IDEAS is this Saturday, April 1st from 10am – 5pm at Studio 5 in the TV building. Come to the show and check out some music, animation, games, and other neat multimedia things.

UPDATE 4/2/2006

The IDEAS festival was a whole lot of fun — I want to thank all of you who attended and I hope you had a good time. Asym and Kelthas (two of my projects) were on display as well as many other very interesting exhibits. Studio Cypher was also on hand and they hosted several rounds of Non Compos Mentis [sic], which was a pointless word game involving mundane social interaction and very loose rules. “Indiana Pacers Public Relations Representative” cannot compete with “Kokomo.” Needless to say, I didn’t win.

Heat Vision and Jack

From the above link you can watch the entire pilot episode of “Heat Vision and Jack.” The show premiered in 1999 and stars Jack Black, Owen Wilson, and Ron Silver. Fox canned it before it ever got a chance. It’s a shame it was cancelled because it looked like the series would have been hilarious.

Tuesday I went to Midway Games’ offices in Chicago for a portfolio review. In addition to looking at my stuff, the guy I spoke with let me know about the software and techniques I should be implementing in my models in order to find a job in the field. He emphasized working with next-generation tools as opposed to current gen programs. This isn’t much of an option for me, but I can at least try to use what I have to fake some of the stuff he mentioned. Newer game engines can support models with a slightly higher poly count as well as additional materials like specular maps and normal maps. Some of this stuff can be generated in Maya and then baked into a color texture. It’s not as pretty but it’s easier than trying to simulate the lighting effects in Photoshop.

I was happy to discover that a game artist’s porfolio doesn’t have to be huge in order to get a job. Just a simple portfolio with a few scenes is sufficient as long as these things show comprehension of the skills the company wants. Simple websites are also preferred. There is no reason to have a giant Flash-extravaganza if you aren’t trying to get a job that requires Flash. Just a simple image gallery is fine.

Visiting Midway Games was a great experience and I’ll jump at the chance to do something like this again.