Catherine Farinas GDC write up

Post date: Mar 16, 2017 9:0:7 PM

            This year was my second time attending GDC, so I had a pretty good grasp on how to divide up my time and what to expect. I flew out on monday, and arrived tuesday. Since i had an expo floor pass, I couldn't go to the floor and spent the afternoon meeting up with Alumni and friends, catching up on how they are and how it is to be employed in the industry straight out of college.  That night I went to the polycount party and ended up at the Github party. There,  I met other students and shared interests and workflows over beer and Wand Wars. It was pretty fun! I learned about the pipeline of soundtrack making and audio, and the frustrations of having to be put on a project last. After Github, I went to the Tripwire party, and met the creative director for Killing Floor. That was awesome! I love killing floor and It was interesting to hear that he first worked on Paladins before moving over to Tripwire. We exchanged cards and I went back to the GitHub party.

            Day one of the convention I ended up not going to the Crystal Dynamics mixer, as the line was awfully long and seemingly unmoving. I ditched and went to see the floor instead. On south side I talked to multiple small VR companies and a few other small scale companies. I ended up making a couple valuable connections, and potential contracting work with them. I also went to a talk on how the shaders for Destiny were created, but that ended up being a much more technical talk than an art oriented one, so that was a struggle to get through but ultimately I was able to get the gist of what the blueprint and material editor equivalent would be to what they were saying, so it was worthwhile.

            Thursday and Friday were mostly oriented towards portfolio reviews and going to talks. I got reviewed by Studio WildCard which eventually turned into an art test, HardSuit Labs who ended up wanting people who did much more hyperrealistic style, and SixFoot who were exclusively looking for veterans of the industry. Oh well.

            One talk that I attended that really blew my mind was the art of Street Fighter and creating art for fighting games. I had always enjoyed the art style of Street Fighter, so seeing how they went about maintaining an art style that was so close to the concept art was amazing. The concept that was really interesting to me is how they handled their normal maps, to create a stylized look rather than the diffuse! Here is a picture for those who haven't seen SFV before. They sculpt out their characters and bake to get a normal, but then instead of hand painting their diffuse textures they run filters over it in photoshop so that the light affects the shape and color instead! that's crazy! They also strategically pose their characters to cater to the "audience" camera, as the game is contained in a single 2D space. Other basics include keeping in mind and maintaining a strong and unique silhouette per character, and exaggerating parts of the character that are iconic and ultimately lead to a better visual gameplay experience.