Level Up – 2013
On April 3, 2013 the Design Exchange hosted the annual Level Up game student showcase. Students from 12 colleges and universities in the Toronto area showed their games to peers and industry, the event expected over 600 attendees!
Graduates from Centennial College’s Game Art & Design program displayed their demo reels and current students attended the event. Graduate Yury Uvarov’s demo reel (shown above) was prominently on display and featured modeling done in 3DsMax and environment work created in the Unreal game engine.
Canada has the third-largest video game industry in the world, organizers said, and the event is a chance for students to rub elbows with industry professionals who will judge their work.
“We’re proud to highlight the dynamic graduates entering our evolving games industry,” said Steve Engels, Level Up co-organizer.
Filed under: Game Art & Design, Industry News, Student Life, Student Work | 1 Comment
Tags: 3DsMax, Centennial College, Design Exchange, Game Art & Design, Game Design, Level Up, Student Life, Student Showcase, Student Work, toronto
Portfolio – part 1
I review applicant portfolios for Game Art & Design and Digital Animation on a weekly basis. Sometimes I am surprised in a good way, some days in a bad way. Good days are when I am blown away by the talent I see, bad days are not so much the quality of work presented, but the manner in which the work is presented or the pieces chosen.
A portfolio by definition is a showcase of your best work, presented in a professional manner – it is a demonstration of not only your technical abilities, but the object itself should say something about you – I say that last part because it does whether you like it or not. Loose drawings (class assignments with masking tape and grades on the back) in a plastic shopping bag tells me one of the following things:
- you don’t really give a crap
- you are clueless
- you are a slob
Given that most portfolios I see are from high school students I don’t hold this against them and usually figure it is #2, after all that’s my job to make students into professionals. The flip side to that slack is the simple fact that we live in the digital age, students applying are supposed to be digital natives. I assume that the thought process would go like this: “oh I need to present a portfolio, better look that up on Google.”
So here are my three short tips:
- Create new work for your portfolio – use the sills you have learned, show the reviewer that you have learned, for example, how to use perspective – cubes on a horizon are meaningless.
- Package your work like it is valuable – it is. Use a proper portfolio case for large work, a tube for life drawing sheets, a binder with plastic sheets for smaller works.
- Label your portfolio (name contact etc) and descriptions of each piece- this is especially important for digital work!
Filed under: Digital Animation, Game Art & Design, Student Work | Leave a Comment
Game Art & Design: Student work
Game Art & Design students proving that the program’s philosophy of “making artists, digital artists” is working. Here at Centennial we don’t try to be a generalist game program, the Game Art & Design program is about creating the assets you see in a console (AAA) game.
Check out the amazing work!
Filed under: Game Art & Design, Student Work | Leave a Comment
Tags: 3DsMax, Centennial College, Character Design, concept art, Game Art & Design, games, Maya, Modeling, Student Work, ZBrush
Despite the word Digital in the Digital Animation program at Centennial, students in program flex their traditional art skills every semester. While students are modeling, rigging and learning to animate in the wonderful world of Maya, there are classes in life drawing (live nude models!) acting and sculpting.
In the animation industry these maquettes are made as reference for the animators and modelers to check volume and form. For students in the Digital Animation program, working in real 3D is a great change from the virtual world of topology in Maya. Shown are a few in the display case outside of the digital animation labs at the Center for Creative Communications.
Filed under: Digital Animation, Student Work | Leave a Comment
Tags: Centennial College, Character Design, concept art, Digital Animation, life drawing, maquette, Student Work, toronto
The Game Art & Design program at Centennial College aims to create world class graduates. Our first semester has a focus on traditional art fundamentals. These fundamentals are necessary to create the incredible characters and environments found in video games.
Here are some examples of work done buy first semester students in the Game Art & Design program.
Filed under: First semester - game, Game Art & Design, Student Work | Leave a Comment
Tags: colour theory, composition, Game Art & Design, perspective, Student Work
Students from the third semester of Centennial College’s Digital Animation program attended a Master Class by movie title designer Susan Bradley. Her talk at the TIFF Lightbox was to a packed audience of students and professionals. Bradley’s talk focused on her (somewhat accidental) career as a title designer that encompasses six years as Manager of Disney Studios’ Title Graphics Department and her current role as a titles designer with Pixar Animation Studios.
Bradley showed three reels of selected works. The beginning of her career started with Quiz Show, then a reel on documentary work and finally her work with animation studios Disney and Pixar.
Susan Bradley onstage TIFF
Her informal talk was filled with lessons she has learned in an often fickle movie industry and the odd place that titles live in the production pipeline. Bradley’s work is cross discipline and collaborative in nature, mostly working directly with the director and editor in post production.
A small sample of Susan Bradley’s credits.
Susan has a skill set that encompasses typography, graphic design, photo composition and of course editing. Most of her work includes hand lettering or heavily modified type leading to new typesets.
Filed under: Digital Animation, Field Trip, Guest speaker | Leave a Comment
Tags: Animation, Centennial College, DISNEY, Field Trip, movie title designer, PIXAR, Susan Bradley, TIFF
On a grey damp afternoon (October 18th) Centennial’s Game Art & Design students made their way to the the edge of Lake Ontario to Corus Quay for Digifest’s Warren Spector and Marv Wolfman Disney Epic Mickey 2 keynote talk.
The panel discussion lasted for just over an hour, and was informal and engaging with anecdotes and information for budding game designers and writers.
Warren Spector, reknowned game designer and Marv Wolfman writer for Epic Mickey 2 focused on the upcoming Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two and detailed Warren Spector’s experiences with the creation process of both the original Epic Mickey and its sequel. Marv Wolfman focused on his experience of writing for the game, which was interesting and enlightening, particularly with his descriptions of transitioning from comic to videogame writing.
The process of making Mickey an engaging character and Epic Mickey an engaging game gave rise to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit as an alternate ego to Mickey . Oswald was the first character Walt Disney created at Universal but as he was under contract, Oswald remained property of Universal. When Disney formed his own studio he created Mickey Mouse, essentially a version of Oswald.
At the end of the talk there was a brief Q&A session with both Spector and Wolfman, and included questions on the writing process . Centennial Game Art & Design students asked some questions regarding the process of transforming a 60 year-old silent character to a talking video-game character.
Filed under: Field Trip, Game Art & Design, Game Design & Development, Industry News, Student Life | Leave a Comment
Tags: Centennial College, Disney Games, Epic Mickey 2, Field Trip, First Semester, Game Art & Design
