GDC 2013: Jati's Notes

Post date: Apr 01, 2013 1:15:14 PM

VFX Roundtable Part 1:

    So it’s Thursday and I am currently sitting across 20 industry heads for VFX. I’m talking about not only lead VFX artists, but also lead art directors from such companies such as Sony Santa Monica, 343 Industries, Blizzard, Epic, and many more.  One of the main topics of discussion was of course many technical ways of not only improving the visual quality of effects but to also optimize them for better game performance. Something that I am looking forward to playing around with in the next couple of weeks is the idea of a more procedural and modular system for effects. This would effectively increase the effectiveness of level designers, as it is often times their job to place the effects in the level. One way to achieve this that was completely mind-blowing was to create flipbook animations of uv coordinates. Essentially you could drive any texture through the animation of uv coordinates to effectively create endless variation of effects. Looking forward to playing with that in the near future.

VFX Roundtable part 2:

            A topic of discussion that was brought up at the roundtables was the current state of students pursuing effects and the job market for effects artists. Currently in the game industry, there is a very large demand for effects artists, as the amount of environment artists, character artists, and concept artists continue to skyrocket. Some of the reasoning that was presented at the roundtables was that many of the new game colleges do not have a program that emphasis the study of effects. Thus, it has a large generational and hole in the industry for effects artists. To better illustrate this point, I was walking around the expo floor for the past three days of GDC and many of the recruiters stated that I was the only student who wanted to be an effects artist that they have seen. It is obvious now that the demand for VFX artists is real and that is something that I will be capitalizing on as I continue my education in effects.

            Irrational Games called me over while I was working the booth to get a portfolio review. When I was there, Jeremy Griffith, an alumni from our school reviewed my work and gave me a lot of pointers. At the end of the session, he relayed me some information about a potential position of VFX intern that might pop up so I am hopeful for that.

            After going to Riot about 5 times to search for one particular person. I was able to meat the head VFX artist at Riot. She looked through my portfolio I was pleasantly surprised that she liked my work and decided to give me an art test. This art test will hopefully lead to a position at Riot as a VFX intern as that (as well as the other offers) jumpstart my career.

How important is it to go to GDC as a sophomore:

As someone who had came to GDC as a sophomore and now has returned as a Junior, I find that going as a Sophomore is just as if not more beneficial to coming as a Junior. What I have found is that by going as a Sophomore, you are able to make contacts BEORE the year you go to GDC to find possible links to internships. By meeting people one year beforehand, I have had contacts to work with this year. I was also able to show growth to a couple of companies, which gave me even more opportunities to obtain more valuable connections. Next year, I will recommend every sophomore if they have the chance to go to GDC so that they can get a jumpstart on their career because everyone knows it’s all about who you know in the game industry.

Thoughts on competition: What I saw in other people’s portfolio’s:

First thing that I learned at GDC is never be a designer. If you go around with a designer’s portfolio, it is almost impossible to get a job. What I also learned was that many other schools do not have the same standards of quality that Ringling has in their student portfolio’s. I don’t know whether that means Ringling fails most of the ones that don’t succeed earlier then others, but generally Ringling has a step higher quality then most. One school however to watch out for, is Digipen, whose work that I have seen rivals ours in terms of quality.

What I took away from Bungie’s Destiny:

In a way, a lot of the things they talked about very much related to my concerns during prepro. During Bungie’s talk, both the narrative director and the art director both showcased the vast amount of exploration that occurred during the previz phase of the project. It goes to show, that solid prepro is going to give you the best chance to produce good work. The amount of time given at Ringling College to do prepro is abysmally short, too short for any iteration of an idea. I hope that in the future, prepro will be changed to further emphasize the importance of getting enough time for at least 3 cycles of iteration of all aspects of design.

   Destiny also showed us the power of postcards, powerful imagery that really capture the essence and power of the world that you are trying to create. Using postcards, Bungie was able to show artists and designers the general path that should be taken, but allow them the freedom to be creative and design based off those cards. In a lot of ways, it is a much more effective means of ideating a video game instead of creating extremely long and not needed design docs that no one ever reads anyways. I know that in the future, I am going to try and infuse postcards into my own thesis as a means of communication.