Sunday 27 April 2014

ANALYSIS INTO A JOB ROLE: 3D CHARACTER ARTIST

    For this blog post, I’m going to be analysing a job role for a Concept Artist. I’ve always loved to draw characters, exploring worlds, with its plant life and animals, how the architecture formed and how the economy grew to support it. Gods and Religion. Weapons and wars. Understanding how patterns form between all these elements and implementing them, forming a realistic culture.
    Now the reason I’m rambling about what I like to draw is in one of our seminars, we were asked what our dream jobs would be and how we would act upon trying to reach it. Our tutors recommended that we look at the companies we played most of their games from, and ultimately my favourite companies came down to Valve and Bethasda.
    I’m a massive Fallout 3 fan, I’ve put 100s of hours into walking the Washington Wasteland. A waste of time for some as I could have been doing something more productive, but I enjoyed it. All of it. Fighting super mutants. Raiding raiders dens. and exploring the wasteland for supplied. But this wasn’t the only Bestheda world I inhabited. I lived in Cyrodiil as a rich Khajiit in Skingard and helped to stop the return of Molog Bal. And lived in Solitude in Skyrim as a Dovahkiin High Elf with my Wizard Husband.
    I’ve escaped from Black Mesa, defeated the leader of the first wave of combine forces on Xen. I’ve escaped from City 17, then went back again to save the people enslaved by Dr. Breen. Escaped the explosion of the Combine tower, before trying to get contact with a large headquaters of the rebels. I’ve completed tests after tests, defeated an psychotic A.I.

    So looking at these two companies jobs, I ended up choosing 3D Character artist from the Valve Corporation.

[1] http://www.valvesoftware.com/jobs/job_postings.html

   
Breaking down the Role:

    This job asks for a wide range of skills and understanding of numerous elements relating the usage of media, both traditional and digital, as well as understanding the application and ability to apply the fundamentals of art, being form, shape, colour, light, mark making and composition.
    The job also asked for five or more years of modelling experience in film or games, meaning that I’ll need to amass an online presence, and portfolio showing my ability of modelling, texturing, optimised UV spaces, and the wireframe. I also need to show my concepting, how I came to the final idea, and any issues that appeared in the application of turning a 2D plane into a 3D sculpture, this maybe the effect of gravity on hair, or the head’s movement being inhibited by a piece of armour.
    The hardware needed for this job ranges from understanding HTML code to using Adobe Flash. As I did two years of Graphic Design, I’m quite familiar with Adobe Illustrator and InDesign. Adobe Photoshop is another software I’m quite fluent in. I need to be able to use shortcuts in ZBrush and Mudbox, saving time whenever I can.
    I’ll need knowledge in art. Different art movements throughout the years, using bits I like from them. Being able to emulate the style if needed.
    The ability to be able to collaborate with others, revise and improve characters quickly yet still maintain a high standard.
    As I would be collaborating with team members, I need to improve on being more well spoken and maybe softer spoken to come across a bit more relaxed. I also need to become a bit more mature to other people's emotions.

My goals:
- Improve on all work
- Become better at optimisation of UV spaces
- Become better at producing low-poly typology on surfaces via getting rid of typology that doesn’t affect the overall silhouette of the object or person, and implement interesting and realistic textures (This depends on the style I’ll be told to implement).
- Improve on anatomy. Muscle structure, skin tension and flow, and finally skeleton structure in humans and animals.
- Being able to communicate my thoughts and feelings about a concept without it coming across as being confusing or rambling.
- Become better at rigging, and understanding what causes deformation and how to correct it.
- My most important goal is to get faster.

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