Talking about the industry (11/11/2013)

* To start with our lecturer decided to talk to us about the industry. I made the following notes from this interesting and reassuring talk as our lecturer seems really dedicated and wants us to do well. As a result, I feel more at ease with my possibilities and understand the industry a bit better.

• Our work will be assessed on national levels. So we shouldn't compare ourselves to others in the room, instead we should concentrate on our work and put in as much hard work as possible. After all, we are graded for completing the tasks, not just for who is the best in the group.
• He would love to hear feedback from us about the course so we shouldn't be afraid to voice our opinions.
• He advised that we shouldn't be afraid to make mistakes! After all, how else are we meant to learn?

* He asked us all what we wanted to do in the future and listed a number of roles called out by us. I responded with Game Designer, Narrative, Animation and Acting.  I had also thought about Games' Tester/QA before I then remembered all that involves is tedious amounts of repeated actions, thus I wouldn't want to do this as I feel this would ruin my experience and opinion of gaming.

Knowing what we were interested in the lecturer then went on to give us advice on each one.

• Think how we can use our skills in order to attract the games' industry e.g. show your art and share your created music etc.
• In terms on how useful a character pro-filer is, it varies from game to game. Sometimes it is up to the artist to draw characters first and then give them personalities afterwards. Other times it is up to the narrative writers to create the concept for characters and their personalities before handing them over to the artists to design. Then of course it may depend on whether or not a games' company want to try out a new piece of tech or game play.
• Writers tend to be hired only if they have some sort of writing experience. Therefore, I may well want to publish a book or two in the future as I have always wanted to, so as to get the games' industries attention.
• Even the Lego games that I enjoy so much employed writers at a time when they were only telling their stories through mime. The writers would do this by coming up with story boards that would clearly explain the narrative without words whilst being funny. The reason he brought this up was because one of his previous students now works for 'Travelers Tales', the same company that makes the Lego games. He hopes to bring them in for a lecture one day. This would be great as I would love to work for them if I could and hearing how to from one of them would be exciting! I may even wish to try and email the company or even the student in order to ask what they look for in new employees. After all, I don't know till I ask.
• Actors tend to be hired later in the process of developing a game from outside sources. Though sometimes employees of the games' company may get given small NPC rolls. Thus, if I do ever get a job in the games' industry I could tell my boss that I am interested and hopefully get something that way.
• When coming up with game ideas write them down in game design documents so as to make sure the reader fully understands the idea and can easily find the areas that interest them most. Though it is best to do two fully detailed pages as you can make your idea more assertive, clearer and not so daunting for the reader to process. Visual evidence and a Hollywood pitch also helps in this case as these pull in your readers.
• When pitching ideas you could create a video consisting of both your own 3D models and animation alongside clips from existing things in order to create something completely new and interesting to watch, whilst also showing your audience what the game would be about.

* Later I carried on modelling my face as seen below. Making sure to use the 'Weld' and 'Bridge' tools in order to connect certain pieces together.

* We also learnt today that we may get a new tutor next term to further help us with our 3D modelling skills.

* We were then set two tasks. One was to draw twenty character designs of ourselves from various games in order to experiment with different styles and have fun with the possibilities of the sort of characters we could animate. After all, he wants us to be creative and inspired so as to put in as much effort as possible. The more we put in the more we will get out of our work.

* The second task is to complete the whole 3D model by the 25th of November.