I had a month to play around, sort of, and so I wound up focusing on my 2D digital art and I took a few commissions. I may take another few during the winter break. They're crazy fun and I really learned some new techniques. In order from my earliest two months ago to the latest:
The fandoms/genres include Star Trek, Star Wars, steampunk noir, and original characters I received commissions for.
I learned to paint hair and metal and wrinkles and scars and PATTERNS... that patterning down the front of the dress was FUN. I learned glass. My proportions are improving. My color theory's getting better. I TOTALLY USED REFERENCES AND I'M NOT AFRAID TO SAY IT. Those are important and key to learning.
I've also done lots of small sketches to keep my hand from getting stiff.
And more text stuff under the cut, just keeping a record of where I am right now. I'M IN A GOOD HEADSPACE, IT'S AWESOME.
And for the record, I'm awesome. I know these programs now:
Autodesk Maya
UDK
Motionbuilder
Cortex
The Foundry's Nuke
Zbrush
Photoshop
And I can do basic Python scripting to make my own toolsets in Maya.
Maya, Zbrush, and Photoshop are my best, since I've worked with them the longest. The others are a work in progress. But considering I have less than a month to learn most of these... I'm awesome. I know their basics and what I don't know, I can pick up on pretty quick.
AND I'm considering going to GDC in 2013. I'll have some work to show if anyone asks because I'll be starting finals around that time. ANd mostly it'd be awesome to meet people in the industry.
I've been writing, too, but that's more fanfictiony so I'm not exactly going to post that here. XD Still, practice is practice.
So, long story short, I had a personal problem that forced me to take a month withdrawal from classes, so I wound up in Character Animation a month later... and then realized I didn't want Computer Animation, I wanted to do Game Art (I love all my friends in CA, so I think that may have been distracting me from, well, me). I love hi-resolution stuff and compositing. Compositing was FUN. But I really like texturing and game stuff. I really do. I'm having so much fun right now!
Luckily, the first 12 months of both Computer Animation and Game Art are the same, so I don't need to retake anything or make up anything.
So I filed a major transfer at the last second, so I was put into a class we're all supposed to take but that has nothing to do with our actual major for a month, which puts me about a month or two behind my usual class, BUT it's not so bad. My current class is pretty chill, and I just adore the work we're doing.
I'm in Asset Creation for Games right now. We do a low-resolution object in Maya, export it to Zbrush for sculpting and roughing it up, then export it back to Maya to generate a normal and ambient occlusion map. The normal we stick right on, but we take the AO and use it to generate a diffuse and specular texture. So far, we've mostly been doing stone, and using actual stone textures from hi-res photos, but next month we'll be doing hand-painted textures. I LOVE PAINTING.
I'm also introduced to UDK as an engine and aside from the vertigo from switching to a program that doesn't require the keyboard to navigate, it's pretty easy to use. We're making a small level based on the Angkor Wat in Cambodia. I've been sculpting like crazy. I love Hindu temples, so this is really fun to research and look up reference for. I'll be excited to post the results.
I'm also in a Motion Capture class, which is fun... but I'm not as good at animation as I am at texturing and modeling. I can do it. I can do rigging. I can do compositing. I can do lighting. I'm just better and more interested in modeling and texturing. I'm not sure whether I'll do environment, characters, or both.
I think taking that month off a few months ago was helpful. I had a VERY bad experience in one of my classes and it really pushed me off the edge when I was already not in a good place. But I'm looking at something like Mass Effect now... and I can totally do that! I can do those textures and models. I look back to those first months and I know SO much more now. I know things. KNOWING THINGS IS AWESOME. No, I'm not as good as people who've been in the industry twelve years, but considering I'm barely 19, and I'm earning my second college degree... I think I'm doing pretty well for now.
I can't do anything about the fact that I don't know where I'll be next year or where I'll get a job, but I can develop a good body of work. I can interact with my developer/artist community. I'll focus on what I can do for now. :)
Also, there's something to be said for games that you DON'T get addicted to. I know all the MMOs and recent games wanna be the next Halo/WOW/L4D, but people like games that you can play for twenty minutes, get a fix, and then go back to work. I love playing long RPGs as much as the next person, but I don't have time anymore! I have to play in short chunks and then stop. Which is hard for a story-driven game!
Still, I love those, and I'd love to work in a studio that does good RPGs.
There's a difference between a mechanics RPG and a writing RPG. For instance... WoW and Guild Wars and Diablo 3 have RPG mechanics, but not as much actual character-driven, dialogue-based RPG things. Even Skyrim is more a mechanical RPG than a character one. Deus Ex? RPG in all respects. Dragon Age? RPG everywhere. Vampire the Masquerade? RPG ALL OVER (and GOD I would love to work on a sequel to that. Poor Troika tanked but that was a freaking awesome game). I don't think marketing departments represent that difference properly. Fuse is advertised as an RPG but that's just in terms of leveling mechanics; the characters themselves are set and you do not make story choices.
Also, Overstrike was totally a better concept than Fuse. What happened? Where did the campy humor go? It was Borderlands plus L4D plus Mass Effect. AWESOME. Now it's.. generic. Whatever. I can't even afford to get any new games right now, I'm replaying old ones when I can and mostly working, so it's all good.
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