Jason Young-Game Artist

We had a good team meeting today for unearthly challenge.  An idea was ironed out, and we’re going to concept some stuff for thursday night before having another meeting and coming up with a plan.  At that point we’ll have a little over 5 weeks(plus the inevitable extension) to finish everything, so we’ll see what happens.  I’m pretty excited about doing environment work for a change, and I’ll definitely be posting WIPs here for the heck of it. 

With that in mind, this was a WIP(work in progress) from my comicon challenge entry that I didn’t finish.  I didn’t end up pushing the character enough to one side, and I’m not entirely happy with it.  I probably should have gone either more realistic and re-designed his clothes to be less costume-ish, or gone full on stylized and tried to match the comic version a little better.  I do feel like I improved my digital sculpting abilities a decent bit with this project, and so I consider it a successful one even if it wasn’t finished and up to my standards.  I’m considering finishing him, but I may just move on to the next character… I’ve got some ideas I want to explore.

This is a viewport grab from max, btw.  The hair is a mess, and I probably can’t fix that without taking him into an engine to fix the alpha sorting.  The staff texture needs a ton of work.

There are two games coming out this week that I’m really looking forward to.  Brutal Legend and Uncharted 2.

Both look to have a campaign/story that is epic in completely different ways. I’ll be curious to see how the multiplayer modes for each of them works, as neither one is a typical shooter.

Recently I played Shadow Complex on XBLA and Fallout 3 some more.  Fallout is probably in my top 5 games of all time, but I’m not sure I’ll play all the way through again.  That game with a focused narrative like Mass Effect would be insanely awesome.  Mass Effect with Fallout’s scope would be insanely awesome as well.  Both games are still extremely good.  Shadow Complex made me like 2d platformers again, even if it is all rendered in 3d.  The level design is spot on, and makes exploring more fun than many 3d games.

Some co-workers and I are working on Unearthly Challenge this year, which should prove to be a great learning experience.  I don’t consider myself much of an environment artist, but I know I can handle individual assets/props without a problem.  It’ll be a challenge to put all the elements together into something cohesive, but having other team members will be a huge help in that regard.  We’ve already got 3 great ideas that are well thought out, and after this week we’ll have everything nailed down conceptually and tasks assigned.  We’re using dropbox to manage all of our files across multiple computers, and I’m curious to see how well that works out.  I’ll be posting updates here as a WIP, which is something I’ve been meaning to do for awhile.  I don’t like having WIPs on my portfolio site, but I do want a place to put them for people to see.  A blog seems somewhat logical for that, and I think it’ll be fine unless I post a whole lot of text posts.

Coming in near the end of a project is pretty interesting.  You’ve got to adapt quicker than usual and try to work within everything that has been done previously.  Typically you might have a grace period of sorts where everyone is figuring out what and how things need to be done, and you might have a milestone or two to hit, but not an end of project deadline.  It’s been good, though, and I’m working on things that have to be done or the game doesn’t ship.  It may not be the most prestigious stuff, but it is important.

Guitar Hero: Metallica was just released last week for the PS3, 360, and Wii, and it’s gotten some really good reviews.  Even though I didn’t work on it, I still feel a sense of pride sitting next to people that did.  Hopefully it will be a sales success, and lead to many more high profile projects for the studio.

My latest game purchases have been Fallout 3’s “The Pitt” expansion, and a DS+Henry Hatsworth and Scrabble for my wife’s birthday.  The Pitt was worth a purchase, and more story driven than the last expansion, operation: anchorage.  I’m still amazed at the scope Bethesda pulled off with Fallout, and it makes me want more.  It does make me question the DLC(downloadable content) from others, though.  For 10 bucks, you get roughly 5-6 hours worth of new scenery, characters, and story in FO3.  For other games, you might get 3 new multiplayer maps for the same amount.  You might also get an entire downloadable game like Castle Crashers or Braid, that provide hours of fun.  That same 10 dollars will get you roughly 5 songs to play in Rock Band.  My issue is how much content you get compared to the initial purchase price.  In RB, you get roughly 50 songs to start for your $60 purchase price.  You also are getting the game itself including all the characters, venues, story, etc.  Why does a song cost 2 dollars when downloading?  That’s more than it is to purchase from itunes or other services, and the only thing you can do with it is play a game.  Seems a bit ridiculous to me.  So does charging $10 for 3 new multiplayer maps for a game who’s multiplayer is essentially broken for many people.  I’ll chalk it up to this being the first generation of consoles that provide DLC, and hope that they’ve figured things out a little better the next time around. 

I’m not entirely sure what my next purchase will be, as the release list looks a little barren this year.  Possibly UFC Undisputed, as long as they get the controls right.

Had my first week at the new job and so far, it’s been a really great experience.  Not a whole lot to talk about or that I can say, but I’m working on Our House: Party for the Wii.

My move was pretty interesting.  We basically had 3 weeks to find a place and get everything setup once I got the job offer.  On the drive up, we hit the worst snow storm in AZ in 15 years, just missed a nasty windstorm in Albuquerque, and drove through tornado inducing thunderstorms in OK.  Pretty much the worst weather I could imagine, and then when we moved in, our pipes burst due to the heat and water being shut off prior to move in.  Most of the issues have been resolved, and we’re settling in.

I’m excited to announce my employment with Budcat Creations in Iowa City, IA will begin in middle February.  They flew me out Monday night, put me in a hotel, and I interviewed on Tuesday morning.  Got an offer today, and overall it’s been a great application experience.  The studio really seems to have a sound business model in place, and the people were all extremely nice.  Most people have probably not heard of the company before, but they do the Wii and Ps2 versions of Guitar Hero games, and have worked on many other notable titles.

One of the best things about this job is the opportunity to do a variety of work.  All of the artists are generalist in nature, and that fits perfectly with my skills.  If I had to take a rough guesstimate, I’d say 99% of the companies I’ve seen hire specialists.  This is great for some and I can see the benefits with hiring specialists, but I think at some point more and more studios will hire people with wider skill-sets.  It’ll take the education system to catch up with the industry and start pumping out more quality artists.  As it is now, with the way academic programs are setup, it’s near impossible to teach someone everything they need to know about everything in 3-4 years and have them be any good at anything.

This is really my first legitimate post, and I have quite a few others in mind for the future.  I’ve got a lot to say about computer graphics education in this country, and really would like to start doing game reviews.  It’ll be a good way for me to pick out the successful elements I see, and hopefully incorporate them into future games that I work on or create.

This blog shall chronicle my time in the computer graphics industry.  I’m still in the process of editing this thing, so I’ll make a proper post once it’s all setup at least halfway decently.