Leukeh is Mentored!

[Leukeh]

Brittons has kindly agreed to mentor me in the art of digital painting - specifically sci-fi/fantasy scenery and landscapes.

Having had extended Photoshop experience but no painting experience, I don't know where to begin. I have a few questions.

1. I have both Photoshop CS3 and Corel Painter X. Which program would you prefer me to work in? I don't know much about Painter but am willing to learn.

2. Where do I start? I've looked at a number of tutorials, but they don't help for a beginner. They have a simple 3 step process - block, shade, detail. Seems easy enough but when it comes to actually doing it, it's impossible.

How I would like this to work is: You give me an assignment of sorts (obviously starting small, with low expectations), I post, you critique as harshly as you like, I make adjustments until it looks ok, then we start something new. Slowly, I'll get better =)

If you have a different idea of how to do this, by all means let me know. You're the expert after all ;-)

To anybody else: Feel free to chip in, critique, suggest assignments etc. - anything that will help me get better than I am. Which is currently useless.

I don't currently have any work for you to critique, I'm just awaiting your command! =)

[Brittons]

Hi Leukeh,

There are really a number of art jobs you can do in the game industry, so I guess my first question would be what your interests are and then I could suggest some portfolio pieces to develop. A quick list of positions in a typical studio would be...

1. Animator: strictly animating objects and nothing else. Character set-up is usually tasked to the animators too.

2. Production artist: Modeling and texturing objects.

Typically, a production artist will wear a lot of hats and is usually geared towards either building/environments or characters. This can change from project to project. Typically, I have found that most of the artists will contribute to the concept art of the project. Of the five studios I have worked at, only one had a designated, concept only artist and frankly... that was a strange situation. Places I have worked have been SONY, Blizzard Entertainment, Liquid Entertainment, THQ and Mad Doc Software. Hopefully people won't jump on me for this comment, but I'm just telling my personal experience from 9 years of working steady in the industry. Usually, if there is a designated concept artist, they have been working freelance, outside the studio, project to project for the games I have been on and they will not usually provide more than a month or so of work from my experiences.

As far as what you are going to do, look at the top tech in the games these days and that will give you your bar. By that I mean, Gears of War, The Darkness, Halo 3, etc, etc... or Mario/Wii type titles, but that is a different market usually and many of those games are made in Japan (which would be great if you live there). Polycount is largely becoming a concern of the past, so your character/environment really just needs to look great. Don't worry about making a "low poly" character because it will probably not meet the visual standards that art directors are looking for now.

So, let me know what you are interested in and I'll go from there. Painter is used "sometimes" in the game studios, but Photoshop is dominant by far.

[Leukeh]

Sorry it took me a while to respond, I've been away for a week.

Ultimately, what I want to do is to be able to paint the environments and once I've got that down, move on to characters. So, based on your description, I guess production artist is the way to head. I guess what got me interested in the environment-painting area is the novel I'm currently making preparations to write. There is 4 different "worlds" (I won't go into that any further... hard to explain) each with different landscapes. I've often found that drawing things helps to flesh out my ideas properly, so painting these landscapes would be much more useful than leaving them in my head.
I don't know if that makes my aims easier to understand, but I guess it gives us something to work towards and I can imagine that creating a landscape in the gaming industry would be a very similar process, if not the same.

[Brittons]

Sure... So let's concentrate on environments. A few words about an environment artist in a studio...

Typically, it's not that different than being a character artist, with the exception that you'll be (duh) making environments instead of characters. You're still going to be responsible for modeling/texturing the assets. Actually making the worlds and placing the objects falls into either a game designer role or a more specialized environment artist. Typically, these people use proprietary (made for only the specific studio they are at) programs and I have no experience in this kind of thing.

My concern from you mentioning writing a book and all those ideas is focus. If you want to break into games, I hate to say it, but put the book on hold. You'll need 100% dedication to putting together a good portfolio or it just won't happen for you. The competition is really intense and you need to take that into consideration and buckle down. When I was breaking into games, I did almost nothing but activities related to that goal. Not a lot of fun, but the pay off is worthwhile.

So... a good first project is to make a building. Make it look recognizable and really take into consideration how it is constructed. I would suggest trying to make a brick texture and put it on a plane as a good first step. You'll need to either use bump map or normal maps. It just needs to look 3D. Are you familiar with what I'm talking about with these different maps and the process towards making them?

[Leukeh]

Thanks for the advice with the book. I'm studying graphic design next year and the book will just be a spare time project, but if I find it's taking up too much time I can easily put it on hold.

I'm sorry to say, I've never even heard of bump maps or normal maps, let along know how to use them. I'm getting the feeling that there's a whole lot to Photoshop I don't know that I don't know... if that makes sense. Reckon you could clue me in as to how to do this?

[Brittons]

Well... I feel like I might be being "mean" by saying that about the book idea, but it's coming for a good place on my part. I just have an uderstanding of how challenging it can be to break into any sort of entertainment field and you'll really need to edit things in your life in general. A book is a whole other world and I would think that might be a huge distraction from the goal of getting paying work in a game company. That said, nobody would know better than you, so it's your call.

As far as normal maps and bump maps, I'll write again very soon with some resources about that kind of thing.

[Leukeh]

Any luck with your resource gathering...?

[Brittons]

Sorry... I've been really busy. Really busy at work. Here's my honest take on things... I can be a good resource for general advice on how to break into the game industry, ie: what to study and put in a portfolio, what certain companies are about and that sort of thing. When it comes to something fundumental like general 3D stuff like normal maps, I really think you're better off just enrolling in a class. There are a TON of people who can teach you to use the programs and teqniques, which is very important. Almost none of these people will have any idea how to make professional art with them though because most professionals in the game industry are so busy at our jobs that we don't have time to teach. Crunch time is a common thing in game development and I couldn't have the energy to teach if I wanted to during those times.

Send me your 3D work and I can give you an artistic crit on it and offer suggestions for making a portfolio. If you're in the United States, I can suggest some schools. Try the DVDs for learning how to apply what you might learn in a school to making actual assets. They're expensive (I think like $70.00 apiece or something like that), but some of them are well worth the expense. Unlike most art colleges/3D programs, these guys are top level pros giving instruction and it's a great resource. Sorry to any college folks there, but I'm just telling it straight. College is a great resource for learning programs and generally learning to learn, but I think for actually building a portfolio, you'll need to expand where you look. CGchat.com is a good resource for getting critiques and seeing how other people are doing.

So... I hope I can be of help. Send along your work and we can go from there. If you're just starting out, dig in your pockets and pay for a class of some kind. Even a poor one will get you started and help you decide where to go next. Any questions you have of me, I'll be happy to write back.

To answer your question, a normal map is similar to a bump map. It contains directional information in it so that it reacts to light and gives a surface an appearance of depth. If you paint them in 2D, you paint like a bump... Dark goes in and white goes out. When you run the filter, it converts it to this, "purple'ish rainbowey" looking thing that will work in game to achieve the effect. It is commonly used for things like pores on a character's face or scales. Anything that needs to pop too far off the character's body is going to need to made with actual geometry. It's a bit gross of a name, but look at www.poopinmymouth.com That guy has had some fairly clear tutorials of some of the techniques used in games. His work is also a pretty standard bar/presentation for game artists looking for work. By standard, I don't mean low quality. I mean that it's a clear presentation with professional level work and looks like what most companies are expecting/hoping to see coming in from candidates.

[Brittons]

Sorry... I accidentally deleted what DVDs I was talking about. I'm talking about the workshop, instructional DVDs. Google them and you'll find what you're looking for.

[Brittons]

Hey... I'm definately interested in looking over your work, so send some of the things you're putting towards a game-art portfolio along and I can give you feedback. I would be able to help you this way.