In 1989, the silicon baby started growing into a monster. The consumer was gobbling up hardware and software faster than companies could churn them out. Like every company in the industry, developers were desperate to find good people; good talented people. If you had any art experience, digital experience or even if you’ve ever been in the same room with a computer, you were as good as hired. Conversely, employers began to bend over backwards to keep good people; stock options, training, bonuses, raises…

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GameCareerGuide.com, Gamasutra’s game education sister site, put out a stellar article from Robert Chang of iWin about what’s involved in being an Art Director. Robert started off doing textures and concept art for various companies, and soon became an art director, but later left game industry in 2001 to pursue his own projects. With years of experience and having returned to game industry as a studio art director at a game development and publishing house, Robert has great advice for any game artists aspiring to advance their careers.

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In Adam Capone’s last two entries, Know Your Assets and Diffuse and Normals, he covered the basics any texture artist should know about the process of making textures and the skills you’ll need. In this final how-to piece, he covers specular extra map techniques with a closing on final stages and more advice about how to get ahead in your career.

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Wes Jenkins, a catch-all media industry veteran, gives us a flash of the past in the first part in his mini-history of interactive media artists. “A full knowledge of art (drawing, perspective, color theory, layout and anatomy) was critical. Typically, these skills were gained by a long stretch in art school and the associated drinking.”

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Much like the Elans, a few golden games led the way for most of the awards at the 8th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards. Valve’s unique genre-crossing puzzle shooter Portal took away Game of the Year, Innovation, and Best Game Design. The Best Visual Art award went to Boston/2K Australia’s BioShock, which also won Best Audio and Best Writing.

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Award season is upon us for 2007 titles! The 2nd Annual Elans, the Canadian Awards for the Electronic and Animated Arts, recently announced the winners for their wide range of game and animation categories divided by commercial titles and student projects. Awards covered everything from writing to design to art to music.

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When I began employment at WayForward in 2001, I was the only female among the 12-20 employees (at that time). This wasn’t a role I sought, as it can be uncomfortable to be the only one. But the animation program I went through in college was about 80% male, so I was used to the ratio. There isn’t much difference between men and women in a work environment.
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If you’re looking at what kind of classes to take, basic drawing and design courses are critical. Drawdrawdraw. Take figure drawing, because that will likely be the best visual training you’ll ever get. If you draw the human body wrong, it’s very obvious, so it forces you to do two key things well: observe what is really in front of you (rather than your mental concept of what should be there), and make visual choices well for putting down the details of a drawing.
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Last week I talked about assets, mapping, and light bake in Know Your Assets. Currently in industry, meshes are far more complicated and require various other maps, which in some cases require different tools from one another, so I’ve put together a breakdown of how I generally work. This week, I’ll talk about Diffuse Map and Normal Map.

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Ever have one of those dreams where you’re decked out in post-nuclear protective gear trying to escape and then you realize you’re stuck in turn-based combat and you have to play out the whole scene in your head? Yeah, well, those of us who played too much Fallout in the dark did. Fallout’s unique 50’s pulp sci-fi style is coming back with the in-development Fallout 3. We were fortunate enough to be directed to Nate Purkeypile, World Artist at Bethesda Softworks, to get word on his personal experience with the project so far. It sounds like he’s enjoying dreaming up nuclear Wasteland grit in high-def quality.

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