Careers Fair

My main reason for heading down this year was for the careers fair and developer sessions, so I headed straight there (via Uncharted 3) to get my name down and beat the queues I was convinced would be there. Initially I was somewhat disappointed with the turn out as it seemed more geared towards encouraging me to go down the postgraduate/Ma route rather than having loads of recruiters from studios. Even though there were only a handful of studios I got more out of a 10 minute chat with the guys at Creative Assembly than I could have imagined. Its a studio I had recently applied to so I was apprehensive about talking to them as I’d been unsuccessful and wasn’t so sure they’d have time to talk to me. Their reaction surprised me, they recognised my name/C.V and the HR team sat me down with the Lead Artist who spent a good 5/10 mins talking to me about my work and where I wanted to be. I’ve been working on side projects to help learn new things and get new and improved content for my portfolio/showreel and it was reassuring to talk through all of this with someone in the industry who was responsible for hiring and be told I’m enthusiastic and to stick with it as they may require more juniors in the future. Happy that I was on the right track and filled with confidence I hit the show floor and played as many games as possible…..

The Games

So I’d finally made it to the expo and realised my slight error in going straight to the careers fair. The queues were HUGE but then I realised that it’s highly likely that I’ll be picking up copies of Batman: Arkham City, BF3, MW3, Skyrim etc. So I could join these mammoth queues OR try things I wouldn’t necessarily have picked up or even heard of without coming down – The Indie Arcade was immense!

Waves – Easily my favourite find in the Indie arcade (Pictured) I think the developer was Squid in a Box. Eitherways it was highly addictive and on my list of games to purchase. Had I spent and hour or two in the Batman queue I’d have missed out on finding this.

Joe Danger: The Movie, I loved trials HD and was introduced to the original Joe Danger soon after, just as addictive but in my opinion it looks so much cooler and the sequel looks funnier and was another game that was hard to stop playing.

Rise of Nightmares – I’d not heard much about this games before, just that it would be unlike any other Kinect game I had played so far. Very. True. Just the way you control it felt nice and different to how other games have worked (looked kinda weird watching someone else play/control (?) ) but overall I was really impressed, not too sure how it would hold up over a long time as I’d still rather have a controller in my hands than shuffle around the living room flailing/hacking at zombies but still very much worth mentioning.

As someone that’s waited what seems like forever for some decent 3Ds games Nintendo finally came through! As well as streetpass going crazy throughout the day, their stand finally allowed me to get my hands on Super Mario Land 3DS, Mario Kart, Pokemon Rumble, and Metal Gear Solid 3D. There were a couple more games on offer but these are the ones I have been waiting for and for me its worth the wait (I did go from original Game Boy to 3DS though so I’m probably far easier to please than other day one buyers upgrading from a DS)

Games of note would include:

Fruit Ninja Kinect – somehow more fun than the mobile version.

Uncharted 3 – Only had the multiplayer but I’m a huge fan of the series and cannot wait to get my hands on the single player campaign.

Rayman Origins – This one took me by surprise, the art is beautiful and its another game that feels nice to play, I cant describe what it is that makes a game ‘feel’ nice I just know that it did and I could happily return to these games after years away – I didn’t know it was still going.

Other Things and Stuff

The day was packed, played lots and should probably have written this the night I returned rather than waiting a week… But besides coming away from it with what is easily a £500+ wish list of games there were a few other things I’d learnt having finally attended a big games event:

1.  Go over two days not one (day of Dev sessions and a day of games)

2. Make sure your following the festival/companies interested in on twitter – we found out about cool stuff that way (free insert coin t-shirts – Nintendo giving away ocarina’s etc. and the free swag is what its all about right?)

3. An exclusive dev talk with Richard Lemerchand and Nolan North. For some reason I’d forgotten about this until now but after running over to the Naughty Dog/Uncharted 3 section I ended up talking to one of the Sony people who let me sign up for an exclusive talk with these two about the game. In groups of about 20 we were shown 5mins of exclusive footage from the plane/desert sequence with a short Q&A session with the developers after all for ‘liking’ playstation access on facebook. Confirming that smartphones are so so useful.

4. The time I had in the Careers section was invaluable, however, a couple of the companies I had the opportunity to talk to wanted to see my work there and then (which was awesome) however I had only taken DVD’s. Next time the laptop is going along too.

- oh and it wouldn’t be right without over priced/stupid/must have merch 

I’m still working out the best way to contribute to the #AltDev community, I’m possibly one the youngest/most inexperienced of all of the authors but I absolutely love what I do and the opportunities I’ve had so far. I’ve just finished a short stint working on Kinect Sports 2 and in that time the animation team taught me an incredible amount, I hadn’t realised how much my own approach had changed until pondering what to write about for this post. This time out I figured I’d try writing a post about problems ive encountered and the solutions I find on the off chance that there’s another me reading this also looking for the best way to muddle through things. When I wasn’t working on in game content at work I’d be working on short shots to practice various animation methods and really want to improve as an animator, working on my own stuff at work meant I could get invaluable advice and hints from the team and get pointed in the right direction if needed. Some of the suggestions seem so obvious now and I wish I was shown these things at uni!

Starting with the obvious

First things first, the ‘un-welcome screen’ the first time you open Maya it’s scary, there’s no getting round that. In my intro to CG lesson there was a collective gasp as we were greeted with this:

However if you break it down into 3 maybe 4 job roles there’s a lot as an animator you don’t need to worry about initially – if ever. Animators and artists all work within maya so there’s tools for everyone –modellers, riggers, animators, texture artists, rendering magicians etc. So I guess what I’m trying to say is don’t panic, keep it simple.

W – Move tool

E –Rotate

R- Scale

S – Set key

At its most basic level they are the keys required to animate, this doesn’t cover constraints/prop interactions but its more information than the ‘download a rig and play with it – oh and the graph editor is your friend’ instructions I received. Opening Maya for the first time and being told that put a lot of people off, which is a shame because after getting past the fact it had about 3 tools that all do the same thing with slightly different names and the less than friendly interface, it’s a really awesome program.

Motion curves

Probably one of the most useful things I was shown at my last job. Timing and Spacing are the fundamentals I struggled the most with and being able to have visual feedback on the position of my keys on the arc/curve of the motion blew my mind. It’s such a simple idea, when learning to animate traditionally we were taught to sketch things out and roughly mark on the spacing – a la bouncing ball

I’ve always wanted to be able to do this in maya and was shown where it was hidden away in the menus:

Select the desired object/control and then with the animation drop down selected go to animate>create motion curve

This creates a piece of geometry/locators showing the arcs/motion trail and will update as you adjust your keys, this has helped me so much – I genuinely do not know how I finished my film without this.

Referencing

Another thing I now don’t work without is referencing, if you work directly with master files that’s asking for trouble. Fortunately if you’re in a studio you’ll have the wonders of version control and a pipeline to work from *however* if you’re working on things on the side it’s a really good habit to get into.

In order for this to work for each shot I will create a new blank scene file and reference each object in:

-          The character

-          The environment/set

-          Any props

Why? Well when I have my main character, the sets and all of the props in their own maya files, this means I can edit away and change textures/tweak models as much as I please knowing that the changes will be implemented across all scenes.

For example when working on my grad film a change to the main characters hair colour was requested, using this method meant I only had to change the master file rather than 28 individual scene files, leaving me more time to devote to other tasks.

Another thing worth pointing out is that referenced files are un-editable which can be really useful as it’ll prevent continuity errors (even if it does seem like a pain in the ass at the time)

Clean Rigs

I love knowing how things work, wherever I’ve gone I seem to ask endless questions in an attempt to know how stuff works, I get curious. With my film I had a good idea about what I wanted character performance wise but initially got pushed down the auto rigging route. I would not suggest this. It was a frustrating and poor use of two months. Needless to say I scrapped that version and set out to create my own rig, I wanted both fk and ik and didn’t want controls all over the place so I added an expression to show/hide the fk/ik controllers depending on the mode I was in; it’s probably the simplest expression going but it kept things clean.

if (rightArmManip.ikFkBlend > 0.5)
{
master.ikManip = 1;
master.fkManip = 0;
} else {
master.ikManip = 0;
master.fkManip = 1;
}

Not exactly maya ‘basics’ but once I got stuck into the slightly more technical side of things I kept wanting to test myself and see what I could create.

I think thats the most recent set of useful little things ive learnt, a mixture of technical and essential, I’ll try repeat the idea in a future post as I learn various ways of making cool stuff

Almost exactly two years ago I got my first taste of what it would be like to work in games, something I had wanted to do for as long as I could remember, it took a while for me to find the right discipline but during art college I stumble across animation and since then I’ve been hooked. This became my chosen subject at degree level and at the end of my second year after a brief introduction to maya I found myself taking a year out from studying to do an animation internship at Lionhead Studios.

Lionhead was a huge learning curve for me in terms of animation and the speed at which each shot was turned around, it would also serve as an introduction to motion capture, which is something all animation jobs I’ve applied for has requested knowledge in but still isn’t taught at university. Over the course of that year I would get the chance to learn everything from calibrating mo cap systems, marker placement and setting up and running shoots to actually cleaning the data and getting it ready for the game as well as having the opportunity to work on some more ‘traditional’ handkeyed animations. Besides the animation work being there gave me the chance to really learn and get a look at what goes into making a game and the vast amount of disciplines/team members involved across production. After the placement was over I knew that games was where I wanted to be and returned to complete my final year at uni with my heart set on getting back into the industry.

Returning to uni was always going to be tricky given that I’d spent a year out and had a chance to learn how things were done and having become accustomed to the ways things were done at work compared with how the course structured work the initial few months felt like an uphill struggle. The overriding question being should I make my film to please the uni and tick all of their boxes to ensure a good grade or should I go with what I’d learnt on my internship and make a film that allowed me to demonstrate the skills I needed to show to get a job after graduating. Being so work focused I went with the latter, frustrating some of the tutors along the way I spend most of this year holed up in the animation studio’s in Newport to make the best film I could in the time that I had.

The film is about a young boy coming to terms with the loss of his father and losing his most cherished possession. He must go on a journey of discovery to find it,which will eventually allow him to move on. I think i had about 7 months in total to make this from initial idea to final hand in, I’d previously only animated in maya and over the 7 months had to teach myself how to model, rig and texture, fortunately I had a lot of good advice from various people I’d met in the industry and help from friends. There’s a few shots I still want to work up and have been doing so in down time at work so hopefully in the coming months/weeks I can post a final cut! Coming back to handkeyed animation after a year or so dealing with motion capture was very tricky indeed but that is another post in itself…

Within about a month of completion and a lot of job applications I’ve found myself working at Rare for the next couple of months, back on the motion capture clean up and most importantly back in games.