The Artistic Family ^.^ *We return!*

Sorry, I get a little excited meeting fellow game designers/aspiring game designers. You'll have to excuse me.

With game design there are petty much many fields and branches of those fields you can go into.

-Examples-

3D Modelers: These individuals make characters, environments, objects, effects, etc. via a 3D modeling program. Sometimes you'll have a team that models, another individual who textures (that's the most important part of modeling in terms of graphick quality), and some who rig and animate the models that need to be animated. At times you'll be able to find some very talented individuals who are able to do all of those specifics at once. The programs my game dev team uses for modeling and animations are Maya and 3Ds Max mostly, though some start out using SketchUp and LightWave, also Blender (a very nice FREE 3D modeling/animation tool with built-in programming in Python code.)

2D Artists: Despite what people think, 2D artists are KEY to game design, even with games that will be programmed in full 3D. In order to make accurate models, a 2D artist usually draws up character sheets with poses that can be loaded onto a 3D plane for modeling references. The 3D modelers take these images and place them into the program to model easily from. 2D artists are also good texture artists at times, and for 2D animation in games they are a key part of the game-making process. Spriters are difficult to come by these days, unfortunately...

Programmers: These guys are the ones wh build the motor and backbone of a game to allow it to work. From inputting commands via code to make sure 'when button x is pressed, this happens' or 'character is loaded into this area of the screen upon opening this door'. Every action carried out has to be programmed via code. There are many engines pre-built out there that allow teams to work through them in order to build games without coding everything from pure scratch. Our team, however,uses graphicks engine Ogre and builds the game logick foundation from scratch. Soon we hope to apply our knowlege into creating an engine we can license out to other game developers, making it easier for them to program and render their graphicks while allowing u to turn a profit.

Musick Composers: Yes, these guys are more knowlegable in the sound-oriented jobs. They create the musick and amospheric expressions, as well as sound effects for games using a musick/sound-creation studio. Most often, one composer is used per game, but some games havefully orchestra soundtracks in which an entire orchestra may be recorded by a sound technology professional to be placed in-game. EkIchi Games has quite a handful of talented musick composers and singers...

Voice Acting: Crucial for speaking roles in games. A person must fully and perfectly express who the character is while maintaining a sense of purity to the situation's dialogue being recorded. Expensive mics are usually a necessity, as well as a sound engineer to clean up the lines once recorded. Unfortunately, low to no budget games have to skip on the hi quality sound and rely on talented voice acting alone.

Writers: The writers do just that. Write. Character fleshing, dialogues, scenes, events, anything that has to do with the story flow you see in games, even down to the menu screen texts.

Game Mechanics: These individuals are actually VERY important, but feware needed per game in order to operate without trpping over each other. These guys calcuate formulas for stats, leveling, monster hp/sp, etc. Basically they do the math and set how things work. Then once done, they colaborate with others to write something called a 'design document' which fully describes everything from A to Z, so that the programmers can read and put everything into code. The storylines are also included, so that the programmers can type out the text that is spoken and place the story in order as it is rogrammed into the game itself.

There are more positions, but I will list one more.

The President/Founder: Perhaps the most difficult role, and the role I play inmy game dev team. I'm responsible for not only keeping everything running smoothely, but in advertisement, keeping funds in check, making play by play
progress plans, and generally keeping track of everything going on at once. It is stressful and takes up much time. I work multiple hours a day and still do not do as much as I should. Sometimes it is nice to have around three on the board of superiours, right under the Founder, so that the job is less harsh.

Hmmm...Do any of those jobs sound interesting? I know I barely touced on them, but those are pretty accurate overviews of some of the large divisions. They are usually separated into more branches per category...but I don't want to bore you.

Haha.

 

Big wall of text is big.

Interesting none the less though. I knew most of these things, but it was a nice review. There is quite a large amount of work put into games, really something to appreciate when you play.

 

Afternoon family<3

To change the subject for 2 seconds: What is the best version of photoshop? For drawing/coloring?

 

I go with Newest = Greatest <<

 

.....Im stupied >.>.....Mmm...Thank you..

 

Blivy:
I believe there is a CS4 out now, I would assume since it is new it would be better than the other previous ones.

Though I hear great things about CS3 still, and CS4 would probably be hard to pirate.

...Arr.

 

>.<
Thats why I wanted to ask.....Since sometimes, for a reference, the first movies made are better then the second.
But then again...Those are completely different types of thing....Anywho...
Carry onn..

 

Yea, most movies the first is always the best, same with things like Windows XP, Me, Vista. :| The older crap is better untill they finally fix all the crap wrong with the new stuff...except for Me, nobody like Windows Me, it just plain sucked, most people pretend it never existed.

But anyway yea, for photoShop it's basically the exact same as the previous one, plus added features.

 

Ooooh...I have Vista >.<

Thats true....I asked because Im writing my Christmas list♥ >.< Hahaha

 

lol, I think ppl are starting to get confused with the difference between 98 and ME now that everyone has Vista and XP. XD

But yea, it's a bad idea to compare movies with Photoshop because every version is an upgrade of the previous whereas sequels are mostly a completely different story with the same characters. Photoshop would be like a movie if the new version took away layering in place of better brushes or something weird like that. Oo

Speaking of which, I finally got some time to finish Phase 1 outlines for this stupid picture...



Can't believe I'm gona make 4 more similar drawings...I NEED MOAR TIME DAMMIT!

 

*Shoots Kairi*
>.>
<.<

........

 

You hate her again?

 

In a slight way >.<..


OHHH!!! OH MY GOSH! I forgot to tell you guys something >.<!

 

APed and came back and found this...



On my computer. God knows what it is supposed to be but I think it looks cool anyway...Don't know who did it either.

 

Blivy:
What? What? wat wat wat?!
I DEMAND YOU TELL MEH!

Flame:
Ah well, doesn't really matter if they remember or not.

Eww, no layering for better brushes? no thanks. I'm glad it's not similar to a movie >_<

I make my own brushes, or download them anyay. I only use one of the origional brushes :| and even that I changed the settings on

So much detail in the hair and fuzzy stuff o_-
I'm to lazy to lineart hair, lineart takes to damn long for me already, hair would just kill me.
And my style doesn't fir it.

D: I think we all wish we had more time for things.





I think I was gonna say something more...I dunno.

 

This guy at my school claims to be in love with me >.<!

 

Blivy:
Is he eww-ish?

 

He's honestly not THAT bad looking but....He talk extremely fast like a tweaker :x
And he hangs out in a group that you dont want to be in.

 

Fast talking can be hard to understand >_<

What does said group do that is unfavorable?

 

Well, they are really annoying and act likes kids. And they do drugs.