Dreamer said:
Im in TV aswell working as an engineer. The one that used to play music videos.
LOVE the sound of getting into computer design like whippy/herminator! 8)
I played around with 3d studio max whilst i was in University about ten years ago and made a short video of a car driving through a city. I remember thinking how amazing it was that i could put a picture of Kelly Brook on a virtual bilboard! That was ten years ago now though!
Whats the best way into that industry and are there many jobs out of London (need to leave before i lose it on the northern line).
I'm no expert, but the best way in is example work, or ultimately your portfolio. When I went to uni there were no degree's in 3ds or games or anything like that, and a decade before those who really started the 3d/2d computer stuff off mainstream were either computer science people, or artists, or a bit of both
In my current job I got in on my portfolio of hobby work. Previously I was engineering/cartography disciplined, which I guess carries over in some areas, and I'd always been into computers/drawing/gfx from the age of five (commodore 64/128 drawing dinosaurs badly
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The core skills are ultimately more arts/experience based now as the computer science lot have written us nice programs to use. Can you visualise something and then reproduce it in your chosen digital media with your chosen application?
Of course, making sure the piece of work works for intended purpose is important, so practicing making models within certain criteria is key. Ie, make it from as few triangles as possible, or using only certain sized textures. Then you have the product visualisation people who make images to exacting standards, architecture types who make prospect buildings look real in video's of the location to build at, or people doing work just for arts sake... Some of the challenges that run actively on http://forums.cgsociety.org for example are a great place to understand the different needs of different work.
Alot of the contacts you may build up for jobs will be through places like cgSociety and so on. Several good people I know who worked on artwork for the PGR series and GTA series racing games I know through, and got jobs through, doing hobby work on games like NFS, rFactor, Racer etc over the years through such communities...
There is loads of work outside London. Team 17 (worms games) are in Wakefield, Rockstar North in Edinburgh (GTA4) Iirc, Yorkshire has one of the highest densities of game developers in the UK... sensible modern IT types you see. They go for geographical centralisation for convenience of travel, knowing that any other comms these days can be done digitally
Quite a nice industry then, because it's new, and because it's changing so fast that by the time you have done a 'new' degree/course in it, things have changed again. Nothing like just jumping in and getting going as a hobby and then just slewing into a job and getting paid for it!
All that said, as Herminator pointed out, the pay isn't so great until you are managing teams/projects more, and that is true anywhere anyway, and doing it 5 days a week, or managing it too much, can drain the enthusiasm sometimes... as with all jobs I suppose.
Personally I'd like to do a different job every day of the week because I have so many interests and not enough time to do them all as in-depth as I want to!
Dave
south yorkshire