Do I have potential?

[jhn1991]

Hey guys, im a Junior in high school, and i started thinking about a career in game art as a 2D / 3D artist. Right now im still a little confused about the job as a whole, but i am looking up more and more about it. One of the things I've been wondering right now though, as i see all this crazy good artwork, is if i have the potential to be a game artist.

I drew up something a while back, a little after i saw The Dark Knight with some friends. I drew this in MS paint with a mouse. took me roughly 45 mins, i dont remember exactly. The letters on the side are bad because i was rushing to get done and show my friends




Basically, I'm just wondering if i should pursue this, and on a side note, i got a tablet 3 days ago and have been practicing with it in GIMP.

[Kaskad]

You can be a game artist if you want to be, just like you can be a rocket scientist if you want to be. It only takes a willingness to learn and the means to do so. Besides the hours you have to spend actually doing it, you have to be committed to learning whatever programs you use and you need to be willing to educate yourself artistically in and out of school. Color theory, composition, and all of the basics carry over.

The drawing you've posted isn't really game art, it's digital painting; you might be more interested in concept art if that's what you like doing. However if you do want to try your hand at texturing then you may want to go through some of the speed texturing competitions that we've done here and snag those unwrapped models for practice.

[Tiros]

Well, it's not like one can really just butt in and say, Hey, I'm gonna be a game-artist!

Don't get me wrong here though, anyone with the least of creative abillities can become a game-artist/concept artist.. but it's not gonna come cheap, it takes a lot of practice just as with anything else of course.

While being a bit brutally honest, and I do sincerely apologize for it, in my opinion, the image you showed us is pretty much crap. I'm sorry dude, but lying to you wouldn't make it any better

Don't stop reading yet tho'!

What your main concern should be is not, do I have potential, rather.. it's, do I want to? If you really want to become a game-artist.. Then go for it, I'm serious.

Even if you fail, atleast you tried, and if you never try, you might come to regret it. Try to get an education in the feild, practice a lot by yourself, simply do it!

That's the only advice I can give you.

And no, I'm not really an einstein, I don't know the answers for everyones questions, so perhaps someone ehere on the forum might think I'm completely wrong, but this is the kind of view I got of it

Cheers m8!

/edit: Kaskad, damn you, got there first!

[swag]

Considering that your drawing was done in MS Paint with a mouse, that's not that bad.

While I could say something like "you can do anything that you put your mind to", or some similar appeasing generalization, the truth is that you really have to put almost all your time into becoming a game artist. I spend probably 80-90% of my free time working/reading game art, and I still have a long way to go. Unfortunately, even if you work very hard for a long time, things might still not be working out, or going the way you wanted to. Not everyone who "puts their mind to it" can get a PhD. in physics, for example. Sure, maybe they can after 50 years, but what good is that?

But the key here is if you know that this is something that you really enjoy (do some research first), and you devote yourself to an ideal (game art, games, etc), then I am sure that it will work. If not, well at least you have a cool hobby

[ZASkaggs]

Everybody with enough free time and ambition has the potential to be just about anything.

Just to put in my two cents; why not spend a few months feeling it out to see if it suits you? Even if you decide not to pursue it professionally you might have a lot of fun making game art as a hobby. I'll probably never work professionally, but fooling around in Maya is still one of my favorite things to do.

[jhn1991]

thanks guys, and Tiros, no hard feelings, i know its no master piece lol.

As i don't really have the funds right now for a professional program, I downloaded Blender, and am trying to learn the interface. I love digital painting and have been reading up about it, but I think I'll try my hand at 3d modeling too. I can barely control the camera in Blender right now, but hey, you gotta start somewhere.

[nfollmer]

Originally Posted by jhn1991

thanks guys, and Tiros, no hard feelings, i know its no master piece lol.

As i don't really have the funds right now for a professional program, I downloaded Blender, and am trying to learn the interface. I love digital painting and have been reading up about it, but I think I'll try my hand at 3d modeling too. I can barely control the camera in Blender right now, but hey, you gotta start somewhere.

See if you can get your hands on an old copy of Maya PLE (Personal Learning Edition). Maya was 10000 times easier to learn than Blender was, especially just starting out. I don't know if Maya has any current PLE editions since Autodesk took it over, but you may be able to find one somewhere. I got one out of an old Maya 5 book years back.

EDIT: forgot to add...

I was probably one of the least artistic people on earth. I'm not saying I'm great now, but I can hold my own. I still need to work at my drawing skills, but my modeling/texturing skills are improving with every model. Trust me, you'll look at other peoples work and think you'll never be that good, but you can and will, if you keep trying. Getting on forums like this one is a great way to improve. You need to surround yourself with talent (and there is no shortage of it here ). Just keep posting your work, getting crits (no matter how harsh you think they are, bad crits are going to improve you faster than good ones) and in no time, you'll be up to speed with everyone else.

[Magnel]

Hey dude, I got on my first Xbox team as a junior in high school, I would draw out lines with pen, do simple hatching for shading, and color with a mouse on GIMP, and got paid fairly nice to do it.

You've got a good attitude not only as an aspiring developer, but as an overall artist.

Things you'll need to get used to is speed: I've worked as a concept artist with teams where I get 15 minutes to churn out a decent sketch of some type of object/character/vehicle, and so on so we can have several these in one meeting to pick a final design.

You mentioned it's no masterpiece, try not make your stuff masterpieces, make them work; functionality before 'prettiness' if you will.

Make your own style. It's still possible to make a style you're comfortable with, that's appealing to clients and so on. Your stuff shouldn't look like Andrew Jones' artwork because if it did no one would care about Andrew Jones. If everyone painted chiaroscuro like I do a lot, some of my work I've done for clients would be pointless.

Well-roundedness is awesome, make yourself useful, in which from talking I see you have already; using Blender (which rocks) and working 2D as well. Because of this, in the future when either making concept art, you'll know not to 'overdue' it(keep the modeler in mind, don't make such magnificent work that the modeler can't possibly make something that works with the engine, again functionality); and as a modeler you can have your own work for originality.

Takes a lot of time, practice, criticizing, and re-doing.

The thing is before I get sidetrack, I'm still learning, and I've been doing this for 3 years and I still suck pretty bad compared to my comrades here. Learn from these guys, I still do, and it makes me a better artist than I ever was. You do have the potential, of course my art teacher always told me 'A monkey has the artistic potential, but show me how you're different than the damn monkey'.

Take care, be looking forward to seeing some stuff coming out of you.

--Wade

--New Edit--

There's nothing wrong with peoples opinion on software and other issues. PLE can literally die from suicide, I hate it and Blender can use PLE to wipe its modeling butt with.

HA! Just ranting, but yea, TRY THINGS! Get PLE, get whatever your downloading fingers can touch, like the style thing I said, find whatever you need to get comfortable.

And agreeing with Tiros, that is crap. Well in reference to video game development, it's crap. Cool from Paint because I use paint to make simple GUI ideas for our game, and it sucks, so that is cool, but for video game development, need to work on better stuff than that, but don't let that fool you, as mentioned draw your little heart out. I did and I got places!

[Kaskad]

It's also worth noting that as you're a junior in high school you're eligible for large discounts on most of the software used in game development. It's still not cheap, photoshop for example runs about $2-300 on a student discount, but it's astronomically better than a full retail license.

[Magnel]

Originally Posted by Kaskad

It's also worth noting that as you're a junior in high school you're eligible for large discounts on most of the software used in game development. It's still not cheap, photoshop for example runs about $2-300 on a student discount, but it's astronomically better than a full retail license.

Or you can luck out like me and have had family that went through college and bought these programs such as Max and PS for their degrees, who gave them to me after they graduated, yay for gifts!