ARTSCHOOLREVIEWS.CA: THE VANCOUVER EXPERIENCE

Are you one of the many thousands of people who want to enroll at an art school, but aren’t sure which one is the best for you? Well my buddy Mike Ngo of ArtSchoolReviews.ca has developed a website to help you decide on that very question. The website deals specifically with schools in the Vancouver, BC area as there are quite a few to choose from. And if you did not know yet, Vancouver is considered to be a central hub for game artists, VFX artists, web designers… and generally a decent recruiting ground for many companies designing games, movies and Web 2.0 applications. So if you’re planning on getting into the industry, Vancouver may be the city you’re looking for and well, ArtSchoolReviews.ca may be the final tool you need in deciding what school you want to go to during your time in Vancouver.

From the schools you have to choose from, there are many that have great names and experience behind those names. But instead of hearing from the schools website or the schools tour guide, wouldn’t you really want to hear directly from the students who have ‘been there, done that’? Some of the schools to choose from consist of schools like the school I went to, Vancouver Institute of Media Arts (VanArts), Vancouver Film School (VFS), the Art Institute (AI), Lost Boys Learning, Think Tank and Emily Carr. Many students have taken the courses at these schools. Only some have actually been hired as a result of their education at these schools. Obviously, each person is going to have a different story… a different education experience that may or may not result in a new career at the end of their journey. In the end, it’s up to you and your determination that will be the deciding factor on how successful you will be. It’s what you make it.

So in order to find out what ArtSchoolReviews.ca is all about and why it got started in the first place, I decided to ask the designer, Mike Ngo, a few questions:

What is ArtSchoolReviews.ca and why did this all get started? What is the main goal of this site?

ArtSchoolReviews.ca was created as a side project for me. I am a web-designer by trade, and I was looking to learn wordpress/php and develop my skills in that regard. The idea itself was something I had wanted to do for a very long time – to create a central hub where aspiring students could hear directly from alumni of the various art schools in Vancouver.

The main goal of the site is actually threefold. The first of which is to give students and alumni a venue to voice their opinions, good or bad. The second is to provide first-hand information about these schools to aspiring students. And lastly, to hopefully hold the schools accountable to their students, address any issues at hand, and hopefully propel the education system forward.
Which school did you go to and why did you make the decision to attend that specific school?

After high school, I went on to attend the Foundation Visual Art and Design program at VFS. I was desperately in love with film, and naturally, VFS seemed like the next step. I wanted to attend Film Production program, but ended up enrolling in Foundations since I had won a scholarship.

What was your first impression of VFS and how did your first impression change once you graduated?

I was completely naive when I first entered VFS. I thought the whole school would revolve around me, and somehow make me the artist I wanted to be. I quickly realized that my education was my own responsibility. I had to be the one to make the decisions, do the work, get critique, and make things happen for myself.

When I graduated, I realized VFS was just a means. It was a way to become a designer, animator, or director, but it was in no ways a guarantee. I just hope ArtSchoolReviews.ca can help aspiring students realize this even before stepping onto campus – you’re going to have to make things happen for yourself.

Ultimately VFS and other schools alike are businesses and will have a bottom line to live up to. That doesn’t mean that they can’t provide the education you need to succeed. Just make sure you don’t kid yourself. All of these schools require hard work, dedication, and yes…a lot of luck.

You can read more about my own personal experience with VFS here.

If you had a chance to re-live your art school experience at VFS all over again, would you? Or would you do things differently?

I would definitely go back to VFS again, if I ever had the money to “burn”. Unfortunately, I don’t ever see myself with that kind of disposable income to go to VFS again.

Honestly, I can’t say that I would have made any changes to my education. I live by the decisions I have made, and there’s nothing that can be done about them now. I am, however, looking towards the future and ArtSchoolReviews.ca is where it’s at for me.

Besides knowing how beautiful Vancouver is to visit and live in, why do you think so many art students move to Vancouver to go to school? Are schools in Vancouver superior?

Vancouver is definitely a mecca for schools in general. We pride ourselves for being an international city, and I think this is reflected in the amount of schools there are here. I don’t think any other city can offer the variety of public/private institutions as we have here.

Vancouver is a natural draw for international students as well. International fees here are in many cases lower than comparable US schools, which helps in attracting students from all over the world. Students know that they can get the education they want for less and gain industry access by studying in Vancouver.

It seems the site you have developed can certainly become a powerful voice in the industry the more it grows. And it is indeed growing. Where do you see ArtSchoolReviews.ca a year or two from now?

I’m already blown away by how large ArtSchoolReviews has become. The site does end with a “.ca” so maybe we’ll venture out and include reviews from other larger Canadian city. That’s a long time coming though, and for now we’re content with just making the site work for Vancouver.

The site is very much still in its infancy, only 4 months old, and there are still many features that we’re looking forward to implementing. That being said, our focus will always be about the reviews, and we’ve received reviews for maybe 10% of the programs out there. There’s still a lot more opinions that need to be voiced, discussions to be had, and reviews to be received.

As more and more students become aware of this site, it is our hope that the insider information we provide ultimately leads them to success.

GAME CAREER SPOTLIGHT: INTERVIEW WITH JOE CRAWFORD

Alright my fellow Game Art and Design students, it’s time yet again for another Gamer Report Interview. This time I am interviewing a great friend of mine I had the privilege of meeting during my time in Vancouver. His name is Joe Crawford and he runs Celestine Studios. He also teaches many students up in Vancouver as well as many developers already in the industry. Going studio to studio to help keep everyone’s skills up to date.

Have you ever had a friend where, no matter what question you asked him, he always came back with a thorough, and logical response? That’s Joe. I can ask him just about anything and feel enlightened by his answers. Lucky for me, I’ve kept in contact with him since I left my favorite home away from home and he is still there for me and many of his former students. He is a dedicated soul and the amount of knowledge you can gain for him is just immense. Which is why I wanted to interview him and talk about some things on my mind lately. Hope you enjoy!

First off I’d like to establish who you are and what your background is in the game industry.

I actually have relatively little background in the games industry itself. The first professional studio project I worked on was at Mainframe Entertainment, for the ReBoot video game. The parts that I did were pre-rendered cut scenes, not for actual game play. I’ve taught hundreds of students over the years, and many studios around the world currently employ students of mine. (EA, Ubisoft, Radical Entertainment, Sony, and far more than I would really want to list here.) I still do support for many students who are now professionals, and I keep in touch with many of my students from long ago. Its always fun to see what they are up to now.

As a technical artist, I have worked with a lot of people in the industry, and have provided assistance (generally through short term contracts) to game studios and game artists. When Backbone Entertainment/Digital Eclipse was in Vancouver I used to do that for them on a semi regular basis.

Primarily at this point, my interest in games is as an independent developer. The game industry is seeing a surge in independently produced great games recently, such as World of Goo, Crayon Physics Deluxe, and Braid. All of these games were very cheap to create compared to the titles that most publishers release, and they are all far far better than the average game. It proves that making great games doesn’t require huge teams or tons of money. My goal is to go in that direction with my own studio. I currently have a project in development, and have been surprised at how easy it is to get your game up and running these days. Some of the open source tools for it are really great. World of Goo for example used ODE for their in game physics. ODE is a great free open source physics simulator, and I’m using it for my own projects as well.

Where did you go to school and how did it help you get to where you are today?

I went to school at Robert Batemen Secondary School. I didn’t do any other post secondary because the classes I got at Batemen were really great. There’s really nothing special about the school, but the teacher that I had there, Bill Henderson, was amazing. He actually won the Prime Minister’s Award for his teaching work.

What does your role at Celestine Studios entail and what skills do you need to do your job?

Since I’m very much an owner/operator, I have to have a lot of skills myself. I need to be good at communicating with clients, and managing projects, but I also have to set up the infrastructure and everything so that the people I work with can get their jobs done easily.

How long have you been teaching/mentoring/lecturing and what inspired you to take this as a career path?

I’ve always like teaching, and doing it professionally was something I just sort of fell into by luck. I got a lot of very positive response from students and once I realized how much of an impact I was having improving students lives, I decided it would be something I’d continue all my life.

I’ve taught classes at several different post secondary institutions, as well as some seminars, such as the “Digifest” events that happened a few years ago. I’ve always really enjoyed it. As a result, I’m planning some independent public seminars in the near future.

I’d like to talk about your views on the game industry when it comes to the economic recession we are in. Is the game industry recession proof? What are you seeing from your point of view and how is it affecting the huge game industry in Vancouver, BC?

The game industry is most certainly not recession proof. I’ve seen a huge number of layoffs recently. Many friends of mine, including several long term veteran guys at established studios have had to deal with lay offs etc.

I think that even when a companies revenues aren’t drastically affected, the market as a whole does affect the actions of a company. Lay offs frequently happen just so companies can please the shareholders, and make it looks like they are cutting costs in troubled times. I know of one particular job cut where upper management at a company let go of someone very important, and the game suffered tremendously because of it. That most likely will cause the game to do poorly, lowering revenue by a lot more than that ones guy’s salary.

What words of advice would you give to an aspiring artist trying to make it in the game industry?

Decide clearly on what you want to do. If you are interested in being an artist, what kind of artist? Do you want to be a 3d character modeler? A concept artist? A world/environment modeler? A rigger? If you work at a large company you will probably have to specialize quite a bit.

Do you want to do creative design work, and have an impact on how the game plays, and not just how it looks? If so, that’s a much more difficult goal, but you should be clear with yourself from the beginning.

If you want to do design work, (in my view, that’s the fun part) a great way to start is by making mods to existing games. Way back in 1995 we used to hack around with Doom and Doom II, and I learned a lot by doing that. The engines have improved over the years, with Quake, Unreal, Doom 3, and now the Unreal 3 engine. For someone learning, I would recommend that they get started with a game that’s easy to mod, and then get experience building levels and scripting interaction etc.

Where do you see the game industry heading? Will we still be seeing multi-million dollar games being developed or will we see a more aggressive trend of smaller indie games?

My guess is that big multi-million dollar games will always be made, but that more and more smaller games will find success. There is a lot of growth in the casual games market, and a lot of growth in online distribution of games. It’s similar to the film and television industry. Blockbuster movies are still being made all the time, but because of online distribution and marketing, a larger audience is now exposed to independent films. Smaller movies and television shows are able to find an audience, without having huge marketing budgets. I think it’s the same with pretty much every kind of media. News, books, music, movies, video games, and anything else. As long as we have a reasonable amount of network neutrality and access, small developers with good products will always be able to reach their audience.

Many artists have been laid off including friends of yours. What can they do to get back on their feet and get hired at another studio? Also, now that there is an even more competitive crowd out searching for game art positions, how does a game art student stand out from the crowd of experienced artists?

Its a bad time for a lot of people. However, I think the most important thing is always the same: Keep learning. If an artist has some downtime, use it to take the time to learn things you didn’t get exposed to in your working environment. Its a fast paced industry, with new workflows being developed all the time. If an artist isn’t working they can take that time to develop new skills, and continue to work on their portfolio and demo reel.

Another possibility would be to join one of the many volunteer based modding or game development projects. It can be a good way to get your name attached to something, and the content created for it can be good portfolio material as well. It can be similar to what many programmers do working on open source projects in their spare time.

The most important thing is to keep working, and keep growing. Although I had some excellent experiences working with companies early in my life, I’ve learned far more in more recent years just by working very actively to teach myself as much as possible. With the internet and all the resources available these days, you can teach yourself pretty much anything.

Be sure to check out Celestine Studios and VanArts to learn more…

PROTOTYPE: THE EVERYMAN, HERO, VILLAIN, ICON

Prototype looks and sounds better and better with every new article or video I see. I am hesitant to say this, but this game just might blow everyone’s expectations away, including my own. Which are already pretty high. It would certainly be a great accomplishment to surpass what I expect to be a title that defines “open world”. Although, I’ve learned in the past not to get too excited for certain video games that have a significant amount of hype behind it. I don’t know if Prototype has the Gears of War or Halo 3 type hype but it’s certainly getting there as the release date approaches. I’ve been disappointed because of uncontrollable media hype before but I feel like there is so much Radical is not telling us about Prototype, even with all of the screenshots, trailers and now Concept Artwork over at CGSociety.org. I think they have some big surprises up their sleeves. But what could they be?

Well if you check out the link to the CGSociety: Production Focus of Prototype, I’ve so graciously provided you, you’ll read where Radical mentions “menacing creatures the size of buildings”. Correct me if I’m wrong guys, but have any of you heard of these huge menacing creatures before? I sure haven’t seen any in the trailers. Hmmm… hope I didn’t ruin a possible surprise there but I’m sure there are better surprises than that in store for us. I’m really looking forward to this game the more I see and read about the amount of work that was put into making this. Hollywood ain’t got nothin’ on this Vancouver based studio. Make sure to head on over to CGSociety and check out some the the outstanding Concept Art on full display for your viewing pleasure.