What do you do?
A typical day varies from project to project.
Usually when we come in the morning, we have a talk
to see how the project is going, how busy the schedule
is, and what we’ll be doing. Then I start drawing,
sketching, animating, or building assets, all depending
on what I have to do. I would be given assets to do
and a schedule. I would talk to the supervisors and
they would tell me that I need to a car, or a walking
character or an aeroplane.
For example, in a fighting game, we start with some
basic moves - we’d start with a punch, a walk
forward, a walk back, and a block – four or five
movements – very basic stuff. Once we get that
down, we are given a whole lot of renders from the 3D
version of the game. I scale them down, pick out a rough
look on how it’s going to fit on the screen. Then
I start doing some basic animations – punch, walk
back. And then we had a look and said "well ok,
well this is a bit too much" we had a bit too many
frames in the movements and the phone couldn't quite
handle it. So we had to scale it down further to make
it very simple very basic.
Once we’ve worked that out and we’re happy,
we move on to variations for each movement - like for
the long punch, there’s the variations –
long punch, high punch, low block, high block. And on
we go, move by move.
How did you get to where you are today?
This is my first job as an artist in the games industry.
Before that I was studying. After school I went and
did a course in classical animation – that’s
hand-drawn Disney-type of thing. There are two main
types, 2D animation and 3D animation. This course focused
mainly on 2D style. I did that for three years, and
after that I realised that I really love animation,
but I didn’t actually want to work in it at that
stage. Then I saw that my 2D and 3D skills translated
really well to games. I saw that it was basically 2D
art and sprites, which is what I’m doing now here
at IronMonkey Studios.
What skills are necessary for you
to do your job?
The mains skills are drawing and painting.
The painting is very important, especially in 2D and
texture work. You have to do a lot of painting, sketching,
talking to other artists for insights and advice.
How important was your education/training?
It was very important. For one it helped me narrow
down what I wanted to do. I learned what I enjoyed more
and I understood what I can to do. Because of that,
it gave me a clearer direction. We
did a lot of drawing in the course. We drew pretty much
every day, eight hours a day. It was a lot of work and
a lot of practice. It definitely helped me. Also, working
in an environment in a creative field, you have to socialise
and have to be able to discuss ideas.
Where do you see your career going?
I would love to create different types of art. This
is a cool job because every project you get to do something
new. So I just want to continue drawing and continue
making interesting games and entertainment for others
to enjoy.
What advice would you give to someone
wanting to enter the games industry?
Number one thing is just draw.
Then try to make friends with people
that do similar things to what you want to do. They
will inspire you every day and will
challenge you and you can talk about
it and discuss it and you’ll grow very quickly
if you are in an environment with creative individuals.
They’ll push you, they’ll push the limits,
and that’s great.
Watch movies and cartoons,
and see what’s popular and what people like or
what people play these days.
Use your imagination. Like when you're
sitting on a train, you literally see thousands of environments
and you can just start imagining what would happen in
that environment. Let’s say you see a building
and you say ‘what would it be like if there was
a bus on top of the building, or what would happen if
an aeroplane was flying by’? That’s very
complex to draw, of course. But try to memorize
even simple things such as interesting colour patterns.
Sometime you see a sticker and it’s scratched
off at the edges and you say ‘wow, that would
be cool in my scene where a poster is hanging off and
it’s all scratched off’. Look at everything.
There is just so much information around,
especially on the Internet.
To get my foot in the door, it was my portfolio.
The three years I spent as an animator I drew a lot.
This is most important.
Also, be flexible. In the games industry
you have to be able to do 2D/3D, fantasy, or science
fiction. What if your next project asked you be able
to draw a hip-hop style characters or robots? You have
to be flexible and enjoy it as well.
Just don’t stop yourself from drawing and learning.
Don’t give up and stay
persistent. Good luck.
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