Artist post for project 2: video game

As I was imagining and sketching out my ideas for the game art, I imagined the corner of a room, with blank walls and a picture frame. Then as the second screen shot was to be shown (as the game creators described the process to us), the wall would erupt into a solid color and the picture would show an image correlating with that wall color. Well as I began to approach the subject and the image I wanted to create, I was reminded of the program Google Sketch Up. I have never worked with the program before, further then scanning across someone else's work, then trying to create one myself and epically failing with the very first attempt at a wall. Then as I began the project I was instructed and helped by Billy with a few basic tools and ways of editing already rendered rooms. As time passed I experimented more and them even began to build my own rooms and a huge hallway. I have used Sketch Up to create 12 rooms, a castle and a hallway for the game.

So for my artist post I chose to look for an artist that too uses Sketch Up as a method of building their game art work. Ken Nguyen was originally an architect and then decided to quit his job as an architect after 5 years and follow his dream of doing concept art. He has a MFA in modeling, animation and texture and is not a concept artist working in the gaming industry. He creates props, characters, weapons, armors and environments for games and movies. Since he has an architectural background he creates a lot of game environments and architecture in Sketch up with the aid of a few other programs, one being Photoshop.

In the game he worked on called "Gods and Heroes" he used Sketch up because as he said in an interview "it is so fast and intuitive". He also talked about how in sketch up dimensions and camera angles are easy to adjust which helps in a gaming situation. He uses Photoshop as a post work tool, whereas I used Photoshop in collaboration with Sketch Up to help create the textures I wanted. Nguyen uses Sketch up much like I did to create 3D models to use in a game but he uses them in a manner so that the user can navigate through them, mine are just screen shots. Works Cited 2