So anyway. I have a mate, and he works as a games-tester at a company that makes mobile-phone games, some pretty well known ones actually. So he's been talking me up to his manager, and recently a vacancy has come up for artist. My mate advised me to make an online portfolio to show off some of my shite, so I did.
And now, my friends, I show it to you, in the hope it may enlighten midgets across the land...
http://www.asparagustrevor.nildram.co.uk/Portfolio/main.htm
It's extremely basic, and unfinished at the moment, but I will add more to it this weekend, hopefully. The sprites I did on request of the boss of my friend's work, and I'm gonna try and get some more done, and some more complex ones, maybe like some complete pixel portraits, Hayo style.
Anyway, take a look, my brothers. But don't stay too long.
I'm not just blowing smoke up your ass when I say that you are VERY talented. Good luck with the job, I'm sure that you have a great chance at getting it. The photoshops were very impressive. Everything was very impressive. Hope you get the job!
Steve Zissou: Anne-Marie, do all the interns get Glocks?
It's all very good, except the sprites. I'm certain you can do better than that. Surely your games have many examples of pixel art you can use?
You can use ImageReady to build some animated GIFs too, they'd like to see those.
The main problem is that for mobile phone games, I would thing pixel art would be the most important of all the work you could do! Vector art could also help for phones with higher res screens (where they want the simplicity of pixel art, but with smoother lines).
All the best with it!
Perhaps you can put up a walking animation, or link to a vitalize example of lots of animations blended (eg: you press a button and your character walks, jumps, crouches, runs, falls, has several idle animations, etc). Maybe as these animations occur you can get MMF to annotate it with the Speech Bubble Object.
Eg: Person starts the idle animation and the Bubble comes up: "This idle animation has subtle changes depending on whether the user is facing left or right. If it were simply mirrored, key details of the sprite would suddenly invert."
Or when they make the character land after a jump or fall: "This animation was carefully blended to mix the falling animation with the standing animation. Care has been taken to ensure that it looks good no matter which frame of the falling anim' it interrupts"
You could also show some expertise by making a fully animated character where his body parts are separate. This would show a relevance between sprite art and game design specifically.
For example, legs have a walking and falling animation, but you can still move the player's arms to aim. His head will still tilt to follow the basic direction of the mouse pointer. If the character has long hair, perhaps you can express this as another object, so it blows and flutters about irrespective of the frames of other body parts. You could make the following comments in the V! app:
"In this example, body parts are expressed and animated as separate objects. This adds a level of interactivity, letting one bit perform one task whilst another does something else (eg: aiming whilst walking, vs. aiming whilst standing). It can also be used to reduce the complexity of animations (eg: if player changes trousers, the legs object can load a different set of sprites without needing to change the body. Otherwise we would have to draw separate animations for each possible clothing choice).
It also has the crucial advantage that frame rates and loops can vary from one 'part' of the player to another. If the player has a 'blink' animation, this can work irrespective of any other animations currently playing. The character can still be blinking if he is walking, running, falling, crouching, etc. By that same standard, idle animations can me mixed to give a greater variety. Note in this example how the player can tap his left foot, tap his right foot, rest on one hip, rest on the other, etc. His torso can fidget, click his fingers, scratch, yawn, etc.
Whilst the blends require careful animating, the result is exquisite."
D'you get what I mean? This stuff isn't that hard to do, and the running commentary makes sure they're seeing the best in your work.
At any rate, all the best! Show us how you get on!
Good luck dude, i hope you get the job and i hope its high paid!
n/a
Deleted User
5th August, 2005 at 21:34:27 -
I think youll get it but a D in math wow that must be a hard subject to you
Deleted User
6th August, 2005 at 00:11:51 -
E as in lowest grades? if that is what you mean in my school theres F's and if i did the home work i would get an A in math and Social Studies but Sciesnce and laguage arts Blah probably a C
Seems like an impossible coincidence! But such a sort of a basic design I've made for my site at the MMF boundled, in friday!
http://nm.mmfbonus.com
Take a look, It's pretty similar, though it doesn't has such great works like trevor has... Anyway, On my site, the art section is underconstruction and I currently don't have plans to change the design...
I have trouble making small sprites. I mean, the job is for a mobile phone game company, so the biggest screens they work with are 320x240, and I find it really hard to make sprites that small that still look good. I've got a bunch of big sprites I've done already, though. If anyone's got any ideas, then I'm all ears... or erm, eyes.
Pete Nattress Cheesy Bits img src/uploads/sccheesegif
Registered 23/09/2002
Points 4811
7th August, 2005 at 12:21:54 -
Playtrip, what browser is your site tested in? It's nasty in both IE and FireFox.
Anyway, Trev, yes, well, as you well know all your Photoshops and renders are awesome. I agree with Dines about the pixel art though, it's pretty crap in comparison. Could be worse but could be better. Good luck with the job application anyway, they'd be pretty stupid to turn you away with all your 3DSMax work.
Trouble is though, it'll be the pixel-art they'll be looking at. It's hard to make a good looking sprite that's so small anyway, and they'll be working on tiny resolutions so that's how I have to make em. Considering the obscenely small size, I don't think they're too bad.
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