Character TD Reel
My reel and example material have been moved here!
A Little History
Since animation for games is one of my primary interests, in this post I will be discussing a bit of history to place exactly where this industry currently is and how far it has come in a very short time span. Video games are interesting in that they have always been highly technology intensive; they are like technical playgounds where limits are pushed and innovations made that can then often be applied to other types of applications.
Games have come a long, long way in terms of capabilities. Contrary to what the G-Man might say, it is not, in fact, just like old times anymore. I remember my very first video game experiences with an Atari 400 that belonged to my dad. I was a pretty big consumer of Star Raiders and my brother and I had quite a few games of Star League Baseball. Back in those days we’d move around single color stick men made up of probably less than 20 pixels each, and we were damn glad to get it!
Seriously though, even though our expectations were low back then, I think one can learn a lot about the value of pure gameplay and the “fun factor” from low tech creations like these. We still did have fun, and we didn’t expect things to look real.
So that was fine. Then we got an IBM PC eventually and I started programming my first experimental games in BASIC. I think my games already tended to emphasize artwork, as I have memories of writing incredibly long DRAW commands to create sprites. That didn’t work out so great, but I did manage to do a small bit of choppy animation with them while not having a single clue what I was doing. We’d also play a lot of games on my grandfather’s Commodore 64 when we’d go to visit my dad’s parents. PC and video game technology was really taking off by this point.
Eventually our household computer got upgraded. I remember one of the things about that which impressed me was wave-table MIDI synthesis, which made game music sound a lot better back then. Then id Software developed Doom. That game was a pretty big revelation, not only because it was an engaging experience that looked really good in those days, but also because - as I would eventually discover - it was possible to modify it to change the gameplay experience to your own whims. That sparked my interest in games development, I think, and I did a lot of goofy Doom mods that never got released but they were sufficient to amuse me. The way random everyday people were injecting their fantasy ideas into this technology was really cool back then. I remember Alien Doom was one of the better mods.
So fast forward a bit.. companies started making dedicated graphics boards for computers, which eventually influenced a move to 3D on console systems. From then on things have pretty much striven to be faster and more versatile. The introduction of shader programming (also known as a “programmable pipeline”) was a huge step which allowed a lot of custom effects to be programmed by a software developer instead of being hard-wired into a given piece of hardware’s capabilities.
Nowadays we have added physical simulation, many high quality graphical effects that replicate real-world lighting phenomena, skeletal animation systems, water with refractions, and on and on. Creating a game that lives up to these modern standards is a hell of a lot more work than it was several years ago, a huge portion of which is art creation. I think these inflated development pricetags do not bode well for fostering creative and innovative ideas. Companies gravitate towards what is safer to produce, because it is a huge financial gamble to produce an unconventional modern game if you aren’t a super successful multi-billion dollar giant. Small timers are having a harder time, rather than being on the forefront as in the days of Doom and shareware. As far as the public is concerned, the bar has been raised and things that don’t look as shiny as, say, Crysis, are at an inevitable disadvantage.
Then: Stick men!
Now: Don’t forget to add the acne and nose hairs.I think there are two answers to this problem, really. The first one is to just simplify your ideas and focus on getting the maximum amount of fun per man-hour of work. This is a great method, and often leads to really brilliant gameplay designs. It can be used to distract from lower quality graphics; if the player is having tons of fun they will care less about how things look (though looking good is never a bad thing). I think an even more correct approach to this philosophy is to embrace simpler, but more stylized art direction, and use it to harmonize with interesting gameplay ideas. Team Fortress 2 is a good recent example of simplified and stylized art direction in a modern game.
The other way to deal with this expanding complexity is to find new ways to master our development processes, which means understanding the tools in new ways, and where necessary, inventing new ones. I think this trend will require the most effective video game artists in the near future to be more than just artists. It is necessary to have a technical frame of reference that allows you to understand unconventional ways technology can be applied to your problems. I am excited to see what the future holds in terms of new ideas to tackle this “epic development” problem, and participating by offering my own ideas. I shall get down to specifics soon enough, but for now, I must wrap this up. Toodles!
Hello, My Name Is: “Computer Graphics”
So, in the small moments I have actually had to think about what to begin writing on here, I have decided on a couple of things. While I do want to cater to people looking to get into the CG profession, another part of me also wants to create things that will be accessible and perhaps spark interest in curious members of the non-graphics oriented public.
In that vein perhaps a good old fashioned overview is a decent way to start things off. These days when one talks about a “CG production”, you are usually referring to something involving 3D graphics. One might consider other media, such as Flash animation, to be “Computer Graphics” as well, but that’s a whole other blog and I won’t be going there.
To really understand what CG is all about, we should begin by looking at the typical generic form of a 3D graphics production process (referred to as a “pipeline”). In a very basic sense it can be broken down like so:
This is just a simple overview. Real pipelines often involve many extra steps and details which we need not be concerned with at the moment. Each of these steps is somebody’s job. Depending on the organization of the studio it can sometimes be the same person doing different jobs. Often times, the larger the scope of a production, the more emphasis tends to be placed on specialization in one of these niches, such as with entirely CG films. I think this pattern is both necessary but also problematic, but I will get into that another time.
I think that’s enough for today’s post. For now I will leave you to congratulate yourself on your new acquaintance with computer graphics (if you two had not already met). It’s not such a frightening beast when you get to know it. Perhaps we can invite it to a party over the weekend.
The Beginning
Well, it’s been many long years of consuming pizzas, moving from state to state, attending art schools, watching Star Trek, plotting get rich quick schemes, and hibernating through the winter months since I’ve even been a blip on the great “Internet Radar”, so I suppose it’s about time that changed. Much like the proverbial Poochy, I figure during this time some people (probably like one guy somewhere in Alaska) have paused to ask themselves the question, “Where’s Jordan??”
Well the answer is “Here!”… and now.
But moving on, by starting this site I hope to iterate some of my feelings, ideas, concerns, advice, and perhaps romantic poetry about the great Computer Graphics Industry (this phrase should be pronounced by cupping your hands around your mouth like a megaphone and speaking in your loudest, most authoritative voice possible).
It is an incredibly exciting time to be an artist! Technology has developed to the point where almost any vision can be made into a reality. However with all this enormous complexity and promise also tends to come enormous confusion. I hope that by organizing my thoughts and experiences as I learn my way through this profession (a process I expect to continue long after I secure a serious art job), I will be able to provide some level of remedy for that confusion, for someone, somewhere. Jobs in this field are becoming more and more specialized, which is often out of necessity due to the epic scales of many projects. After all, even if someone can do it all, it might take them their whole life to accomplish just one work on this scale.
But there are things we can do to work with this situation. I think it is important for us to keep a “big-picture” perspective wherever possible. Even though things are becoming highly compartmentalized, the end product of any project involving CG production is always an interdisciplinary effort. It is a melding of technical skills, artistic skills, storytelling skills, acting skills, and on and on. I feel that any artist, no matter his or her specialty, can benefit by having even a cursory understanding of the other pipeline elements that will affect the work, and that makes it worth the time to dabble in something that is not necessarily your job. It facilitates better communication between people of different CG disciplines, and in general promotes more sophisticated - and, I feel, satisfying - understanding of our creations.
I am interested in eventually getting into CG work for video games, though film projects can be interesting as well and present their own unique challenges. I am not yet a working professional in the field and remain a student, but I hope to change this soon enough. From a game artist perspective, I find that a generalist philosophy is highly useful to understanding how your models, imagery, animations, etc. will be used by a given game’s technology, and thus will prepare you better to make assets that more appropriately fit those needs.
Ok, enough verbiage. For those who happen upon this site in its infancy, please bear with me as I develop it in my limited spare time! See you next post.