Come join us! We’re expanding our development team and are actively hiring for a variety of art and production positions. Here’s the full list:
Art
Art Producer
Environment / Lighting Artist
Environment Artist (multiple)
Lead UI Artist
Senior Lighting Artist
VFX Artist / Senior VFX Artist
Production
Producer
Production Tester
Splash Damage offers a comprehensive benefits package to all successful applicants. Check out our Culture section to find out more about what it’s like to work here and don’t forget to browse our extensive Living in London guide for everything you need to know about moving to London and living here.
I know it doesn’t really belong in this thread here, but I have one question in regards of the technical skills that someone needs to work in the gaming industry. Most of my knowledge is purely “traditional”, even though I have a Wacom Intuos and even programms like Maja and PS. My question is; what should I be able to do, in order to get a job somewhere in the industry? Are there some “test exercises”, so I could work in the right direction?
Drawing and painting was always a huge hobby in my life, but I really have the feeling that I should change my approach, since I don’t wanna just work for myself forever. I can draw and paint, but I can’t really do anything with that craft. I’m just not getting anywhere. I’m grateful for every real advice in this regard.
pick a game genre, decide what your skillset could enhance the most, atmosphere, animation, detail, terrain, etc. and build from there, just focus on your strengths.
You are right there, but that wasn’t exactly what I wanted to know, but maybe I didn’t make myself very clear, sorry if so. I know in which department/-s I’d like to work, my biggest problem however is, that I don’t know what they want to see from me. My strengths are drawing humans, clothing and weapons, so I think, that something that has to do with character design, or promotional art would be the right thing. I have no experience in animation and just a bare minimum in terms of 3D modelling; however, those(anim./modelling) aren’t things, that I could see myself doing professionally anyways. Aside from character design I could imagine to work on any kind of 2D stuff, since illustration is what I’m most comfortable with.
I’d just like to get some kind of task, so I could proof myself in that regard, or to see where I am atm and what I have to do in order to get where I could be useful.
[QUOTE=.FROST.;499000]You are right there, but that wasn’t exactly what I wanted to know, but maybe I didn’t make myself very clear, sorry if so. I know in which department/-s I’d like to work, my biggest problem however is, that I don’t know what they want to see from me. My strengths are drawing humans, clothing and weapons, so I think, that something that has to do with character design, or promotional art would be the right thing. I have no experience in animation and just a bare minimum in terms of 3D modelling; however, those(anim./modelling) aren’t things, that I could see myself doing professionally anyways. Aside from character design I could imagine to work on any kind of 2D stuff, since illustration is what I’m most comfortable with.
I’d just like to get some kind of task, so I could proof myself in that regard, or to see where I am atm and what I have to do in order to get where I could be useful.[/QUOTE]
I would work on three things:
Implement your artwork into a game engine of some sort (Unity, UDK, etc). This would demonstrate that you are not afraid of the “technical” side of things. You could do this by designing and implementing some sort of User Interface and perhaps a comic-book style story. This would need an element of scripting, but not much and would show you are willing to “talk to the dark side”.
Take a game and work to an imaginary brief for a poster campaign (let’s say). Produce the artwork and accurately measure how long it took you. Alternatively, produce an imaginary “pitch document” for a game. This would entail you looking into gameplay mechanics, narrative, character design, level design, etc. Research what should be in such a document.
In order to achieve the above, plan it in advance and provide documentation that you have stuck to your plan, modified it for good reason, and show progression (It doesn’t necessarily have to be a Gantt chart!). Try and work out how long industry should pay you to make, say, a high detail, 2D representation of a primary game character for print. Evaluation, time estimation and planning is quite key. Another challenge if you want one would be to estimate how long it would take you to put together a “match attax” card for a single player from scratch (they are football trading cards) in the same style as the original but without recourse to internet based material.
Thanks for your helpful post :). Right now I’m doing basically just what you’ve wrote(parts of it). I really understand now, that there’s just no way to work fully “traditionally” and make a living off of it, at least not with my pace and style. And it wouldn’t fit to anything else in the industry either; I really can’t remember when I saw the last traditionally painted cover on a magazine; let alone a gaming mag, or production drawings.
I have a Wacom and I’ll see how fast I can work with it and how good the quality of the final product will be. I tried digital painting/coloring a couple times, but never went the full nine yards with it. This time I really want to see what I can get out of that thing. My first fully fleshed out work in this regard will be a Proxy pin-up. For further info look in the off-topic section under “Portrait from A-Z”.
Lol, that’s almost the exact same I’ve wrote a couple weeks ago And that’s the answer I’ve got from one of the devs. I think it’s ok to share that with you, since there’s not really anything private in it.
Re: I’m looking for a job
Hey Frost!
I actually want to start to do more sharing on topics like this, but to start you off…
My best advice to you (as it is to most) is get involved in an indie game or mod, this is how we first started as a studio 13 odd years ago and none of us had degrees just a passion for games. This will help you get the practical experience of working with others and will force you to work harder. As Jon will have no doubt told you this is how he and I got started.
In terms of finding like-minded individuals polycount.com & moddb.com is where you should start.
You may already be doing this, but one time-cheat for painting concepts that I learnt many years ago, was to block out the scene or object in 3D first then paint over it. It makes getting the perspective right a whole lot easier!
You’ve got the passion and the underlying artistic ability you just need to keep working at it, and get that amateur experience it’ll be invaluable while you keep on the job hunt. And who knows you might even start an indie of your own in the process!
I wish you the best of luck and I hope this is helpful! lemme know how you get on!
P.S. Finally (and some of this may end up repeating what I’ve already said), I dug it out from an interview I did in the Brink times which may also be helpful on getting started in the industry:
PORTFOLIO
Whatever the job position you are going for, you’ll need some way or other to demonstrate your ability to do the job:
Present your best (hopefully most recent) work, but don’t necessarily show everything you’ve ever done.
Keep it up to date, if you’re not working then it’s important to keep producing new content and feeding it into your portfolio, take out older work in place of new better pieces.
Keep your presentation medium simple; elaborate Flash website may look great but they tend to be a pain for the viewer when they just want to see the content. You have to think that the person looking at your portfolio probably has another 50-100 to go through, so only has a few minutes at most to look at yours; make it easy for them.
SPECIALISE
‘Jack of All Trades’ are very useful in small development teams, however in a larger team ‘Masters’ of specific areas are preferred. Team sizes are growing along with it the amount of work required to make a game. Take the example of a character model in Brink, first an idea will be developed into a written design, a concept artist will then work it into a concept painting. This will then be given to a character artist who will build the model in high polygon 3D, then a low polygon game model to which normal and AO maps are baked. Next the model will go to a texture artist who paints the materials on the model. Once completed it goes to an animator for rigging and finally often to a programmer to put in the game. That is upwards of six people for a single asset, and while it’s still possible for one person to do all these jobs, they are going to be better and worse in different areas and as a result the quality will suffer.
So in summary… you aren’t expected to be able to do everything anymore, game development is too complex for that…. Instead find something you are good at and enjoy doing, and become a master of it
JOIN A COMMUNITY WEBSITE OR AMATEUR TEAM
These are two distinct areas both are valuable in gaining some experience of what it’s like to work in game development.
This is how Splash Damage was formed so if you do join a strong team and you can pull something special out of the bag there’s always the possibility of ‘going commercial’.
Having the support of a team/community and the pressure to produce content is a great tool for improving your skills and for content you can show in your portfolio.
Often on job listings a developer will ask for X number of years of experience in the industry, now while I can’t speak for all developers at Splash Damage at least we’ll take into consideration amateur projects that you may have worked on as counting towards this.
USEFUL LINKS:
www.moddb.com - a great general resource and news site for game engine tools
www.polycount.com - this is the game art site I got started on many moons ago, the forums are still great for getting constructive feedback on your work.
And that’s the answer I’ve got from one of the devs. I think it’s ok to share that with you, since there’s not really anything private in it.