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Pimping a friend - Geek Field Guide

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Kevin Johnstone polycounter lvl 18
Hey Folks,

A friend of mine who I used to work with at Epic is going on a European tour collecting reference images and videos while documenting the experience in words. Finding reference of what we want to build is hard work, not simply the task of finding something that's well enough lit, has shots of different angles and is high enough resolution to be analyzed up close up, but actually robust enough in its detail to allow us to understand the 'thing' more deeply.

I've often used Wikipedia along with google to research my work so I could understand the 'why' of the things I am building and get a sense of the history of the place. Establishing mood takes more than lighting, building in believability requires more than a good selection of props to support the infrastructure... there needs to be a logic to the worlds we build, a reason to the people we create and a mechanism than can truly function in the vehicles / weapons that we invent.

I've been lucky enough to travel a bit, I think that living in European cities for a while subconsciously informed many choices I made in my work on Gears assets but as I ran out of of places I'd visited to ravage for inspiration and was required more often to research new places, it slowed me down.

Warren Schultz is quite understanding of these pratfalls and decided to start the Geek Field Guide expedition around Europe to address these issues for those that are willing to help back him.

Now I know how this sounds at first ( Dude wants a free vacation ) but honestly, the idea of travelling constantly round Europe, on call all day for my backers, going where they choose, spending my time capturing reference by day and documenting it and uploading it by night..... for 6 damn months.... well it sounds worse than a 6 month crunch period at the end of a games production cycle imo. I think he'll be needing a vacation when he gets done with this trip.

So, give it a bit of a think. Are there specific places in Europe you would like researched for a game or mod you are working on ? The cost of sending an art team over to Europe is prohibitive, but without doing so, we miss out on the words associated with the images.

Words are important. They connect us to the source material on a deeper level. How many character artists here have found they have done better work when they were creating a character that was in a book or comic, someone that already had their personality and history established in words?

How many environment artists here have had a similar experience when they had more than a piece of concept art to draw upon?

Warren is a published author, he gets the importance of the words and will be taking the time to deliver an extra layer of depth to the reference material that I think will be very useful to artists trying to create more believable worlds.

Anyway, again, forgive me for bending the rules with this post but I wanted to make sure this information reached as many game developers and editing community people as possible and not everyone looks in the technical or general discussion sections.

Cheers,
Kevin.



Geek Field Guide is creating a library of game reference assets on demand.

We will primarily be taking photos for use as reference and textures, but will also be shooting video of the environments, capturing audio with a Zoom H4N, and documenting the locations with written and video journals. Because of the comprehensiveness of our documentation of the sites, we will provide (or you will be able to construct your own) photogrammetrically-created 3D models.

Our Indiegogo page has been updated with a small sample of what a on-site shoot would contain.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/geek-field-guide/x/2185094

What makes us different than the existing photo texture sites or an image search across the web?
Backers choose our destinations. We are providing a comprehensive reference package for the places we travel, not just a collection of textures. We feel that our services are actually complementary to existing photo sites, as they provide an excellent go-to for general use across many environments, while we are there to allow you to focus on a specific scene, allowing you to maximize the authentic detail in your work.

Why Europe?
We chose Europe as our first destination as it is the most often used basis of current western entertainment media (video games, books, movies), both contemporary or fantasy in nature. it also presents the lowest barrier of entry for us on the technical and linguistic side as well, and thus gives us more time to focus on work, and less on logistical delays.

How many photos are we talking about?
To give you a sample, we did a 2-hour shoot at Duke Chapel to give an idea of what sort of photos we are talking about. In that time, we turned out over 1500 photos, and we didn't get full coverage of the site.
Because we will be spending a large amount of time processing photos and traveling between locations, we won't be able to shoot daily. Even so, it would be conservative to estimate that there will be several hundred thousand photos taken over a six month period, if not many more.

What are backers paying for?
I (Warren) am covering all initial hardware and business expenses. Backers are covering the travel, lodging, and board costs of the trip, any extra we get will go toward helping out on what will be significant bandwidth costs for hosting. We plan to rent a flat in a central point each month and then take daily excursions to avoid the costs of nightly hotels, and put your money to better use. (More photos).

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