I’m now at the
halfway point of this year, and the course as a whole and I think it may now be
time to start thinking about specializing in a specific art discipline. I don’t
what to set myself on a narrow path now, but I think I need to start seriously
considering what I want to do in industry.
Last term we had an
incredible guest lecture and workshop from concepts artists: Mitch Small and
the head of Codemasters concepting, Mitch is a previous student of our course,
and is now a concept artist for Codemasters. Out of all of the disciplines of
game art: Environment, UI, VFX, vehicle, character and concept artists,
concepting is by far the hardest to get into, as there are so few required, in
comparison to other artists. During the talk they mentioned the sizes of the
art teams within the company, and by far, environment artists outnumbered any
other team, with ten times the amount as in the concept team. They also
mentioned specialized teams within the art department, including a very
specialized weapons team, but what I found most interesting was their vehicle team’s
work. As Codemasters work primarily on racing games, they have a dedicated
vehicle team, which design and model all of their games vehicles. I found this
very appealing, as the team uses their knowledge and passion for motor vehicles
to design and model more convincing cars. This is very evident in Dirt 3, where
the level of detail in the vehicles not just graphically, but technically is
astounding. Also the design aspect is very exciting, as to design convincing
rally cars for instance, a level of expertise is needed, from knowing about
automotive design trends, engineering ,race homologation , vehicle dynamics and
racing history. For me, doing that as a job would encompass all of my passions,
and to be able to capitalise on something I have an interest, hobby and passion
is immensely exciting. So currently my idea of a dream job is a lead vehicle
artist/designer at any racing game studio, namely Codemasters, Rockstar north,
Criterion Games, evolution studios, Studio Liverpool, slightly mad studios, sumo
digital or reflections. Another great fact is since Gran Turismo 5 was a bigger
let down than Disney Land Scunthorpe, Britain is the only county in the world
who makes awesome racing games now, so surely, if I can get myself up to a
professional standard at modelling vehicles, I should be able to work into a
job. It’s probably not going to be that easy to put it lightly, but I can give
it a good stab.
Whatever I chose, I do need to still be aware that of I
do specialize to get into industry, when I’m there, my future isn’t set in
stone, and moving around disciplines and companies is inevitable.
