#bagd

This time, we focused on Futurism (or at least I did). 

My notes: 

First impressionist exhibition in 1874.

Gauginism

Primitivism

Pointalism  >> Seurat, E. Signal?

In terms of structure, Cezanne >> Still life by cupid

Emphasis on structure, St. Victoire

Demoiselle d’Avignon // Pablo Picasso >> fucked perspective, not just from one POV. Important influence from African art, the craft of masks specifically.

Braque, Piano and Mandolin, 1909

Cubism >> analytic cubism, first term of cubism, >> 1912

The table of musicians: uses text, gives a collage’y feel

Synthetic cubism, in reality collage. >> Verre, Bouteille de Vin, Journal sur une Table, Picasso, 1914

02.10 // BA SHOW

It’s interesting to see what everyone associates design with!

After a year’s break*, I’m very happy to be back. I like to think that I have a better grasp of who I want to be and what I want to do. I expect my BA year to be the time and space in which I experiment and realise the projects that are outside of my comfort zone. I also want to work on pushing myself in a more cultural and fine art direction. Mostly, I am excited to learn from the various people in my group :]

At this very moment, I am working full-time; however, it is on a freelance basis and so, it shouldn’t be such a problem to cut down on work, and dedicate more time for university. 

*a year of working in commercial design. Does this constitute a break? I am not so sure.

CLICK BELOW FOR A DAILY SUMMARY

Okay, so this is gonna take a little longer than I’d anticipated. I’ve finally finished building the layout of the level, with most of the time spent on that dedicated to the background scenery. Everything that needs a collider has one, all the lighting is in place, and there’s even a van in there with the headlights on to designate the level start/extraction point (though I may include two additional options like a speedboat and something else).

Currently the map has been divided into five sections, areas of NO threat, LOW threat, MEDIUM threat, HIGH threat, and inaccessible (as with everything beyond the play area). The low threat area will have enough cover for the player to remain undetected for the sake of level start and end. Low threat will have patrolling guards who just stick to a strict route unless they spot the player. They will only attempt to catch the player, not shoot or raise an alarm. Medium threat guards are protecting player objectives, and they also have torches. These guards will both try to catch the player and activate an alarm. Finally, the high threat guards will have guns with torches mounted onto them. All they’ll so is try to buy a 99p flake off the player. Or attempt to kill them, I haven’t quite decided yet.

Anyway, my next task will be to implement an AI system for the guards, followed by obstacles, objectives, and finally player inventory, as I reckon items are key to stealth games, be it a torch, a map to navigate (there won’t be a satnav system), a noise maker, and possibly a weapon. Well, the weapon’s probably a given considering the player already has one, but I may give it a one-use suppressor and change the projectile from tennis balls to actual bullets. After all, if someone’s shooting at you, it’s probably best to shoot back rather than just annoy them.

Did a quick run-through of my presentation file with John and just confirmed a couple of things. There’s plenty of imagery, so I’m sound with that (though I forgot to ask if I’ll need to reference everything). He also mentioned a few times that my blog will have easily hit the minimum 2000 word mark, so won’t need a specialised token post to fulfill criteria. Also, for the sake of thoroughness, here’s the two responses I received in my email inquiries to various studious. I’m leaving the third out, as it was worthless. And he addressed it to Daivd, so it may not have actually been meant for me...

Hi David, Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, I completely sympathise with how difficult it can be to get a break into the industry. My advice is always to be "never give up" - as with anything in life, if you give up you'll never achieve what it is you set out to do. Although I've been "in the industry" 20 years, I've lost my job several times, failed interviews, had companies go bust, x, y and z. But if someone offered me the chance to do it again? Yep, definitely. It's a wonderful career and a special industry. Being happy to go to work on a Monday morning is worth a salary sacrifice. So onto that - my other tips are: 1. Production is the hardest discipline to get into, your biggest problem is teams want someone who's "experienced", when projects go wrong, they know this guy is a safe pair of hands to get them out of trouble. Or better yet, a guy who can "see" problems because they've experienced it before. - Without a track record in production, you're basically learning on the fly - and it's very costly to make mistakes! (see above) - it's a complete chicken and egg paradox. I moved into production purely because someone who was doing the job left and they needed a replacement! 2. It sounds like you have a varied skill set, (I'm not a programmer myself!) - if your goal is to ultimately end up as a producer - this is good, but at the moment it's maybe a bad thing? I'd always recommend a laser like focus on a single discipline. It sounds like you have design overtones? Why not make a few good maps in Unity or Unreal, or write a design document... build a portfolio and then go for a junior design position at a big company like Travellers Tails or Cloud Imperium. You'll be part of a "big machine" and it won't be fun, but you'll get a vital foot in the doorway and great experience. Game Jams are a perfect way to demonstrate design skills, (taking part in one will give you contacts to other guys.. so you don't need to be a talented artist, or whatever - it gives you a project to talk about) Producers have to be able to talk to every discipline, they need to understand programmers brains (if not programming) and be able to speak to designers without suggesting design fixes, or to artists who are precious little snowflakes with a talent. It's totally a people person job position, you need to be almost invisible at times, but also a natural leader. 3. QA is often the route that everyone suggests for producers, and that's really how I started all those years ago. Like you say, the starting salaries are always very poor for QA staff, (there's a lot of people who want these jobs so competition is fierce) - Again, I'd say you have a better chance of getting a position at a bigger company. My suggestion here would be Sony QA over in Wavertree / Liverpool. (It's a commute, but doable). They have a very large QA position and their salaries are above average for that job role. Warning: staff turnover is high! So roadmap:        Get a degree in something solid, that can be used in a "normal job" - English, Maths, science, whatever. Games degrees are okay, but will be frowned upon in the 'real world', although degree's are always secondary to experience (in my humble opinion)        Get a Prince 2 qualification - this is a basic requirement, but is probably worth the admission fee (it'll get you a project management job elsewhere if you need something to fall back on)        Get some agile/scrum project management qualifications / experience - again, will help in the "real world" of work.        Keep talking to every single company you can think of, most of the time, companies don't advertise for entry level positions and will just look at speculative applications on a case-by-case basis. You might just hit the right desk on the right day. Avoid "application systems" and try and get actual human contacts - it shows you've made the extra step of effort (Linkedin!)        Fake it till you make it, make games in unity (it doesn't matter how bad!) - learn, and attend any gamejams & events nearby you can. (Look into Gameopolis in Manchester for example) if you expand your network, you'll have a much better chance. http://ukie.org.uk/tags/uk-games-map - here's a map of every company in the area. Connect this with people on Linkedin, and build your network of contacts - people advertise for jobs on there all the time. Anyway, sorry for the lengthy E-mail! Hopefully some of this will be of use. Chris Jones Senior Producer Clever Beans

The above response was quite possibly the most valuable of the two, but the email below isn’t without merit.

Hi David, Thanks for getting in touch.  It's always good to hear from our local Futureworks guys :) I'm not really sure I can give you any really general advice, as the sort of entry level positions you'd want to look for can come in a huge variety of guises.  It really depends where you want to end up, in the long run - project management, or actual development, are quite different roads to go down.  Within development, as well, there's a tremendous amount of variation from hardcore C++ programmers through to graphic artists or musicians who've never written a line of code, and everything in between.  Really the starting job title to search for should be "junior developer" but that can cover any of the categories I mentioned, depending on the company that's writing the job advert. If you're looking simply to get your foot in the door, "analyst" can be a good position to search for - that can often encompass QA as you mentioned, and also potentially get you experience in programming, which can help to progress in the long term.  In my experience, a starting salary for a Junior Software Analyst would be between 20-30k in the UK generally, and 30-40k in London.  At the top of the hierarchy tend to be roles with "architect" in the name, for example Principal Architect, Senior Solution Architect and Enterprise Architect are all roles that typically provide the highest end salaries under the overall "developer" umbrella, with the latter fetching typically 70-80k as a senior position - higher than typical CTO salaries - so that could perhaps be something to aim for in the long run. With regards to salaries, I've found glassdoor.co.uk/ to be a very helpful resource for research - especially if you have a specific company in mind, you can get a good idea of what sorts of salaries they're offering for a particular position.  Another useful salary research tool is indeed.co.uk's salary estimator, which can give you averages for a particular job title - you may be surprised to find huge amounts of variation depending on the exact wording you use, so I would recommend spending some time here and searching for all the different ways a position you might be interested in could be described.  It's also worth filtering on that site for the geographical area.  Typically, London salaries can be around 20% higher than the national average for the same role - you mentioned you'd want to stay in Manchester in the long run, so you may want to rule out that difference in London salaries when making your comparisons. Best of luck with your career path research! Regards, Eugene Hopkinson VoxelStorm Ltd