Project Motivation

Project Motivation
Taking from personal experience of over 6 years working at AAA game studios I was able to trace back one key lesson that lead to a great acceleration in learning aesthetics and sound practices in games.  I started working at Midway Games in August 2007.  I was hired as an art intern and was given my first job in the industry.  That first job did not really involve creating any art though.  I was put on a team called Art Sharing.  At the time Midway was not only a developer but also a publisher and owned a number of studios all over the United States and Europe. To streamline game production the leadership had implemented a server based asset library for all of the studios to add to and take from.  Instead of creating assets that were already made by somebody say in England, the asset library allowed anyone on any game team to search and find professionally created models, textures and animations. Those assets did not of course magically find their way onto the database.  It was art sharing's job to take assets off game studios repositories, collecting all of the associated files necessary and to bundle them in a zip folder that contained a visual representation (a render) and meta tags. During these rote exercise I dreamed of creating environments for the games I was packaging for.  I was amazed at the level of artistry I was witness to. Little did I realize the invaluable lessons I was learning at the time.  Day in and day out for two and a half months I looked through, organized, examined and had exposure to AAA quality game art.  My eye for professional level assets and their composition was starting to become refined.  I remember really understanding how scrutinizing my artist eye became after a friend from college sent me his portfolio to see if I would give it to my Art Director.  This friend graduated a year before me and I always thought he was one of the best artist on campus.  After looking at true professional art for just 2 months I was able to make a clear distinction between what was passable for Midway Games and what was not. What I was learning from just rooting through professional files helped advance not only my eye for art, but I learned how UV's were laid out, textures utilized and how the files in general were structured.   My internship in Art sharing lasted two and a half months until I was promoted to a game team and worked on cinematic and game assets for the following nine and a half months. 
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Many years after my internship and having had a number of opportunities mentoring other new comers to game studies, I found much satisfaction in helping others grow.  As a Senior Environment Artist I have seen many portfolios come past my desk. I now teach at the undergraduate level and have observed a significant distance between industry professionals expectations from students (and thereby, potential employees), and what many students are actually producing while in school. Students in a game major typically have a personal love and passion for the media that brought them to the realization, ‘I want to make games’.  Like me, most students did not come to this realization lightly, but decided the thing that brought so much joy and inspiration to their lives was something they wanted to give to someone else.  Unfortunately, most undergraduates seem to have little or no knowledge of what being a part of the game industry requires.   Soon after college begins, many are surprised by the reality of game development, particularly that there are only three primary roles that make nearly all games: Designers, Artists and Programmers. While there are many supporting roles, like Producers and Quality Assurance (testers), if one does not fit well into the three primary roles it is unlikely that they will find themselves hands on creating games in the highly competitive world of game development.  To further the struggle, even one who shows potential in design or programming might find it hard to get their work noticed by industry recruiters when the work, which might in fact be technically excellent, nonetheless lacks a sufficient level of visual quality to catch a reviewers eye.  This is the real struggle many game students face, and it can diminish their hopes and efforts. By pursuing this study I wanted to take my years of industry experience and my passion for seeing others succeed and try to create a new approach for those who may hold within them the next evolution of game design or AI programming.  

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