Chris Goodswen Lecture

Recently I attended a presentation given by Chris Goodswen, a 3D Character Artist who attended NUCA and also did the Games Art and Design course. Within this lecture he told us about his experiences within the course, what its like working in the games industry and tips on how we can improve and learn more about our work. Chris told us when he started this course, he wanted to be a 2D character artist and was influenced heavily by Syd Mead, Feng Zhu and Arron Symms. This got me thinking about what job route i want to take and whether this will change throughout the years too, and which artists I'm influenced by. A lot of my work is strongly character based, this is what i enjoy most so i think i would like to go into 2D character and maybe some other form of concept design, but maybe this will change as i learn new things. I would also like to be a storyboard artist or illustrator because the cut scenes in the Final Fantasy games are what made me want to get a job in this industry.
Chris presented a lot of the work he has done over the past year and the projects he has worked on, one piece was a 3D model he did for an ogre character that eats children. This idea was really inventive and captured the creepiness well, however, it didn't just pop out purely from his imagination. He told us how much research is involved in any design process, and for this project he started by looking into old fairy tales, but not the obvious Brothers Grimm, Victorian type of tales, so his ideas were still unique. This taught me to do a lot of research before designing something, and also to create lots of thumbnail sketches and gradually build up a design because its likely you will find something better than your first idea. I will definitely start taking this line of process when designing and creating.

When Chris was talking about how much work he had to do for his masters, with the thousands of words essays, I did find this rather daunting, however, this is just one part of what he had to do, he also had the chance to actually create a playable game, which must have been so rewarding.
Overall, what i learnt is that i should use these next few years t, build up my skills, try using different programmes and techniques, do lots of observations and sketches, but overall, to enjoy the course and the creative freedom, because in the industry, this will go, you'll be designing what other people want, and if its not exactly how they want it, or they don't like it, they will tell you and you will have to change it to their needs. It was really great to see someone who has gone through the process we are now starting and acomplished so much.