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Thursday I got the chance to go to the Tom Raider camera talk where Remi Lacoste talked about how he was the only camera designer in the team and that it is very rare to find camera designers in the industry. Usually this type of task is left up to a programmer or game designer and most of the time the camera ends up disengaging the player from the game experience with common glitches such as the camera going inside the character if the camera hits a wall or the camera usually having trouble with collision. Most importantly he talked about how the camera is able to bring emotion to the player by completely immersing them in the experience.

 The way you accomplish this is by strategically and artistically moving and aiming the camera to either create an emotion in the player or emphasize an objective or goal. The camera also influences other professions in the studio.

For example he talked about how he wanted the player to feel the height and danger of climbing a very tall communications tower, but the stair up was inside the tower, so he had to ask the environment artist to place it outside so that the camera could easily showcase the dangerous height at which the player is at.

I also got the chance to go to a talk by Andrew Maximov who is the environment artist who did the “Desert-UDK” environment with nearly no textures and procedural generated additional detail. He talked about beauty in games and how little the actual execution of assets matter as long as you have subject, color, lighting, scale/detail, and composition. 

He shared an example of how in a less detail painting every one of those elements were there, making the painting absolutely beautiful. The question then became, why go any further than that? Especially in this day in age where time and money are a big one, as long as you master those key elements, there is little benefit to going all out on execution.

Still frame from my “Beauty” Lecture, image by Zhu Haibo

I also had a chance to get my portfolio torn apart by Wyeth Johnson, Art Director from Epic games. Getting my portfolio torn apart felt absolutely great, especially since my growth as an artist here at Ringling, I was able to understand every single one of his critiques and be able to agree and nod my head and see what I’d need to make each and every one of my pieces superior thanks to his critiques. They were spot on. A key critique that stuck with me primarily relating to hard surface models: Model as if you were able to actually physically build the object and be functional. Some of my detail was purely there for ascetics, which works in some cases but in most hard surfacing, there is usually a reason for that detail. 

An insight for everyone at next GDC. Fridays, everyone has sent the word out that you should not go to the career floor because of students. The students have also learned this so they now buy the $200 pass and go on Wednesday and Thursday. Professionals also go during these days. During the same day Friday, there is also a massive portfolio review at a different hall where everyone lines up. Thus, Friday is actually the best day to go, much shorter lines, that is unless this gets out and reverses back to normal.