for more information, found out he lived about 10 minutes down the street from me. He gave me this wonderful 2-3 hour speech (OVER THE PHONE FFS!) about the game and how the demo is practically finished; investors are "lining up" and all that other BS. Having never been in the industry before, I was excited, eager and ready to work. Unfortunately the work was not paid, it was a simple team project that "could" lead to success based off effort and determination, I took the gamble...my brother had agreed to help me pay my bills every month along with my student loan and such (great bro i know).
So as I practically was jobless and still jobless (not getting paid), I had nothing to do other than work on this project. He liked to connect through MSN, at first things were very relaxed in terms of what work i should be doing and how long per day, though this quickly changed. Being the manipulative and exploitive person Jim is he learned and got to know me personally and my living situation and exploited me for it over time.
Because I believe myself to be a hard worker for what I believe is right for myself, I found myself after about 1 month working 8-12 hour days 5 days a week, I did this because i really wanted this project to succeed and i wanted something better for myself, but FOR NO PAY I was expected to be on at certain times of the day, work for certain amount of hours, get certain things done on time all while he spoonfed me bullshit through msn and over the phone (i didn't realize all this yet though). He had me practically doing everything art/design related on the project...I was doing all the models, environments, characters, animations, textures, UVing, Normals, Speculars, Materials, UDK work, etc...
every screenshot you see on his website (not really anymore) 90% of the work is practically my models all done by myself within 5-6 hard months with individual strict deadlines per assets, deadlines that didn't make sense because he obviously had no clue how to model with high quality so obviously his 6 polygon car is gonna take 5 mins to him, but my car can take up to 1-2 days but he would never understand that, he expected me to do that city level in practically 2 weeks BY MYSELF and guess what? I DID...and guess what!? IT LOOKS LIKE GARBAGE, i wonder why JIM?
I wasn't given time to polish and give high quality and detail to my models or textures, he had no proper pipelines or way of handling assets and textures within the game engine which made all my models look like shite, he did all the lighting, UI, etc... and it clearly shows. I'm not saying i'm the best digital artist out there...but the work seen here is not something i want others to see as my best as it's all rushed poorly made low quality work for an uneducated in the field type of guy...unfortunately he now owns all of my work, and it does kinda hurt when people slam my artwork even though he deserves it, because really...I was just under pressure the whole time and i don't think it's fair for me. In the end of everything, 8 months have passed me by...I was not getting paid, my brother was starting to get worried and frustrated why jim kept giving me false hopes and i'm sorry but no demo should take 8 months to complete to show to investors.
He claimed to have the best laptop "in the world", and it ran his game at like what...5 frames per second? ON NATIONAL TELEVISION! and the game looked like it was made in the n64 days, god how i wish i can erase that video of me even sitting beside that fool of a man or even touching that horrible game. What's even worse...is all the things he talks about and says. he has a dirty mouth, swears, insults people, is very demeaning and is mr.knowitall. I have all the chatlogs of him being crude and abusive on MSN and emails still backed up. If he reads this, and tried again to sue me for defamation, I'll tell him the same thing i did before, This is all fact and truth, you won't win.
I had to teach him about ZBrush...and i barely knew it myself having just graduated knowing only the basics of the software, those 8 months was all about me teaching myself and spoon feeding them. But what really pissed me off was that i soon came to realize just how unorganized he was about well...everything!
every month he seemed to change his mind of how he wanted this demo created, he wanted more and more and more and more and more! I kept asking when is this demo going to be done. he kept telling me a couple more months...and a couple more and a couple more...until i was 8 months in. Nothing but false hopes and lies. even what i'm saying right now doesn't cover hardly anything in detail of things he's said onto me and done throughout those 8 months.
Guess what else is amazing? his best friend whom lives in calgary was supposed to be the character artist...i showed them zbrush and they made me REDO the main character...you know what he told me to do? a nano tech suit...LIKE FROM CRYSIS! i told him the next day that i didn't feel comfortable imitating a crysis nanosuit because that would brand me terribly bad as an artist and make him look incredibly stupid in the end, but of course he wouldn't listen to little young naive me. He told me to pretty much make it as close as possible to a nano suit like from crysis...and i barely knew how to use zbrush...so i woke up one day, learned zspheres all day, then proceeded to try and create a character out of zspheres and utilizing zbrush...my result after being rushed to complete this in 12 hours?
that picture all of you are hating on!
(LOL i'm not proud of it either so don't worry)
I made two full staged levels for this guy, character models of the main character and enemies, all props and models seen in the boat and container area and city are mine all designed by me...even though i'm just a 3d artist right? f'ing ridiculous...but anyways, i eventually started to get tired of all this sh*t and started fighting back. I knew this was a dead end project, he treated it like a job even though i was unpaid, he expected models out of me of high quality and detail in like 20 minutes bragging that he can do it, then when i told him "to do it then"...he said ok how much time do you need? (caved like a little b*tch).
I'll put it simply, Jim Yake doesn't know what the f*ck he's doing when it comes to games, 3d modeling, or game design. in fact he even admitted to me he was more of a movie buff and yea that skyline apparently copied his game, i almost barffed in my mouth the morning he told me that over the phone... i knew more about video games than him cuz that's my number one hobby! but in the end, things ended very sour between he and I.
I was at my wits end, he had taken advantage and used abused and exploited me enough, I was sick and tired of hearing the demo being pushed further back and back and back to the point where i just left the team with no regrets. i sent him an email of resignation without any vulgarity and kept it professional. I would post his email here but that could be bad for me...so in short, he practically tore into me saying how my work sucked, and how everyone (all two of them) thought it was terrible etc etc. then he closes with "I'll see you when our game is on the shelves and making it big, loser!"...hmmm it's been about 2 years now? and they've made about 3 updates on their website?
I made that team. when i was on the team, things were moving quickly. after i left, it all fell apart and the website shows clear as day. he even said he won't be using any of my assets in the game since it's so terrible to him. but then he sends me another email saying he changed his mind and will be using my assets LOL what a nub. but you know...after those hellish 8 months, i've never felt more relief and stress taken off my shoulders when i quit. to finally put that dick in his place and tear away from the team, it shows how much i meant to the team considering the demo still isn't completed and get this... I further did some research and i found out that he's been trying to complete this demo since....don't laugh seriously......don't you do it.....2004. BWAHAHAHA! but dam i felt like a fool after researching all this, i'm like why didn't i do this BEFORE i said yes to joining this god awful team. lesson learned though, and i did come out of it learning a lot about my 3d skills and much more which i personally think has improved me greatly as a 3d artist. But reading all the posts in this thread does hurt me a little bit, but at the same time i can't blame the harsh criticisms, i will be the first one to say the game was horrible and looked horrible in all aspects...and still does, my 3d assets were force rushed and also look terrible, i shouldn't of even let crap like this export from maya to his grubby hands...
but...this is long in the past now, oh did i mention that he tried to sue me with a defamation suit? but never came through because i straight up told him he's got no proof of anything and that telling the truth isn't defamation?...and he didn't come through with it so it was just another lame threat of many he's made onto me throughout.
to sum Jim up, he's a lying conceided demeaning false hope giver, he'll exploit you and tell you what you want to hear, and when things dont go his way...he's right and your wrong no arguing that. all in all, a big friggin joke. my time there was terrible, the people were terrible, I did all the hard work, and gained nothing.
the end
I'm sorry that so many of you think my 3d work sucks lol. if you visit my portfolio page maybe you can see a little more updated work i've done within the year, But i'm actually now working on projects for the iphone/android with a buddy i graduated college with who is much more organized, we get paid and am doing very very well!!! so i guess there's always a greener side to things.
sorry for the huge wall of text, I just felt this was very needed and also needs to be heard. if you go to his youtube page, all his videos have comments and ratings disabled LOL watch me get another defamation attempt here...
I'm Ryan Fissenwert, 2d/3d Digital Artist
you can view my somewhat updated portfolio at www.ryanfissenwert.tumblr.com
add me on facebook at www.facebook.com/ryanfissenwert
or tune into our daily gaming stream we do nightly
my youtube channel: www.youtube.com/grieverxvii
thank you for taking the time to read this if you did, and I hope some of you can seriously forgive my poor artwork on this team :O
and the render:complete thing was just retarded lol, so meme worthy! LOL! I rendered that in maya in like 5 minutes with 3 point lighting and mental ray and he almost exploded in his pants so he was all like "RENDER:COMPLETE" lololol. ok next thing is, I don't think i've ever laughed so hard reading a thread before on the internet, some of you guys are downright hilarious, those pictures man...dem pictures lol. even if most of it is making fun of me, still funny
also apparently i contacted some of my friends and he pretty much has a terrible reputation with some people that worked at EA in vancouver, they all say the same thing, demeaning, rude, doesn't want to listen. the usual. so now he can't get back into the game industry, so what does he do? start his own game company
but yea, practically everything that was written on that website was exaggerated and an utter lie.
hope i cleared up some of the confusions in here lol.
Or in fact any pictures at all?
http://ryanfissenwert.tumblr.com/image/6310129674
Here is a prop i was able to do on my own pipeline and time with quality in mind, i think its clear as day just how much Jim hindered the potential of my art and assets through his pipelines.
But yea huge lesson learned and i only hope this thread will help prevent other new grads from making the same mistakes i did.
Thanks for the absolution Teriyakistyle.
Really glad you finally got yourself out of that mess, and echoing Dan on the big ups for coming forward. Hope your new gig works out for you, man
It can be tough for a bright-eyed graduate...especially with so many deceitful "idea men" out there pulling crap like this.
Unfortunately its not uncommon for this to happen...you see projects looking for people to do royalty work or to work for free "but get portfolio experience." when really, they just want to capitalize on the fact that your eager to do work and inexperienced so you might do it for free.
Sucks you had to learn the hard way...but...don't ever work for free. If your not getting paid, you should only be doing art for yourself/portfolio, or a project that you genuinely enjoy....not for people pretending to be a legit business.
Sorry to see you got suckered like that dude.
Still, working under someone so narcissistic and unstable, one who'll turn around and completely change the project, start an entirely project, or fire an employee completely on a whim starts to wear on your pretty quickly.
If you survived a trial by fire like that as a newbie and haven't thrown in the towel on the game art thing (and lord knows, I probably would have in your position) the experience is only going to make you a stronger worker and artist.
Far too many people implicated in this one post. I've removed its contents. - Adam
I also have to commend you for taking the collective polycount comments and being a good sport about it all.
I hope you stick around polycount and even post some of your own work for feedback in the pimping section, I think you'll find in a more normal situation you'll get more constructive feedback than you have in this thread. =P
Overhaul: Baldur's Gate Enhanced
Fluik: ios games
xgen: casual games
pixelstorm: hidden object games
Bioware is looking for local people right now for QA.
These studios would hire artists on occassion. Tip is...you have to check their twitter or site job section on a regular basis.
There also Gauge, but I don't know if they pay. (LinkedIn to see who works there)
Soft Reset (I think a one man operation) was hiring for animator/rigger recently.
Some other startups and one man operations that offer paid work if you just search on a daily basis.
That's not even from "hitting the streets". You want to do the old school networking, sign up for the local gamecamp activity alert.
The other Edmonton wannabe dev running on freebie labor is Burning Dog's mmo. They seem a bit better than Snake Takes in terms of getting shit done.
If you have the heart for local indie team, I recommend volunteering for the Star Forge guys. There's also Syndicate Alpha, but my impression is they're just another Snake Takes.
Lots of wannabe devs in this town working hard to look legit online (via fancy websites, for example).
If you want to get into feature film, there's a Winnepeg studio that's ramping up right now. I think if you're a noob you have a better chance getting hired there than competing in Vancouver.
Good luck.
PS. 3di...they don't do games but e-learning for the oil industry. They do sims. It's boring and dry work, but they've been around many years. They have an ex Bioware guy in there if you're looking for some mentoring (assuming they'll hire you in the first place). Just don't expect high salary, they look cheap.
edit:
Forgot to mention I actually just passed up an opportunity with Bioware recently due to my current work situation and schedule (kinda working two jobs), but it's good to know i have the opportunities now then before and haven't lost them either for any future changes or so. But the advice is still very valuable and helpful to me and you guys seem like a really well put together professional community with an awesome sense of humour, thank you for all the kindness.
What the hell I was going to read that.
I am also surprised that this has been bumped 2-3 times and no one closed it yet.