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| I started off drawing 2D art at college taking it up to GSCE level. I was advised to take A Levels but I had enough of education plus, in my ignorance, I thought I didn't have anything to learn. It was minor mistake, but I've learnt from it. Other than that, I've had no formal training as regards to 2D art. I didn't get into 3D until 2 years later when a company based in Aylesbury gave me an opportunity to begin my career as a 3D artist. I had a good teacher; he taught me some of the advanced techniques of modelling in 3D Studio, he taught me how to utilise network rendering, post production & video editing using editing software and BetaMax tape decks Inspired by films such as The Last Starfighter and TRON (which were the first to feature computer generated graphics in a motion picture), I wanted to learn all I could about 3D art. I copied objects, refined existing meshes, built spaceships, cities and characters (my personal favourite). I learnt all I could technically from the Aylesbury company but I felt restricted, I needed to move on. I initially wanted to move into the special effects field with companies like The Moving Picture Company or ILM. Although I had the technical ability, I didn't have the creative discipline needed to be considered by the best in the field. So I decided to work for a games company. I moved to a company called SCI based in Southampton, Hampshire. You may have heard of SCI because there publishing the controversial driving/killing game CARMAGEDDON. I've been here since November 1996 and am enjoying the creative freedom associated with the games business. One of the things I had trouble getting used to was building models using the least about of polygons as possible. I've been used to building projects that have had over a million polygons...now my current project for SCI probably has over 400 models and 15 levels with no more than 200,000 polys combined!!! This is only an estimate but you get my point. I'm currently working on a "Quake" type game for the Playstation. I'm currently configuring collision parameters in 3D Studio for our programmer. Most of the ART ground work is already done with only a few props left to build by myself. All in all, I've been using 3D Studio 4 for 3 years and Max ever since Beta stage. I'm an expert at Photoshop and Premiere. I also dabble in web authoring. All of the images you see all this site are by me using those tools I mentioned as well as a few handy utilities off the 'net. I'm learning Softimage on the SGIs just so that I can gain another skill. I'm not competent enough to produce any finished artwork but who knows, in 6 months time ;-) And that's it! Hopefully you didn't find it too boring and that I've answered a lot of commons questions I receive about how to start out.
Personal: I have a girlfriend who lives in Aston Clinton (nr Aylesbury, Bucks). She wants to be an artist; she has the talent, the techniques but no opportunity yet. I'm currently building her page. It's quite empty ATM, but I've seen some of her latest stuff...she's never 100% happy with work! Artist huh!? Go to Nicola Brown's Girly Gallery to view her page. |