Semester 3 Week 15-16

This week's focus was the exterior level, and setting the groundwork for a stunning environment, mainly in the scene's composition and lighting. To be sure that I was putting the proper amount of thought into the composition, I watched an Artstation Learning course about environment art. I learned a bunch about composition stuff. All very fascinating to me, and I've started to dive into blocking the basic composition and layout.

The project lead wanted to create a very flat and open environment to contrast the tight space you will have been in for the entire game up top this point. I want to add a bit of interest, though, so I added a distant mountain range and some abandoned houses and silos. To give the landscape some sort of directionality to lead the player where they need to be, I added a road and some power lines headed in the direction of the final confrontation with the creepy monster.

I've been spending quite a bit of time lately figuring out my future in the field. I'm considering applying for game dev jobs right out of the gate, or taking a gap year. Those options are on the table, but the most obvious and most likely option is college. I started by researching the handful of art schools that previous WT game dev graduates are attending now, schools like LCAD, SCAD, RMCAD, and Ringling. These schools, especially LCAD and Ringling, seem to have top-notch game art programs, but, being private US art schools, the tuition is absurd, not to mention cost of living. This is all still new to me, so I feel like I don't have a good frame of reference for what is "reasonable" or "normal", but $80k a year??? That's not gonna happen.

So I dug further, and found two valid alternatives. First, there's international art schools. Not only does studying abroad sound like a fun and challenging adventure, but the tuition makes the US's education system look like a scam. The tuition is significantly cheaper for citizens of their respective countries, but even the international student rates are on the low end of what's available here. There are a few good options in the UK including NUA, Falmouth, and Staffordshire.

The second alternative is a 3d production trade school. I've only found one out there, because the industry is so young: Gnomon. Gnomon began as a film VFX school, but they've branched out into general 3d and game art production. The tuition is on par with the UK schools, the student work is astounding, and they seem to have a good rep to boot. Here's the catch: It's in Hollywood, and there's no dorms. The cost of living would be just about the highest possible. On the bright side, one of my classmates, Conlen, is looking to go there, so I could potentially have already found a roomie.

Once I find the school, though, I still have to have a good enough portfolio to get in. I've been spending some time sprucing up the portfolio on this site with previous work, including creating Marmoset 3d viewers and imbedding them. I don't think my portfolio is really a good representation of where my skills are right now, so I'm spending time creating better work. Finishing projects is my Achilles heel though, so I don't have anything to show for it yet, except this robot character work in progress:

I still need to improve the rigging, then I need to animate and implement him into a Unreal template.