After reading a recent article about a graduate not being able to get a job (and the resulting furore surrounding it), I thought I should revisit my short post on Education vs Self teaching. Previously I had had stated that I thought education was becoming more relevent (but not there yet), and I still stand by that.

However by revisiting this in light of Brian Nathanson’s article and after looking at his portfolio I thought there were some others things worth mentioning. Brian didn’t seem to have a portfolio - he had a collection of images, some of which were based on his coursework at college. The truth is that a university education isn’t there to build a portfolio for you, it’s there to teach you how to use the software via a series of assignments. You get an understanding of how everything works, but the finished works are not relevant to a portfolio. In much the same way I learned French at school (with a passing grade), but I wouldn’t use my French homework on my CV to get myself a job as a translator.

As Adam Bromell said, you have to throw away everything you have done on your course and create your own portfolio using the TECHNIQUES you have learned. That’s the real reason you went to the class.

I’ve had the EEE PC for a few weeks now, and I’m writing this in the pub (no wifi signal so I can’t browse the net).

It’s an exceptional little machine. It’s tiny, dinky even - which is both it’s greatest strength and weakness. The keyboard is very small, but more on that later. It’s so light that I hardly notice it in my bag, whereas my old Toshiba was like carrying round a couple of bricks.

Although the screen is small (800 x 480), it’s fine for most purposes (I’d bought it purely as a thin client/dumb terminal to connect to the internet. Of course this pub has no wifi). By most purposes, I mean using the internet, and that means Firefox. By running Firefox in full screen it’s perfectly usable.

If I wanted a serious laptop, I’d have bought a serious laptop, however I made the conscious decision to buy the EEE PC because it wasn’t an expensive, powerful computer. Although I’m a computer artist, if I wanted to do any art I’d not want to work on ANY laptop, especially since I have a 24 inch monitor on my powerful iMac. Over the last year I’ve moved most of my computing software to Google - email, RSS reading, document editing, calendar et al., so all a I wanted was Firefox, a screen and a keyboard.

Since there is no wifi here, I’ve switched off the Wifi mode (Function key+F2), which seems to make a huge difference to the battery life - indeed the battery life is my second biggest issue after the keyboard size. I get about 2.5 hours withWiFi enabled, and just over 3 hours with it disabled.

The keyboard is what takes the most getting used to. It’s not ultra tiny, and it’s certainly much more usable than the soft keyboard on my iPod touch. It’s comparable in size to the iGo Stowaway Bluetooth keyboard, and to be perfectly honest, after 2 to 3 minutes of typing each time I use it my hands adjust. It’s similar to the switch I had to make when I switched to playing guitar after playing bass for a few hours. The biggest bugbear is actually the arrow keys, which are placed so close to the right shift that I continually hit the up arrow when I try to use shift. Again, after a few minutes this becomes less of an issue.

I’m writing this is Google Docs - but as I mentioned I have no Wi-Fi here. Thankfully Google have brought their Google Gears technology to Docs, which means I can create new documents and edit existing ones offline. When I get home (or find any network signal), the documents will sync again. Google Reader also works fantastically well with no network thanks to Gears. I’d been away for a few days, so I’d built up 600-700 unread feed items. Google Gears downloaded all these and I was then able to read them offline.

If only Google mail had an offline mode…

Kikizo, GamesRadar, IGN, VideoGamer, and ComputerAndVideoGames have just unveiled their latest previews of Grand Theft Auto 4, the first major collection of online GTA IV previews since July of last year.

The previews are based on a 90 minute preview session granted to them by Rockstar Games last week, and come with 10 never-before-seen screenshots of GTA4.

I ripped this from GTA4.net

How do you manage to find time to keep up to date with modeling techniques, new programs, etc?

This was a question from Game Artist Forums - since the technology is constantly changing, and software is always evolving, how do you stay up to date?

Just reading various sites on the net can keep you to date with new games and their engines, tools and other other tech, and hanging around forums (such as Polycount) will keep you fairly up to date with what is new out there. Looking at other peoples posted artwork will point you towards techniques that may not always be new, but perhaps cover something you’ve never considered.

As for actually sitting down and learning new techniques, or trying to put into practice something that you have spotted online, I occasionally do this at home, but to be honest a lot of this happens at work. When we got Zbrush at work a few years ago we all just sat down and played with it - looked at tutorials on the net and simply got tore in. We learned off one another, someone would ask “Does anyone know a good way to this?”. More often than not my home learning is down to seeing interesting art on the internet.

You don’t need to know a package inside out to use it - I don’t know Maya these days, I’ve never used XSI, but if I got a job where I had to use either of those packages I’d probably be up and running within a few days. The only major difference is the interface, the rest is pretty much the same from package to package. When we got a trial of Mudbox, we were creating things in minutes because we knew Zbrush.

Learning on the job is something that just happens as a matter of fact.

Now, if you are making (for example) Playstation 2 or Nintendo DS assets day to day, then you most likely wont be learning highpoly sculpting and DirectX shaders on the job, and you’ll have to put in the effort to learn it outside your normal daily tasks - though you can easily hack away 30 minutes over a lunchbreak.

Technorati Tags: games industry, software

A common question asked of me, and of many others on various game art websites from people considering or wanting a career making games is “How much should I be earning?”

The answer is rarely directly given - for one thing it is such a subjective area (experience and location are just two factors), and secondly it’s never been considered polite to disclose how much you make - this is true in many vocations.

So why is it so hard to give a figure? It depends on too many factors - your experience, your age and your previous salary all matter (as well as how well you do in the interview, and how much you ask for), the location of the company (a higher cost of living generally means a compensatory increase in salary), and how well the company is doing (if they have limited cashflow, they don’t want to spend it on you). You also have to take into account other benefits you may or may not get - will you get bonuses? Are they one off completion bonuses, or linked to sales? Will you get health insurance? Life insurance? A pension?

So again you ask, how much will you make? Game Developer Research might be a good place to start - they do a yearly census to try and get as much information as possible. Gamasutra also published the results of the 2006 survery online.

The 2006 average for artists was $65,107, again basically flat on 2005, though average salaries of experienced lead artists and animators rose the most. The game designers’ average was $61,538, with salaries scaling within a $5,000 range over the last 3 years over all experience levels.

In other categories, production personnel in America had an average salary of $77,131 in 2006, Q/A’s average decreased to $37,861, the average audio employee was paid $69,935, and business & legal personnel came out on top with an average $95,596 salary last year.

As for the regional variations for the survey, which polled 5,600 readers of Game Developer magazine and Gamasutra.com and attendees of Game Developers Conference, California had the top worldwide average salary for game professionals in 2006, followed by Washington, Oregon, and Georgia, with Texas rounding out the top 5.

Of course, those are AVERAGE salaries, and are therefore not as meaningful as they could be to someone seeking an entry level position. Those figures also all in $US, and I live in the UK which currently has a very strong currency compared to the currently weaker $US.

So again you ask, how much will you make? This is where I got out on a limb and use REAL figures for two currencies, for entry level positions. You’ll have read all the above and know that there are myriad factors which alter these figures:

• UK entry level salary, 2007 : £18-21k
• US entry level salary, 2007 : $33-40k

Don’t shoot me if you don’t get paid that.

Now, another factor is how much your salary would increase, but that also depends on many factors, such the games you release, company growth, personal growth and negotiation skills - and this is a discussion perhaps best left for another time.

Since work is removing MSN messenger, and I rarely speak to more that 1 or two friends on it, I’m ditching it and moving to Jabber.

http://www.jabber.org/about/overview.shtml

The nice thing about Jabber is that it’s an open system, so I can see the same contacts in iChat and Googletalk, and Googletalk works within it’s own application or the browser.

The best thing was clearing out my MSN contacts, I had hundreds of people there that I never speak to, so I pared it down to about 5 people, and linked them up via a Jabber server so that they can still see me.

At first I was afraid, I was petrified - but then I remembered that the same thing happened 5 years ago with ICQ. ICQ became so bloated and messy that it wasn’t worth using anymore.

Technorati Tags: jabber, messenger, msn

“Should I got to university, or take the time to teach myself game art?”

Self teaching is great - it shows a company that you had the skills to pick up something by yourself, showing initiative. You’ll be able to learn exactly what you want in a timeframe that suits you.

Having a degree is superb because as well helping to protect your future, it will show a prospective company that you were able to complete a series of tasks and deadlines set by others - and to an ability level good enough to get awarded a degree. These days however there are very few courses that teach you exactly what you need to know to get a job. The courses are becoming more relevant, but university courses have to cater for a wide range of possible career choices, so they don’t seem to offer a direct path to a job making games.

So you could do both - go to university, get a degree in SOMETHING, and teach yourself art at the same time.

Robert Headley has just started a blog, Game by Design. So pop over and say hullo.

Now, it got me wondering - how many other game artists out there are blogging? If you know any, then let me know.

Edit: I’ve had one so far, Adam Bromell

Edit 2: Pete joins the fray - Stray Neutrino