Game Art help!

Hey everyone.
I'm a bit lost at the moment, I'm looking to go to Uni next year to help me on my road to becoming a game artist.
My question is which is better for following that route a specific Game Art Design course or something like 3D Art.
Also I wanted to know if I wanted to do a course like this would I have to take a foundation art course before I started the actual degree.
Any help would be much appreciated! (:

Reply 1

moid

That's a tricky question to answer - the short answer is: it depends.

The first thing to be aware of is that the Games Industry won't care if you have a degree or not - they only look at the quality of the work in your portfolio. However, for most people to have any chance of achieving a professional quality level of artwork in their portfolio they will need to attend a course where they are taught by lecturers with industry experience. It doesn't matter to most games companies whether you study 3D or Games Art, as long as your artwork is good enough. There are a few games companies that do insist on seeing some realtime artwork rendered inside a game engine to prove that a candidate can do so and can deal with export issues from a 3D program and then import into a realtime environment. However most (this year at any rate) are more impressed by high polygon rendered work that you could generate on either a 3D or Games Art course. The important thing to look for is a course that teaches students to a professional standard (very few of those in the UK). The other thing you will need is an over whelming, obsessive, near crazy desire to want to get that job - something that will force you to work all hours of the day and night, seven days a week. Making games is a very different experience to playing them. Some decent intelligence will help as well, so that you can analyse why and what you are doing and think differently to the rest of the people in the class.

As to whether you need to study a Foundation course that depends of how talented your traditional art skills are, and whether it matters to you that you attend a decent Games Art / 3D course. There are hundreds of poor quality degrees in the UK that will happily accept you without a portfolio, so you won't need Foundation skills for them. If you want to get into a decent course you will need good quality traditional skills - life drawing, perspective, colour theory, paintings, even some sculpture would help. You'll also need some 3D work as well.

Go to some open days, look at the quality of the work, go online and find work made by students of universities that you are thinking of applying for and see what impresses you and apply for them - if you get in, fine, your standards are high enough. If not, do a foundation year and apply again the year after, and as long as you picked a decent foundation course, you will stand a much better chance next time around.

Hmmm another thought - you don't mention what you are studying at the moment - BTEC's rarely prepare students to a good level of art (although I know of two good exceptions), but at the same time A-levels (Fine Art etc) can often be run by teachers of the conceptual/pasta shapes glued to collage/weaving school of crap teaching so that's not always a golden standard either. You may be about to discover that what passes for art education in this country up to the age of 18 is pretty awful in many places.

Good luck :smile:

Reply 2

SexuallySexySex

I am stating a Game Art course at DMU this year, I can't wait! :biggrin:

I didn't need to take a foundation course they said Fine Art was okay.
Of course I had to attend an interview with a portfolio of work and it went great so I should be in there this year.

Life drawing, perspective, colour theory, paintings, even some sculpture, I've done all that, but I had another interview at the same time for Teesside, but Teessise is a real dump to be honest and the teaching isn't very good I've heard and the interview went quite poorly. ¬_¬ They both basically wanted to see still life/life drawing, I'd recommend whatever media you work best with like me I used pencil in all mine. I guess interviews apply for all Art related subjects and of course digital work is done on the course so showing some 3D work you may have done would look good on any 3D or Game Art course.

But overall I know I am making the right choice because DMU's course is now Skill Set credited, so its among the best and the only Game Art course in England to have it. It will probably be harder to get on the course next year with it new status but who knows could see you on my course next year if you chose, good luck! :smile:

Reply 3

HWD-x

Thanks for both of your replies! The information was very helpful, I forgot I'd joined here. ;P
I've actually now visited DMU and the course talk was very impressive a lot of competition and very very talented students! I've now realised I need to improve my foundation art skills quite a bit to have a chance of being accepted. I'm also visiting Hertfordshire uni later this year, as that's a second option.

@moid - I'm currently taking two BTEC national certificates one in Art & Design and one in IT. I've heard that most uni's prefer A-Level's so it's a bit worrying, but I'm hoping my skills may help back me up a bit. Although most the units I've done have been sculpture, drawing and graphic at the moment.

@SexuallySexySex - Congrats on getting in! DMU does look a great place to study and the course looks really amazing to, the work I saw on display was really fantastic! Can I ask you what kind of things you put into your portfolio? Also do you have pre-existent 3D skills as I have tried experimenting but was a little worried in case I did get accepted and my skills where further behind than others in the course!

Gahh! University is very stressful! ;D

Reply 4

blacklight

Bournemouth is supposed to be good for 3d. Try searching youtube for examples of peoples work at whatever places you are considering, you should be able to get a general idea of how good the teaching is.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bournemouth+NCCA&aq=f

A friend of mine went to Vancouver Film School in Canada. He seems very pleased with it, and I can definitely attest to how intense the work there is. The tuition is very expensive though, but you can get away with only 2 years there, or 1 if you skip the foundation course due to having a strong artistic background already.

Reply 5

HWD-x

Ahh I see thanks a lot for that blacklight! Will have search up some more Uni options I think to, only have two in mind at the moment! Ah wow that's great, I can imagine how intense the work is for finishing in two years!

Reply 6

moid

HWD-x

Hi there - yes universities (on the whole) prefer A-levels over BTECs because A-levels (mostly) require much more intellectual effort than BTECs do, even though the government rates the as the same UCAS points, there is usually a big difference between a BTEC applicant and an A-level / Foundation applicant. For what it's worth (and this may be completely different elsewhere) at Hertfordshire we take the majority of applicants from Foundation courses, then a reasonable chunk from A-levels and finally a much smaller amount from BTEC/other similar access courses. However, if your art skills are fantastic we don't care what you studied :smile:

One warning though, our minimum entry requirements go up to 300 points next year.

If you are studying realistic sculpture (clay modelling or similar) that's very good for 3D, please put that in a portfolio, we don't get many applicants with good sculpture skills, and even if your digital 3D skills are not as strong as you would like, if you can sculpt well traditionally that will do instead. But no pretentious stuff please (leave the macrame/pasta shapes/toilet rolls for Fine Art application :smile:

). Practice drawing as much as possible, make sure you can draw well in two point perspective (minimum), and also have plenty of life drawing. You will also need to show good 3D modelling skills in a 3D programme of you choice.

Here are a few examples of work by Games Art students that graduated this year:

http://vimeo.com/9023031

http://vimeo.com/12021969

http://vimeo.com/12130423

http://vimeo.com/12538276

Reply 7

HWD-x

Yeah I am doing clay at the moment, sculptures of real life animals which I hope to finally input into my portfolio. It's great to hear what a Uni look for, thanks for replying! To be honest it sounds like I'm going to have really up my game if I want to get in. I think I'll just have to wait and see, build on my skills and try and make my portfolio the best. Thanks again moid, you've been very helpful! :biggrin:

Wow the Graduates work is amazing! If that's what I'll be leaving with I MUST get in! (:

Reply 8

SexuallySexySex

HWD-x

I did some 3D work, I did AS&A2 Graphics which required us make some buildings and objects so if you can print them off and take them with you that would be great! They looked at all my Art work and then at the end I showed them some of the 3D stuff but they wasn't to interested by then. But it went really well, I start the full course on monday :biggrin:

Just still life and life drawing is what they really wanna see, do NOT copy any pictures that already exist and do NOT bring any thing that is fantasy type stuff done on Photoshop etc, they don't wanna see that, anything from the world as you see it is perfect and this can be done on photoshop if you wish.

As far as 3D work goes its good to bring some stuff that exists, but try not to make things up, I think thats why they were not interested in that much. There is 3D stuff on the course but you get into that later, I personally do not like 3D work but it is required so you just have to work at it eventually, but there A LOT of people on this course that don't like 3D work either and prefer 2D so we're gonna be all together when that comes around, you get to do team work within the second year so can't wait for that.

But on the whole at interview, bring life/still drawings weather they are Pencil, charcoal, water colours, photoshop digital paintings or 3D models of existing things. They say its more of a fine Art course which looking at previous students work it is.

Don't worry compared to the rest of the class I am probably at the bottom of how good I am as an Artist and I made it! Out of 300 applicants 42 were accepted, and only about half of them will still be here come July 2013. It must be the type of work I brought in were as everyone else must think they can easily get into the course with all this digital fantasy stuff, which is what they do not want.

Do what I say and I'll see you next year :wink: