Advisory Board Notes: Oct. 26, 2017
Alain Viesca of Viesca Digital Designs is starting up a ZBrush User Group to be hosted at Francis Tuttle.
Discussed our program’s goals. We prepare students who then attend art schools or college to get related degrees. We are accountable to get students jobs or to help them get ready for college.
Sketchfab. https://sketchfab.com/ Sketchfab is empowering a new era of creativity by making it easy for anyone to publish, share, and discover 3D content on the web or in VR.
Discussed how to help students get opportunities and education despite challenges. Potential additional Advisory Board involvement in OKC area — names given
Justin Marshall of PluralSight would like to be active in helping students.
Alain attended the Zbrush Summit in L.A. http://summit.pixologic.com/
He mentioned companies he works with for 3D modeling: Hasbro, Funko, Sideshow Collectibles.
To work in organic modeling, you should show that you can do creative design. They want to see your sketching, drawing, sculpting, and painting. Personal projects. They want to see your art background. Otherwise, you’ll only be able to do hard surface modeling like architecture.
Alain: don’t cut corners (i.e. using a prebuilt model). The minute you cut a corner, it’s obvious. This can affect others’ estimation of your abilities. They want to see YOUR ability to create new things. Your creativity.
Virtual Reality will go more mainstream once the console companies feel confident in supporting it.
Can pull things from Vive Tiltbrush and Zbrush into Unity.
Google is interested in MIT lab experiments with AR. INSIDE GOOGLE’S PLAN TO MAKE VR AMAZING FOR ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY EVERYONE
Discussed that we’d be doing Portfolio Reviews at Pixlfest and will need their help with those.
Chase Layman of Datebox suggested that we should increase timed projects. Also that it would be useful for prospective employers to know how long students spent on a project. (We should ask students to mention that in their portfolios.) He says that when they hire a creative, they ask them to produce something in 24 hours so that they can see what they can do quickly. Because a student can polish, polish, polish a portfolio project and that makes it hard to know what they can do under a deadline – in a real-world situation. (Example: They were hiring a graphic designer and they asked candidates to design a marketing campaign overnight including a splash page, 3 social media templates, etc.)
Alain says from viewing past portfolios, he feels our program has got the gist of how to do it. His thoughts:
- Focus on strength areas. We already do this well.
- Don’t shy away from showing sketching, painting, sculpting. To compete in a creative field, it’s vitally important to see your art that you made with your bare hands.
- Analog art (non-digital) is important. Sculpting and painting is important – can’t emphasize that enough.
Chase asked if we had studio/labs available to students after hours.
Blender is free. Students can do that at home.
ZCore is $150 and is almost identical to ZBrush.
The field is very competitive.
Hasbro contracts out work. https://gizmodo.com/5995083/where-the-toys-come-from-inside-hasbros-model-workshop
Critiques. Be direct, but have instructor there to facilitate. Deliver honest feedback without getting personal. If receiving feedback, if working in this field, you’ll have to learn to have a thick skin. Stay polite. If you were to ever be rude to client, regardless of whether they are being rude/critical, word would get around and your reputation would suffer greatly.
Can also have students do portfolio presentations with instructor there in front of whole class.
Game Developer meeting at StarSpace 46. https://www.meetup.com/Oklahoma-Game-Developers/?_cookie-check=gno0v56LR4N3nJWM
SkylineInk in OKC has markerless MoCap setup. http://www.skylineink.com/portfolio-animation/
Funko business leaders include young women. Breaking the typical men-centered corporate culture. https://www.themuse.com/companies/funko
One of their job postings: https://www.themuse.com/companies/funko
Alain’s doodle…
