The Games Industry – Practice your Games Industry Art Here

[Seedling]

So you want to get a job in the games industry. Wonderful! But where to begin? There’s a bit of a gap in higher education between school and a job. Various colleges are rushing to fill that gap, but colleges move slowly – possibly too slowly for you. Perhaps you are stuck in a college program that isn’t focused on games. Or, you’re out of college and feeling your way along on your own. Or maybe you are still in highschool. Wherever you are, I would like to help you. To that end, I have been putting information about the games industry in the Employment Discussion subforum:

Game Art – Advice From Someone In the Industry

Others in the games industry have been sharing their knowledge there as well. If you want to get an insider’s perspective on the industry, it’s right there for you; and if you are an insider and have something you would like to share, please do!

In that thread I have been suggesting assignments that I feel will help you to learn the skills that you need to get into the games industry, as well as fill your portfolio. They are thoroughly unorganized, and they range from easy and quick to complex and long-term. The mediums involved span everything from 3D modeling programs to paper. They are:


Assignment #1 - Analyze a Game Environment
Assignment #2 – Monsters and Concepts
Assignment #3 – Establish an Exercise Routine
Assignment #4 – Draw a Chair
Assignment #5 – Carousel
Assignment #6 – Photorealism
Assignment #7 – Composition
Assignment #8 – From Observation to Concept Art
Assignment #9 – Game Mod
Assignment #10 – Rocky Environment
Assignment #11 – Low-Poly Doo-Dads
Assignment #12 – Make a Dull Assignment Fun
Assignment #13 - Paintover
Assignment #14 - Modular Dungeon Pieces
Assignment #15 - Trees

Care to try out an assignment and share your results here? Or do you have other art that you want to make that you think will help you get into the games industry? Just refining your portfolio a bit before applying for a job? Still have years of work ahead of you? Whatever level you are at, this space is for you. Share what you have made, critique and get critiqued, and meet up with your future coworkers here!

[Stupidity'sUglyHead]

This is my drawing for A#2! Im awaitin the Blue Severins drawing.

[Tec]

Assignment #1 - Analyze a Game Environment



this is my attempt to create a lava-environment for disgaea2....i tried to resemble the chessboard-like layout of this game and created simple ground planes, which could easily be built with a small amout of polygons

btw: thanks for your great engagement to create this kind of advice/practice ......i'm a bit busy atm, but i hope to finish some more of your assignments in the future...this is some really helpful stuff

[Seedling]

Woot! *happy dance* Bonus points for you two for starting things off here! Sorry it took me a couple of days to get caught up.


SUH - I’ve made some comments on this before, so I apologize for any redundancy. For the design of the creature, overall he’s pretty good. I do recommend that you take a look at the anatomy of the hind legs of a quadruped, such as a horse, and rework this fella’s legs before proceeding to the model. The reason is that no existing animal stands on legs that folded. If this guy has the weight of a human, he would get very tired very quickly holding himself in that sort of crouch.

For the purpose of using this drawing as a background for the modeler to follow, then it would be best if the hands were palms-down, or palm forward. At the moment, one is rotated too far upward and one is rotated too far downward. Also, even if you really want the legs to be so bent in this guy’s regular standing post, in this sort of guide drawing he should still be drawn with his legs more extended, and his feet flat on the ground.

If Blue has already started modeling, then don’t worry about making these changes. Instead, make sure he gives you lots of feedback on what it is like working from the drawing, including what is and isn’t easy to model, based on the information you have given him. His feedback will be more helpful than anything else I could blather. :-)


Tec – This is a great example of designing for an existing engine! I don’t know which Disgaea this is intended for, but there are some questions I have about how this would work. For instance, can the individual squares be bent in the middle? I don’t remember if they do that in either version. Also, is the large volcano made up of four squares? Also, what about the sides of the cubes? In Disgaea 2, in the most basic item levels there are tiles for the tops, tiles for the sides, and a strip of pattern along the edge. (I can’t remember if they did the same in Disgaea 1, though.)

Any way, this is a fine effort. :-) Good color choices. And I particularly like that you came up with monsters that are a part of the environment!

[Unbreakable]

I think this falls under assignment 13A draw and then paintover an environment. Tryed to take advantage of Djobuk's advice and used some textures. It's pretty quick

[Inkfish]

Thanks Seedling for this great opportunity to learn!

I choose Diablo 2 to be the subject of the first assignment. I've never done anything like this, so crits are more than welcome. I tried to add some details to the picture, but i didn't have enough time to add as many as i'd liked, so i stuck to the non interactive enviroment.

[Seedling]

Great work Inkfish and Unbreakable! (And my apologies for not checking back here sooner!)

Unbreakable – Now you’ve got me all curious to know the story behind this grungy bunker! Is it underground? Civilian or military? Currently inhabited, or abandoned long ago? What year was this place built, and what year was the computer made? (Having just watched the first three episodes of the second season of Lost, the thought of an old computer in a grungy bunker gives me the willies! ;-) Should this room inspire dread, like a ghost story, or a feeling that this is the safest place to be because somewhere above bombs are falling?

I like the red light and the grungy details on the walls. Was the assignment fun?


Inkfish – nice work! Ah Diablo 2, hacky slashy goodness! What you have drawn certainly looks like it belongs in the game. Hey, that human scale reference dood looks like the one I use! ;-)

One thing that you can use to have some fun with this type of drawing is text. If you have thoughts on how these elements should be used, you can always write your thoughts in the margins, and draw arrows. If you want to iterate on this, you can also take a copy and scribble in monsters or decorative elements or lighting changes.

Cheers!

[ScaryPotato]

Wow, I can't believe I didn't see this forum before, what an excellent idea! It's just what I am looking for anyhow, so I will try taking part in all of these things in the near future!

[Seedling]

Awesome! I can't wait to see what you make, Scary Potato! :-)

[Justin.]

OH!!! Those Maya things are awesome! I have always wanted one of those. If we made a thread full of them, that would totally rock!

[ArtZealot]

some of my stuff. i'm not in the games industry yet, but goin to school for game art and design:

[Blue Severin]

sorry about the turn around time, Stupidity, but here's my end of the creature trade.



@ artzealot: cool stuff man. I'd push the contrast in your creature piece, at least in the creature. Get on board and do some activities with us.

[Seedling]

Sorry guys, I suck: I keep forgetting to stop by this thread. Bad me.

Justin – You mean those gawdawful 3D things I threw together in Maya? :-P Heehe – those were unofficially the last thing I got to do in Maya before turning over my dongle. *sniffle* *happy dance*

ArtZealot – I dig the environments. And the Body Bandit is thoroughly gross! ;-) The arms on the quadruped strike me as a bit too human, but he’s got a great face. Cyclopcow! Does she moo with only one “o”?

Blue – Hehee, that looks a bit like Mike Wazosky from Monsters Inc., only meaner. I could see him being a lot of fun to animate, bouncing around on his hands, and maybe tripping and rolling now and then. Or better yet, climbing trees. That way he could use those arms as leverage when he grabs someone with those teeth.

[Farvus]

Nice job guys. I finally decided to take first assignment and I think Diablo 1 is perfect for the beginnining. Simple levels, Isometric view, Few elements.

First I made sketches, then painted painted bricks based on them. Finally I constructed simple room from these (everything is a bit skewed but it's more like example of level ). I also made Sketchup model and used those tiles as textures. All this stuff took me about 3,5 hours.

***Assignment #1 - Analyze a Game Environment***

[Seedling]

And you’ve even got the translucent near-walls in there! Geat job!

This is a really good example of where you want your work to be if designing for a game level. You’ve got the necessary parts in place. Now you’re free to mess around with aesthetic changes. Color would be the best place to have a little fun here. If you’ve worked in layers you can do some quick experiments to see what sort of effect other color combination would have in this space. What variants would make the walls stand out, or the pillars, etc.?

Also, if you have a saved game of Diablo on hand, you could grab a screenshot and cut-and-paste your characters or some monsters into your space, to see how they look.

Cheers! :-)

[ArtZealot]

u spelled labyrinth wrong Farvus.

[Thaelys]

I initially posted this in Seedling's concept art 101 thread, but it should go here
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Here's one of the characters I'm working on that relates to the "character design" assignment. I'm actually drawing a set of 8 characters for an EQ2 guild group portrait. However, my approach is like reverse enginneering. I get a screenshot the player's in game character, then the player gives me a a few ideas of what they want that character to REALLY look like. I've included a few costume ideas specific to the character, as well as an elven ear study (LOL). One of the characters is a "catman" so that should be a fun one.

[InFlux]

heres a map im working on for halo custom edition.
obviously its a WIP and im still trying different textures/UVW/etc...

renders:








suggestions?

[Seedling]

Nice work guys!

Thaelys –to help make what you are doing more clear, it might be useful to have a screenshot of the original model next to your re-design.

InFlux – Ooh, shiny! Be sure to spend as much time as possible looking at the space from a player’s perspective. Think about where you want the players to go and how you can lead them there. “Fun” is more important than “pretty”. Some of those open spaces look like they’re going to need obstacles in them.

[InFlux]

InFlux – Ooh, shiny! Be sure to spend as much time as possible looking at the space from a player’s perspective. Think about where you want the players to go and how you can lead them there. “Fun” is more important than “pretty”. Some of those open spaces look like they’re going to need obstacles in them.

i have it ingame already as a few test plays and its fun to play. i think it looks bigger in renders becuase of the buildings but i think its perfect.
the map is designed to have 4 "clash" points (each base and 2 parts in the middle) so it should be fun in an 8v8 ctf game or something. also alot of the empty spaces will be filled with scenery (added with the game editor)

[Seedling]

Cool. :-) I have never played Halo, so I'm sure you have a better feel for what its engine does than I do.

I'm currently sculpting another landscape, myself. Mountains and gullies and whatnot. . . I have a thing for maze-like spaces that get players lost, and I think I went a bit overboard with that today. But I do so love torturing them. . . ;-)

[InFlux]

Seedling what kind of game artist are you? 3d environments? also where do you work?

[Seedling]

Hi Influx! I work at a company called Turbine, working on Dungeons and Dragons Online. For the past several years I've been modeling and texturing environment art, and recently I've been allowed to play with the designers building dungeons and (my specialty) big honkin' landscapes. :-)

[Sacretis]

Hi Influx! I work at a company called Turbine, working on Dungeons and Dragons Online. For the past several years I've been modeling and texturing environment art, and recently I've been allowed to play with the designers building dungeons and (my specialty) big honkin' landscapes. :-)

Hey, is there any chance of us seeing any of that art? Are you still under a NDA from D&D Online now that it's been released? I love seeing professional environmental art...

Sacretis

[Seedling]

Hey, is there any chance of us seeing any of that art?

Oh! Um, I don't have any screenshots on hand, and I'm kinda not sure if I would have to go through the marketing department to post pics from the game. But there's a free trial version:

http://trial.ddo.com/

Google could probably find you some pics of the game. If it's a desert landscape or a jungle landscape, then I had a hand in it.

:-)

[JanW]

Hi guys, my name is Jan Weßbecher and I'm from Germany.
I recently joined a hobby mmorpg project to have some training
besides my school activities to reach my goal: becoming
a concept artist .

I'd like to thank you Seedling. I'm always pleased to see people who
care for those who are on their way and need advise.

So here I go. It's a concept for a Guard from a desertnation.

[ScaryPotato]

Okay, well after pretty much forever, I finally have something to show from a thing I've been working on! There isn't any sketches or the like as I'm at work, and tend not to hang onto my doodles for years and years but trust me, a lot of design work and brainstorming went into creating this. It isn't near being done as learning the code part of it is more time consuming than I thought it would be, but if anyone is interested in playing a work in progress game, here is an address for the culmination of my work!

http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?s...Adventure+Apes

I realize that it might not be allowed to show stuff other than typical art in these forums, but I do think that it would be interesting for people to see that even an individual is able to see their ideas come to be something than just concepts If there is a rule against posting a link to another site, or to a game (wholly made by me), please remove this post and accept my most humble apologies!

[CopticMike]

Hey JanW that looks awesome, great stuff, I especially love the Diablo Art, big fan. I just got an Idea these past few days about a contest, Game concept artists or any artists will have the chance to participate in contests similar to the ones we have, but it will be simple ideas such as props, weapons, monsters and creatures, main characters, various environments. Anyway im gonna start a seperate thread