Lecture 3D character artist. 8/10/10

Chris Goodswen

At first he used to hate 3D and was mainly focused on at traditional work and avoided doing 3D work. His main focus was on character design but he also did some background and environment art. All this was when he was still in university.

During his final year at university he was working on his final project as well as getting stuff together for a portfolio, he explained that it was important to have some traditional art in your portfolio as well, like life drawing and thumb nail sketches, this would show that you new about anatomy and the original ideas that you came up with. He really focused on the anatomy, as if you can show you know what you’re doing in that area, it looks really good in your portfolio. Despite the fact that he was not that skilled in 3D work he chose to specialise in it. He chose to base his game concept as a horror in the 1980’s; he started by looking at some rather disturbing fantasy stories to get inspiration for his designs. He then did a lot of thumbnail sketches and then moved on to speed paints, so he had the basic concepts for his characters before he started the final models.

The program he used to create his models was called Mud box, he explained that the companies that you do work for don’t really care how you do the work as long as it gets done. The method you use is up to you and what you are most comfortable using.

As he went further on in his education he found that he did not have as much freedom over what her did on the BA course, he didn’t have much say on what he was meant to be designing and producing and found his work was being intensely criticized and he was often told to redo a lot of stuff. They usually worked in teams each having their own job to do within the game making process, giving them a chance to specialise in there chosen area, in Chris’ case character design. He found the process of producing a game very stressful and found that they were under a lot of pressure as the deadlines were tight. 

At the end of his lecture he emphasized that it was important to network and get yourself out there, giving yourself a good opportunity to get spotted by potential employers, also to make sure to keep working on improving yourself while looking for a job.