Hi, just call me RJ. My Passions are videogames, art and comic books and have been illustrating and drawing comics for a while now and just recently decided to make art and games a profession. Thus I have truly put my nose to the grind stone and balls to the wall in trying to reach my long term goal of breaking into the gaming art industry.

I am 21 and already enlisted in the airforce for 6 years. Right now I am on delayed enlistment so I should be shipping out for Basic in aound 6- 12 months. I am saying this because, due to money issues, I cannot pay for college and have decided to serve and after my 6 years, use the GI bill to gain a degree in game art. However I will sharpen my skills and prepare myself on my own time while in service to be as skilled as I possibly can be.

Here is some of my art; to let you know where i stand. I always embrace critiques.

ps, I currently dont have the resourses to make 3D art YET. I will though in the next few months and I look forward to growing as an artist with all of you.

Thanks in advance!








Most of my time now is learning how to texture. I have a basic grip on that now (i will post the model Ive done soon after I teak it a bit. I do 2d to relax;















or you can go here http://eddieble.deviantart.com/

Hi RJ,

That is the craziest story I ever heard!
You have a lot of nice stuff there. I am sure with some improvement you can get something. Studying is great. And definitely a degree will push your skills.
But there are other cheeper ways to go if you can´t pay a formal (super expensive) degree course. Probably you gonna have to work harder and longer to achieve those skills. (but comparing to air force they are not that hard ) There are a lot of cheaper courses around, books and foruns.
Ask for crits and learn from them. But I suggest you make one new artwork and ask feedback about this new one. And post working in progress instead a final version.
It is hard to tell you anything diferent then "great work" looking all those images...
Also you need to have in mind what you want to work with. Concept art? If yes you don´t realy need 3d...
That is just my opinion (long one...hehe)
Good luck!

RJ, autodesk has all its software available for free to students, just sign up on their community site. Using the free student license I've been learning using MAX, Maya, and mudbox for free at my community college.

Your artwork is decent, but you need to show more foundation work. More form, lighting, etc. All these aspects get applied to the 3D model. Right now, with so much comic style work, I'm not seeing anything that could be handed off to a 3D artist and modeled from easily, at least not without the modeler taking a lot of liberties.

It's these foundations mixed in with your healthy design skill that will give you some real success in the future. If you focus on those foundations, your mind will constantly think in terms of them, making it easier for you model exactly what you want from the start, instead of having to noodle around a concept to try and make it work in full high def 3D.

When you get out of the military, don't go for a specific game art degree, instead get one in 3D entertainment art, which covers a whole lot more and is more useful (and should hopefully cover more fundamentals). Do not neglect your 2D skills.

I second the don't do a game art course advice. I just finished one and it was a waste. I've learnt more game art skills here from Polycount and on my own.

"When you get out of the military, don't go for a specific game art degree, instead get one in 3D entertainment art, which covers a whole lot more and is more useful (and should hopefully cover more fundamentals). Do not neglect your 2D skills.
"

i would simply go to an art degree , they help out alot in this industry rather than knowing programs that can be learned by pressing F1. Nice work !

Thanks guys! Your advice here as well as in other threads is golden!

whoopee! first modeling attempt. About an hour an a half. will move onto more difficult prodjcts later on, kinda sucks but im mostly trying to learn to navigate and use the brushes. also ears are for losers.


Had a blast!






Critiques for next time are always welcome.

Originally Posted by Johny

"When you get out of the military, don't go for a specific game art degree, instead get one in 3D entertainment art, which covers a whole lot more and is more useful (and should hopefully cover more fundamentals). Do not neglect your 2D skills.
"

i would simply go to an art degree , they help out alot in this industry rather than knowing programs that can be learned by pressing F1. Nice work !

seems you would make a better 2D artist than 3D. Id do that if I were you

You have awesome 2d skills, man. Very Capcomesque.

Good luck! XD I like your 2d art, and I think you'll probably do really well with 3d when you start too, since that up there was your very first modeling attempt!!

Your illustrations are nice and i like the softish colours that you have going on in them. I think if your aiming for game art tho as well as having different stuff like that you can never pass up basics so add allot more life drawing in there. I do a fair bit myself and absolutely love 2D. It's great doing characters 2 but at the end of the day it's good to have strong traditional skills if that's the right word.
Also vary your style. I say that because looking at some of your pieces your heading down the manga route which is again good but seriously dangerous territory because it's done allot.
I did the same and pulled my own style out of the pitt in college after a massive brawl with my lecturers. I lost the battle but picked up allot of new distinctive styles and I thank them for that.

You doing 3d and 2D I think is the way to go because im pretty sure even in the industry most concept artists have some degree of knowledge about 3D anyway.

I would second the tutorial DVD's is much cheaper and you can learn specifics you could use the money you earn just to buy those and survive if it comes to that however it is good being around lots of different people with different skills and takes on different subjects. Up to you to way it up I suppose.

Keep at it anyway dude.

@ Hboybowen -well thats why im doing 3d so I can get better. Its just the first attempt...

thanks yall. doesa anyone know brushes they use to sculpt females. I have noyiced its harder than doing males becasue of the reason it has to have more finess in the sculpt.

don't go man, don't go!

what?

theres got to be a better way to sculpt eyes. Also How do you guys sculpt your ears?

did my 2d for the day. Comments and cirts alwasy apreciated!



On to sculpting.

used a base model, I cheated I guess. Had a blast. Critiques are always welcome.

no base meshes are ok. um ears are a combination of move tool,standard and clay.

^thanks yo!

I heard somone say I should post some WIP to get some direction to where im going. Im also working on a simple 3d female bust at the moment . As You can see, I like to keep several prodjects going to keep me fresh and working at 100% and I also find it easeir to find errors when I rotate to another peice.

so here are some.

this one is just the lines, I figured I should draw somore manly stuff sense all ive been drawing lately have been females. ha. does anyone see any anatomy problems or anything?



Another, Im long overdue for somthing like this. any tips or anthing apreciated.



anywho, thats that Critiques are always welcome.

This is awesome stuff dude. I really need to find your motivation and start crankin' myself.

Keep moving forward in 3d, you'll get better. That muscular dude was looking pretty good. Your facial anatomy might need some work though (not really noticeable in your 2d stuff because of stylization, but some things seem off in your 3d heads)

^yea I do need to work on heads...for example....



Work in progress. The major difference between this one and the previous is that I didnt start w/ a base mesh. Might clip on some accessorys.

I realy need to buckle down and dedicate some major time to Z brush....

the aplication technique is sloppy reason being that 3 hours where waisted because PS crashed twice during the making.

Fun in z brush. first full body. not finished gonna try out some appending techniques. also gonna see If I can apend sperate hands and feet sense I hate the current ones.

Another all nighter in the bag. I could of posed him allittle better but ive been up for a while and its the first 3d that ive spent over 2 hours on. haha.

You can tell there is alot of unthought out texture spamming going on. I did wing it after all. My next one will be beter.

A little bit of experimentation isn't a bad thing. It'll help you a little later down the line when you need to take a project from the middle phases of development, all the way to the final product.

If you want 2 handy pieces of advice for using zbrush:

1: Take a lot of time to nail down the form development of each character. Often I like to a quick massing of the character, then go up to several levels of detail so clay brushes behave naturally. I nail down all the major forms with clay brushes and sharp line brushes, and then go back down to just a few subdivisions to move, inflate and orient each feature properly. From there you slowly move upwards. Going to super high levels of detail and trying to manage everything from that level, is really tough, and generally leads to bumpy meshes. To nail in sharp mechanical features, using high levels of detail, and masking is a good way to block in those forms.


2: Invest a bit of time learning the topology feature in zbrush, and the projection feature to keep your meshes cleaner. Often you'll find with certain meshes that the geometry doesn't flow in ideal patterns across a surface, or you might be short on detail entirely. Creating a mesh using custom topology and transferring your work over is a great way to get things cleaned up, and you'll be less reliant on using others base meshes if you want to add additional features.

It's demonstrated nicely in here:

You Tube

As others have mentioned, be wary about how you spend your money. This is sort of an emerging industry and there really aren't any set standards for curriculum. It's not saying that there aren't good schools out there, but there are a heck of a lot of programs and courses that will leave you with next to nothing when you graduate. Really research what you're getting into and probably plan around investing in some books, DVD tutorials, and even budget some time where you can do independent study.

Your 2d work is great and it's apparent that you have quite a bit of artistic talent. You just need some time and effort to develop your skills, but you'll get there if you just stick with it. Best of luck with your upcoming deployment!

I wrote a tutorial not long ago that might help you out:

http://jasongordy.com/pages/tutorial/page1.html