GDC 2016- Zaq Schlanger

Post date: Mar 25, 2016 3:1:59 AM

Day 1 in SanFran (Tuesday)

I flew into San Francisco on Tuesday and was fully free to roam by 6:30pm. Since it was my first day, I had no real plans other than go to the Destructoid party which I had gotten confirmed to attend. This is where I learned a valuable bonus lesson before my three observations: Networking in an actual club is not my forte. Trying to yell my information in a deafening room is something that was not particularly easy for me. In addition, trading business cards in the dark was not the best, although all of these problems were tiny and helped me make informed decisions for the rest of GDC: the best after GDC activity for my trip would be held at bars!

Day 2 (Wednesday)

Observation 1: The game industry is not as scary as I had imagined. (Networking and talking)

I spent my entire day walking between the Expo and the Career floor multiple times (6.4 miles actually) checking out booths and talking to whoever I bumped into or had the courage to walk up to. My observation sounds kind of broad so I want to justify it as best as possible. I had my portfolio reviewed officially at High Voltage, Avalanche and by a senior environment artist at Riot at the gamers for good booth. I went into each review unsure what to expect but each one was refreshing and filled me with hope, they were all incredibly nice people and had tons to say to benefit me, whether it was suggestions about what content to include or remove or specifics such as different approaches to lighting my Scifi Workshop, or ways to improve my rock and tree models. After the day was done, I journeyed to the Polycount party, which was at a bar so it was an easier environment to talk in. Everyone was welcoming to conversation and even was willing to look at my work in between sips of refreshments. Because of my experience at my Tuesday party, I decided to skip out on the legendary Epic party and spend my night at the Ringling alumni meetup. Here talking was even easier because of the common school thread and I had a really awesome time chatting with a whole host of graduates and exchanging information. The lesson I learned today was to not be afraid to strike up a conversation and to remember that the people in the industry don’t bite and being able to casually talk to someone really builds a good connection.

Day 3 (Thursday)

Observation 2: Don’t stop believing/ Tech is cool.

My first agenda item was to go to one of the talks I was excited for: Ted Price of Insomniac. He gave a talk about his career in the industry starting out with the very beginning where he decided to make a game called “Disruptor” with one other guy and try to cold call publishers with no avail. Throughout the talk he gave 4 lessons which helped keep the GAD spark alive in me.

• 1. Don’t let the bastards get you down.

  2. Check your ego at the door- You will ignore well intended advice and ultimately fail if you stick to your ego.

  3. Try it, you’ll like it- When given advice or crit, try it, you will most likely realize you had blinders on and like it. If not, at least you tried it and it keeps you more open in the future.

  4. Grab the magic and don’t let it go.- If you love something, hold on and don’t let anyone change your vision, you will lose passion and in crunch, passion fuels the game.

Even though I have heard most of these rules in some form before, hearing them again helped me and made me more confident in my own work and made me more open to advice.

When I say “tech is cool” what I mean is that the new features of Unreal and other software such as Substance are super cool and open new ways to create and make for us. I watched a demo of Unreal’s new feature Sequencer and I immediately fell in love. My biggest issue with Unreal’s cinematic package at the moment is that I still struggle with matinee due to the unruliness of keyframes and the difficulty that comes when you need to move a whole shot. Sequencer brings in features similar to After Effects and Premiere where each set of keyframes is contained within a shot that can be easily moved. The most exciting part for me was the more realistic camera controls and rigs because my previous photography skills can be better applied and creating a shot is more fluid of an operation. Being able to create cinematic shots in Unreal with less headache is always appreciated so I am excited to try sequencer and see what Epic comes up with next.

Day 4 (Friday)

Observation 3 : There is no wrong way to do something & Don’t be afraid of anyone.

Friday was my unwind day of sorts, but I still wanted to roam around the conference, just more so on the expo floor. I sat in on a talk by a character artist from Naughty Dog at the substance booth. He showed his personal workflow in substance to texture a character and I really connected with his workflow because it is similar to mine (although much more refined due to his experience). He comes from a traditional sculpture background where he paints FX makeup using traditional tools and airbrushes. Before I started Ringling, I did some FX makeup myself and when I did the Grunt project in freshmen year at Ringling, I used those skills plus I learned how to use an airbrush from FX makeup videos. I use Substance with the same workflow and manually paint as if I am using an airbrush. I had always thought that I was doing something weird but after seeing his demo, I realized that there are a huge variety of ways to approach any situation. After watching his talk, i built up the courage to talk to him and I mentioned that my background in traditional airbrush helped me with Substance and that I really enjoyed how he worked.

In the beginning of the week I sort of set a challenge for myself which was to find anyone who worked at any branch of Bioware and talk to them. Not only was Bioware one of the companies that inspired me to join Game art, but since i am interning with Bioware in the upcoming summer, I wanted to talk to anyone who would either be in the Austin office or at the company in general. I found a cluster of Bioware people on Friday and I immediately struck up a conversation with them about an hour before the floor closed. As it turns out, two of them will be with me in Austin, one as one of my bosses, and the other working in the sound department. We had an interesting conversation about the industry stealing our souls but we all agreed it was mostly worth it :) It was a very fun conversation in the end. This was another example of “don’t be afraid of anyone” because once I overcame my anxiety of joining a conversation in progress, it was a thrilling experience.