Final Showreel

This is the last blog entry that I will make for this project, which will be a recap of the project and some of the changes I made from the block out you saw in the last post to the final.

Since I started working on creating my portfolio showreel I have looked at what other artists out there have done and also mainly concentrated at referencing character artist work, because it was my main area of interested.

This is the example of my final cinematic showreel which was done using After Effects and by combining some of my 3rd year and 2nd year work in it. In my previous post examples of what work I would use in my showreel. In terms of that since block out everything has stayed the same the only changes that were made was that I replaced the Roman Centurion footage with the final one and edited the music.
I was pretty happy with the music that I had in my block out cinematic and I think that it worked well, but after I received feedback that it might be a good idea to break up the music a bit, so it add a bit more interested to the showreel. I was also told to include information of software that I have used and maybe show texture sheets. So I change the footage for the spider characters and added wireframe information, gave examples of the software that was used in the creation of these characters and also texture sheet examples. Changes to the opening title text were made as well to match the closing text at the end, because it looked more cleaner with the white on black and centred.
After implementing the feedback and making these changes to my showreel, I believe that it made the final result look a lot better, more professional and close to what I had seen from other artists showreels on the web. Overall, I am happy with the final result that I achieved and some changes will be made later on like, adding a break down of my roman centurion character to give a bit more information about this project; removing the alien a some point, because in the overall showreel he looks a bit out of place; adding future work as well to match the mood and overall look of the showreel.
In conclusion, I didn't use any golden rule or try to follow a specific example for creating my showreel, but made it so it looked good, the music and footage were compatible and most of all I was happy with what I achieved in the end. 

Showreel Block-Out

I just wanted to make a quick post about the block out I made for my showreel. I used a lot of the setting in After Effects which proved to be very useful like, layers, masks and used a lot of the opacity on the different layers to blend between the different footages.
A few changes were made to the footages and work that I would use in my showreel. Some more work was included and other work was not used for the time being, but I will not add everything I have to my showreel, because having to much will feel cramped and its not good to show all of your work, but just the best pieces.

I am happy with everything that is in the showreel as footage and music. The only thing that will be changed is the starting footage with the Centurion soldier with the more finalized video footage that I will make for my cinematic for that character as it is a part of another project, but everything else will stay the same. By the end off this week I will upload the final showreel and make a blog post about it as that will be the end of this project.

Week 11- Showreel development

So this week I was working on blocking-out my showreel, which will be used as a base for me to edit and change with final footage later on.
For this assignment I have decided to use some of my second year and third year work as examples. Some of it will be changed later on but some will be kept and edited. In my last post I talked about other artists showreels and the good and bad things they had, so I will try and follow that as much as possible for this block-out, but for my final showreel I will have everything up to standard and more professional.
This is one of the first time I have worked with After Effects, so everything is a bit new to me, but I am finding a lot of similarities with Photoshop, so I think that by the end of it I will know my way around it. For music I have decided to use instrumental music or more soundtrack type music, because I believe this helps a lot with showing your work. But I will not put anything too epic, because that can bring down the work and the showreel in general.
Next week i will make my final post with the final product with the footage and music in for now I will just include images and videos of the footage/work that I have decided to use and some music that I have taken in to consideration for it.

Roman Centurion

 Alien Character high poly sculpt

Main Character and Enemy Characters for a team university project: Courage

Freelance work: Mad Hatter, Alice in Wonderland

And this is the music that I am considering to use for my showreel:

Gladiator

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRY1N5yhL-U

The Last of Us

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y97u-U0nvJM

The music will be edited to fit the showreel and maybe I will choose another track from these two soundtracks, but for the time being these are my two favorite. Stay tuned to see the final result

Week 10 Showreel Development

This week I was looking at examples of various character showreel to get a better understanding of what other people have done in this field and their take on it. As we discussed the different rules that should be applied to a cinematic or camera shots like composition, the rule of third, the golden rule and etc, I went back to review some of the cinematic's that I looked at before and considered to be good to see how these rules have been applied or not.
After reviewing them I realised that some were not as good, the quality was good, but the actual cinematic were lacking more depth and in my opinion some of the shots could have been planned differently.
One of the portfolios I reviewed is on youtube by Victor Hernandez a character artist.

The quality of the work was amazing, because he shows examples of organic sculpting, knowledge of anatomy and the combination of mechanical and hard- surface modelling as you can see in the image above. He also shows examples of natural poses and dynamic posing for characters. However, one of the things that his cinematic is lacking is specific camera shots for each character that he shows like repeating the same shot more than once or showing the same part of the character mutiple times, starting shot with the character in the middle of the screen.

Here are a few examples of the shot. The dynamic pose of the character help the eye to move around the figure, but I think that if some of the shots were altered slightly it could have benefited the overall look a lot more.
I have posted link on some other portfolios that I have looked at which I believe are better, but that is only because of the nature of there showreel. In Pedro Cabeleira's showreel you can see a great break down of his work, which gives you an understanding of how he went about creating some of the characters.
In Ran Manolov showreel there are some shots that could be altered, but he gives a breakdown example of his work and includes some nice static shots of some characters in which you can see the rule of third being applied quite well in his Don Quixote character.
Here are the link to both showreels and I have added one more I looked at, so have a look and judge for yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jkN7rp5NJE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp0uM8HIu9Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZYpn2Tn5pM

Web Site and Facebook page Development

This week I worked on creating on my web site and a facebook page that I would you to promote my work on social media as we have discussed in previous lectures. I covered this in my previous blog post of setting up social media accounts on Facebook, twitter or Linkedin and that I will be using Artstation as a source to create my community profile and web site.
I made a review and justified my reasons for using Artstation and Facebook and that I have decided to postpone creating a Twitter account for later on, because I don't think it is necessary at the moment, if you want to remember what I talked about go and check my Personal Branding Part 1&2 post for more detail.

So this is how my web site currently looks like as you can see in the first image and bellow it is my artstation community profile that everybody that is sing up with artstation or not can view. The reason why I choose Artstation as a main source was that is art orientated, a lot of professionals from industry have account as well and I am able to connect with them...basically is a art version of Facebook and Twitter, where people can post their work and other could like and follow them and it gives me the chance to build a small community.
Using Artstation was also really useful in setting up the layout for my website, links to my Linkedin profile and Facebook page as well as mail. I can update any of these and add and remove information very quickly and edit constantly.

My reason for creating the Facebook page is that I will use it like a blog, the same way Torfrick does, to post my work, updates on things I am looking in to as research and work in progress as well as creating another small community that my followers on artstation can join as well, so this way I am getting more exposure and people have an easy way to look me up and connect with me and my work. I have already started posting updates on the page with things that I have worked on and my current progress on other project, so in a way I am already building a library that people can access and find what they like and if they share it on their Facebook more people can see it more and more people will start joining in. Since I made the accounts yesterday, I have 83 views, 9 likes and 3 people following me on Artstation and 26 likes on my Facebook page, this shows that things are progressing very fast and the exposure is massive.
I will be looking in to the development of my showreel next week on which I will post updates, so stay tuned and I have also posted links to my profile in artstation and facebook page, so feel free to follow me if you like what you see, which is not a lot now, but there will be more in the future.

Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artist/ndkolev

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nikolaykolev3D/

Week 8&9 - Mark Ranson and Sumo Digital

Last week on Friday we had guest lecturer Mark Ranson an environment artist at Rock Steady come around to talk to us about his experience in industry and give us tip on how to improve our work.

But before I talk about that I will mention that today we had Sumo-Digital a big game developing studio in the UK gives a lecture about the company, potential graduate programs they will have, some of the games they have worked on and advice on how we can prepare for interview and how to approach it.

So back to Mark Ranson, the latest project he worked on at Rock Steady was Batman: Arkham Knight and the main focus of his work was one of the islands which was China town. His main focust during the presentation was game development and how we as artists should approach it and prepare for it. Some of the things that he mentioned I could relate to, because of my experience during my Game Development Project, when me and my team took similar approaches to our work as he was suggesting. He gave us a valuable tip to fail faster and not become to precious of our work, because the earlier to mock things up to test them and make changes to your designs, you will get a better end result and when you build this habit this will save you a lot of time in future projects.
Overall, he gave us a good insight of the game development side of a project in industry and his personal experience of it.
Whereas for Sumo-Digital I will be using my development of portfolio and show real from this modual to apply for their graduate scheme and other jobs in industry. After I have done my show real and portfolio, I might spend some time after I finish to polish it and get it up to standard.
In the up coming weeks I will be posting my development on that and i will add a link to my facebook page which you can follow to see my progress on other personal projects and work related to the games industry. Stay tuned for more.

Interviews and Class experiment

On last weeks Friday session we were given a task during class to get in groups 3 and to do interviews. The idea was that one person will be the interviewer, one the the note taker and one the interviewee and the interviewer will choose at randomly a question from the ones that we were given and ask and relate the interview to that question. We had 5 minutes for the interview and after one was done we would swap position, so everybody could have a turn in each role.
This was an interesting experiment and good experience to answer random questions that were not game industry related as well as asking them and trying to develop an interview from that in 5 minutes. Some people found the role of the interviewer very intimidating, because it is something unnatural for students like us to be in this position. I thought that it was interesting to be the interviewer, but that was only because I had this experience in May while working for a small company. They were looking at hiring other arts to work for the company and as I was the only artist currently working at the company I was required to attend the interviews and ask questions with other two guys. It was an interesting experience, because it was the first time I ever did something like this and also being on the other side of the table to ask the questions and trying to find good and bad things in the candidate to determined if they will fit the role or not.
I believe that this was a good experience for everybody to experience this in a different environment and that it gave everybody an idea of how to approach an interview, which is to level the plain field and treat it more like a conversation with the interviewer than an interview.
Next Friday, we will have a guest lecture from Mark Ranson an environment artist at Rock steady, which will be a good experience to see what he has done in industry, how he has approached preparing and applying for jobs and his experience in the industry, so keep a look at for another update on how that went.

Personal Branding Part 2

Exposing your work and yourself to social media and the internet is something that can greatly assist you in creating contacts or even just being noticed. 

One of my final year projects in university was to get together in a team of artist and programmers and develop a game in 12 weeks. We were under a lot of pressure, because we had very strict deadlines, which resembled working on a game title in the industry. We had to develop our own idea for a game from scratch, with all the mechanics, story line, gameplay etc. At the beginning of the project were given only two requirements, we had to use the VR Oculus Rift with a back seat player type gameplay and the game needed to be based on the theme Escape.

Taking all this in to consideration with my team we started early on to thing about the marketing side of things as well and how can we get noticed by others, so we started posting our work online on forums, make our twitter page and youtube channel that were regularly updated. Using youtube didn't prove to be that useful, because in my opinion there is not much exposure and people will not find your channel unless you build a huge amount of followers and become more popular. If I upload videos I might use youtube just because everybody has access to it and its free to access and for you to create your own channel.

After we finished the development of your game we create our own web page for of the game, with link to twitter and youtube, but we also added our own personal details separately, so all of us could be contacted by people.

We even made our game downloadable, so people can test and have a feeling for the game, not just watch videos and image of it.

We also took part in the Autodesk contest Game of the Year on which we got to the final round but unfortunately we didn't win the contest. However, the game was mentioned in a live Twitch by Epic Games, who were showing what students and people have achieved with their game engine. This was amazing for all of us, because that live Twitch was view by hundreds or maybe thousands of people that had the chance to see our game. A few months later our game was in Epic Games community spotlight, which was displayed in the Epic Games Unreal Engine 4 Community.

What I learned form this experience the more your expose and market yourself the higher the chance for you to be noticed, I will try and take the same steps as to creating a Twitter page on which I can post my work and work in progress, probably will do the same in Facebook, because that way I can create small community of follower and expose my work to a lot more people. I might take part in contests in the future just so I can see on what level I am in comparison to other artists. 

Personal Branding

Personal branding is something that companies and self-employed individuals have to be aware of, because that is how others will see them. This is something that I have given a lot of though, because I will graduating university soon and will be on the job market looking of a job in the games industry as a character artist. I don't have the financial capability as a company that has an entire marketing department that is branding the company and selling the company as to what they have to offer and I don't have the connections in industry like people that have worked there even for 1 year, but everybody had to start from the beginning.
Through my research and what I have seen as examples of how other artist have used social media, like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin to create there own brand and make their mark in the job market. Some artists like Torfrick and Maciej Kuciara, have created a Facebook page or profile on which they post images, tutorials etc of their finished work and work in progress. They also share information on projects they have worked on and might mention other artists that they have worked before. This is a very useful way of creating connections and getting yourself noticed in my opinion and is something that I would like to try.
What I think is the best thing to do, is to create a Facebook page on which I will post weekly or monthly updates of my work in progress and images, research and videos of my previous work. This is useful, because people that will like my facebook page will begin to follow me and receive updates from me, which they can share and their friends can see that and also like my page, that way I can build a small community of followers, who can be casual people, other artists, requiters and industry professionals. Another way of using Facebook is by joining an art group on which you can post your work and get feedback and reviews form artists in different fields. I think that this way you will have to opportunity to create even more connections, because the more you put yourself out there the better chance you have that people will notice you and you will be contacted by a requiter or art director etc.
In the same way I will approach to use Twitter, to create a professional account on which I will post my work and this way when I follow other artists the people that follow them will be able to see my work and maybe follow me in return. Whenever, I tweet my work on my twitter account, people can retweet that and more and more people can see it and have access to it and my profile, so this way I can also create a small community of people. But the best part is that I can join these two communities on Facebook and Twitter and this gives me an amazing opportunity and chance to be noticed.
Another way that I have approached is by creating a Linkedin profile, but in my opinion this could be used on the more professional side of your brand, a bit of history about you that requiters will like to see. One way that I have found Linkedin to be useful even during my studies is that most of my lectures are ex or currant industry employees and they have connections with people in industry. Therefor, by connecting with them on Linkedin, I can have access and communicate with other people in industry from art directors to character leads to get feedback on my work or advice on a university project.
I made some researched and found that another good way to get noticed is by taking part in online 3D contests, like polycount, autodesk etc. I read an article which was an interview of a character artist in Unreal that got noticed by them after competing in such a contest and he was saying that this could be used to present yourself to other artists and people in this community whether or not you win you will still be noticed.
How I have decided to approach my personal brand is by creating my portfolio in Artstation, which allow me to follow other artists and they can follow me in the directory of the website. On this portfolio I will have links to my Facebook page and Twitter account, on which people will have access to a lot more of my work and see what methods I have used and research I have done in my work in progress. And I will use Linkedin to create a more professional profile of myself to which employers and requiters can have access to my CV, job experience, projects that I have worked on etc and used it to create connections with industry professionals to communicate with them and receive feedback.

Portfolio Presentation and marketing methods

During the week we had a task to get in to a team and review 5 good and 5 bad portfolios of artists be they in industry or not. This task helped me to understand a few things like, which is better for presenting yourself, quality or quantity, what type of layouts are good and what bad, what interests people about your work and draws their attention. These are all things that I have to consider and take in mind when I am working on my portfolio.
One of the key things for making a portfolio is to establish an identity, which could be done in a manner of ways, like making a logo, colour pallet or create a demo reel and online presence that will let your work speak for its self. One such example on the web is an artist named Torfrick who has made a simple portfolio with lots of big images of his work that are easy to access as shown in the image below.

http://www.torfrick.com/

His website has a simple layout that showcases his work and in the menu tabs above he has links to tutorials that he has done and also an art blog, which is really good to have in a portfolio, because you can include break down images of your work in progress and show how you have gone about doing something and how you have approached a problem that you had, which are all good things that an employer can see and will be interested in the way you work, not only the quality of the work and the final render.
However, one of the downfalls of Torfrick's portfolio website is the navigation between the different links and the reason that you have to go back and forth to what you were looking before that. But over all his work is the one thing that sells its self and maybe that's could be the reason why he is so popular.

For me as a character artist that wants to go in to the games industry a good way to show my characters in my portfolio is by giving examples of T-pose with wireframe that will showcase the topology of my characters ans also dynamic poses that can give examples of the personality of the character. A T-pose could be used to show a breakdown of your character and examples of topology in the different areas of interest in the character, like the head and how the topology is build around the mouth, eye and nose which are the key areas in the face that will move if animated. Creating a dynamic pose for your character could be useful to bring out more personality of your character. The pose of the character depends on the personality and look of the character that will determine if its going to be an action pose or a more natural pose.
I good example is some of the work that Adam Skutt, the character lead at Ready at Dawn that worked on the characters for The Order 1886, showed in the ZbrushCentral web page which you can see in the images below and on this link: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?193491-The-Order-1886-Team-Post

These images give a good example of posing your character in a more natural pose that is part of his/her character and personality.

And some of these images give examples of posing your character in a more action pose. Source is Alejandro Peraira, limk: http://alejandropereirastudio.com/?page_id=64#all

What Peraira has done is to pose his characters in to a more dynamic poses to showcase the personality of the character and his mood, as well as that some of these character sculpts are created to be used for 3D figurine, so the approach and final goal is different to creating a game ready character.

Chosen Career Path in the Games Industry

One of the first things to consider before leaving university is what type of career path I was going to take once I graduated my gaming course. From what I learned during my studies was the many different careers that I could choose from to go in to the games industry, but what I had to find out is what inspired me and what was interesting and fun as a job. Therefore, I chose to pursue a career as a Character Artist, because of my 2D traditional background from high school and combining that and expanding it with 3D modelling.

Choosing to work in the game industry as a Character artist, I had to consider the difficulty in finding a job and the possibility of relocating to the company location. Being a character artist requires to have an understanding of various modelling packages like Maya, 3ds Max, Zbrush and Mudbox. This is because different studios have build there pipeline around a certain software. Whereas, some studios, like Naughty Dog, use either Zbrush and Mudbox for their character creation process depending on the artists preference. Another requirement is to have an understanding of mesh topology, because that creates an efficient modelling practice for in-game character creation. Good understanding of UV layout for texture maps and how can that be best utilized. The use of Photoshop for creating high quality textures. And a character artist should have a basic understanding of Rigging and Animation principles and how they are applied to a character.

Some of the issues that I might face in the begging of my career path is that most of the software that is required for me to do my job is very expensive and as a junior artist that is making his way in to industry will be quite difficult to achieve. Some of the software is free to download as a student version, but that can not be used to sale your work if you want pursue a more freelance type of work which immediately pulls you back. Another issue that some people might face as I mentioned before is you finding a job in another country and the possibility of relocation. For me personally this is not an issue, because this gives you a lot more opportunities and chances to build your experience, meet new people and expand your knowledge of how different companies in industry work.

Other potentially related industries that I can go in to as a character artist are the film, advertising and 3D figurine industry.

As part of our task we had to research jobs in the UK in the roles that we were interested in and the other group had to research positions around the world. The data that was collected and analysed didn't meat my expectations and I was very surprised by finding out the role of a character artist is wildly advertised around the UK, which has made me consider my possibility of finding a job in the game industry is a lot higher in the UK than anywhere else in the world. 

The research I made in to the availability of a position for a junior character artist in the game industry has lead me to believe that there are more available positions and opportunities in North America and parts of Asia, but as I mentioned before, I was quite surprised by the fact that there is a lot of opportunities here in the UK. Some of the positions I stumbled upon in my research were for an Associate Character artist at Sledgehammer Games and EA studios and also a Senior Character position at Bioware were the ones that I think I could meet the requirements for.

I have chosen to use an existing website like Artstation.com to create my portfolio page, which is wildly know to the artists community and could be used to showcase your work to get feedback from other artists and compare it with other artists work. Other methods that could be used for promoting yourself is Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin, which could be used to create connections and contacts with people from industry.

Before creating a professional portfolio which will showcase my work and skill set, I must look in to the used of PBR in the character creation process, learn more advance texturing techniques and build my knowledge of Photoshop and maybe research the use of alternative methods of texturing like substance designer. I also have to improve upon my sculpting and 3D modelling skills to bring them to a higher standard.

In conclusion, there are opportunities and positions for a character artist in the UK and around the world, but the main thing that I need to look in to is to improve upon some of my skills and knowledge and which will help me in to polishing some of my work and creating new pieces of work that I can include in my portfolio and show-reel.