how you made it to where you are today. As to how I got here, it was a bit of luck and a bit of talent, I think you need both. I did a degree in Media Studies, then worked in publishing for a while, tried and failed to get into graphic design, got interested in 3D on my own time, then got a job working on mobile phone games (this was before they were any good) carried on tinkering with 3D stuff but not really getting anywhere, then I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time to get a spot on an MA in Games Design at Liverpool John Moore’s University, then on the strength of that and a portfolio I got a job at Evo straight after.
What is your specific role as a Principal Lead Artist and what is the difference between a principle lead artist and a lead artist? what kind of day to day jobs do you do? And do you think it would be possible to do this kind of work while being self-employed?
Job Titles in the games industry are all over the place. Different studios have wildly different ideas of what a Lead or a Senior or a Producer is, and what they do. Principal is a term left over from Sony, and tried to define something more senior than Senior, but not going down the Management route. So a Principal Artist was someone who still got involved in making stuff, rather than just managing people. So a Principal Artist makes stuff, but also gets to go to meetings and have some input into decisions about workflows and pipelines, and sometimes drive them in a certain direction. For instance, I'm particularly interested in the shader and material side of things, and I get to have some say into the shaders, and design some of them. If you're self-employed I doubt you would be that involved in decision making, so it doesn't make sense to be a Principal freelancer. If course, if you were really good, and in high demand, then you could be well paid, but essentially a freelancer just gets told to make something and they go off and make it. Day to day, a Principal or a Lead reviews work of more junior staff, and signs them off, or offers feedback and improves quality.
Do you have any Specific abilities that you gained which helped you get into your job position and is there any transferable skills required when interviewing for the job?
Learning to model and unwrap well, learning the principals of high to low poly modelling and baking, learning substance designer and paint, learning to use UE4 (or another engine) and get a good portfolio together. That really is all there is to it. When interviewing a junior or trainee I would not expect them to know everything, but to grasp the fundamentals and be articulate and able to engage with their work critically.
With technology and software constantly being developed how has that affected your Workflow, how did you learn to adapt?
PBR was a big change in workflow for artists. Essentially it meant that artists could no longer take a photo and generate a texture out of it, and derive a normal map etc. It's really hard to generate decent colour textures without photos, and even harder to generate ones that look better, so it’s about 100% more effort for 10% improvement in quality. It can be difficult when trusted techniques are suddenly outdated, but it is all about getting better results. Changes aren't imposed on artists, artists should be at the forefront of driving those changes.
When Sony evolution studios shut, how did you manage to find another job position and how did you find the transition to Codemasters?
We were lucky in that Codemasters effectively rehired the whole Evolution team, and opened a new studio, Codemasters Evo, using the same offices etc.
Is there any health and safety issues where you work?
There are, but it's all just box ticking. The only issue is really crunch and unpaid overtime, which is common practice across the games industry.
Are there any legal rules you have to follow, like how game companies aren’t allowed to leek information of games before it is released?
There are many issues like these and it is taken very seriously. It is a sackable offence to leek information in the way you describe, even accidentally. This is why developers will never participate in forums, even to correct obviously incorrect information that is being posted. Everything has to go through media trained individuals and community managers.
Do you have any advice for someone like myself who wants to go into the gaming industry?
I take it that you would like to work in the games industry too? If so then there are several routes. There are a lot of degree courses now. Many are good, some are not. I could recommend Sheffield, St Ives are good, I know people who work there. The problem is there are a lot more places on games courses than there are jobs at the end of it. I reckon 70% or 80% of games course graduates don't end up working in games, but that's a just a guess.
If I were doing it again from scratch this is what I would do: Do a degree at Bournemouth to study CGI, animation etc, more generally. It’s hard to get in at Bournemouth, or at least it used to be, but it has a good reputation, I kind of think of it as Oxford\Cambridge for computer graphics. Other courses will take almost anyone - they will take your money and waste your time. If you can't get in at Bournemouth, question whether you have the talent and work ethic to make a go of it. Although it sounds harsh, it might save you a lot of time and money if you face the reality sooner rather than later? Nothing to stop you applying there more than once of course - it’s possible to be unlucky and just miss out one year. You should also try and tailor your modules to games as you go along, if possible. At the end of your degree, you can decide whether you want to work in games or special effects houses. If you choose games, then spend some time putting together a portfolio specifically for games and see how you get on. Apply to absolutely everyone, and do art tests etc.
Of course, if you're really really good you could just miss out the whole degree thing and get a portfolio together and apply directly to UK studios - and abroad? Do some art tests. Get an online presence - LinkedIn, portfolio website. Post work on polycount and artstation and get some feedback. Read and learn everything you can on the internet. Everything you need to know is out there, you just have to focus in on it. When you have something, get in touch with HR departments or art directors - phone or email, ask for an art test. Send or link your portfolio. You just need to be lucky once. There is absolutely nothing to stop you getting a job without a degree if you can demonstrate ability and potential.
Another route would be to get a foot in the door doing QA at a studio - or lot of this work is low paid and mundane, but you can get help advice from artists, learn how development works, suck up to the art director, and of course, you're in the right place at the right time when a job comes up. We have a couple of trainees recruited in this way. BTW, the lead up to Christmas (around now) is a good time to apply as there are lots of temporary contracts going.
Some more advice, I think it’s safe to say it’s a lot easier to get a job as an environment artist than as an animator or a character artist. I would say for every character artist in the industry there are around 50 environment artists. That's just Math’s. If you would be happy doing environments, focus in on it. Doesn't hurt to have some character work in your portfolio as well of course.
Whatever route you try, you need to work really, really hard. Whether you’re on a course or working on your portfolio, if you just dabble you won't get anywhere. You need to apply yourself 100%, working late into the night, every night (well maybe not every night, but you know what I mean). So there you go, a bit of luck, a bit of talent, lots of hard work. But the good news is it is possible, it’s not like winning the lottery, there are jobs out there, but it’s not enough to just want it, you have to earn it.
Sorry for the long rambling reply. Feel free to follow up with more questions if you need to.
Now I’m doing a HND in 3D Animation and learning how to use Maya and MudBox by Auto desk as there free and used more widely than Blender, I’m not sure if there are any others that you could recommend?
I was actually quite surprised that you couldn’t use your own photographs to generate textures, when it’s still your own work and there’s no fraudulent copying, or is it to do with the software not having the feature of importing images into the texture mapping?.
OK, I'm glad it was useful. If you want to get into games Maya and Mudbox are good (we use Maya). I would definitely recommend UE4, as its also free and gives you a fully featured game engine. If you can get your head around getting your stuff into Unreal, using materials and so on, then that's a great start and if you’re doing renders for a portfolio, render form unreal - it will look more authentic, and real-time. I would also recommend substance designer, especially for creating tiling textures, and normal for baking from high to low res.
A slight misunderstanding though - it’s not that we can't use our own photos because of copyright, it’s that the results are worse using that kind of workflow, though lots of people still do it (that is, take a photo of a brick wall and try to generate normal maps, etc from that photo). A better workflow is to reproduce the brick wall in substance (or Maya\zbrush, whatever) and output the colour and normal maps etc. The photo is only really used as a guide.
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