Ladies and gentlemen, a new huge milestone has been achieved in my life. While we bitterly celebrate the 100th year of foundation of the Republic of Turkey, in this August 2023 I am celebrating the 10th year of working as a game artist in the gaming industry.
I cannot really track down the actual dates but I have started making frame by frame animations with an application that I do not remember in 2000 when I was around 11 years old. Then I have started to use Macromedia Flash in around 2002. It was a huge step for me because it had tween animations and vector drawing that took my mind in that time. What I can really track down is the first model I made in 3Ds Max. It dates 8/8/2004. A car rim. It makes sense because probably I made it under the effect of Need for Speed Underground. When I was learning the app, we had no internet. Maybe we had but it was very limited. I studied it from a book my elder brother once brought, known as the book with dinosaur. I still keep that book with the blood, sweat and tears I have shed among the pages.
Before starting to write this article I have checked my previous works and articles and I have seen that how my perspective has changed in the course of time. What I used to think was very shallow as it should be according to my experience in that time. The longer I have stay on gaming industry, I have discovered more of it. I feel like I used to look everything very closely which makes you see the details but unable to see the whole picture. Experience is basically increasing peripheral view of yourself in any area. Besides being a game artist I am also practicing Kendō almost as long as my professional activity. Looking at the whole picture and increasing the peripheral view is very similar to the term we use enzan no metsuke in Kendō . It means “looking somewhere far away”. This technique brings awareness by standing unfocused, alert and calm. I think what I have learned the most is the ability to look far away even when I make my art. It is really difficult to succeed if you look into details a lot.
Working in the game industry is actually surprisingly similar to playing a game. There are hundreds of descriptions about what a “game” is. These descriptions usually do not contradict with each other. Maybe only disagreement is the property about “being fun”. However my favourite and the most inclusive, clear and simple description was made by Bernard Suits as ” overcoming unncessary obstacles.” What I do is actually basically overcoming the obstacles by destroying them, fakeing them and finding a way around them. Every game comes with a puzzle and the duty of the developers or artists is untangle this puzzle with the most efficient way. So when I work on a game, I feel like I am untangling a puzzle. Every game is unique and the challenge never ends.
Video games should not be seperated from the other art disciplines. Playing a game is actually interactively watching a movie. Recently Netflix’s Black Mirror: Bendersnatch has made a direct connection between these two disciplines. Video games can be considered as audio/visual discipline that combine auditory art and visual art. Since art is a way of communication, video games deliver a message to the players. Video game artists main role is neither only making good looking models nor technical advancements but delivering the message correctly to the players. We are narrators eventually. Video game artists must be curious about surroundings and also observe a lot. They need to know literature, history, movies, fictional universes, popular culture etc. Because the message can only be delivered correctly if it is convincing enough. It will also increase the immersion in the game. Lets say in a zombie apocalypse theme, if the character has a well groomed hair and clean cloths, this would mislead the message. Even its behave, walk and the way of talk may change the message completely. I feel like studying in painting improved me a lot on creating convincing models. I think even if a game artist who create only 3d models should be able to draw as well. Drawing is great to understand the concept of anathomy, composition and color. It also helps how an object would deform in time, or how a cloth folds which is essential for creating convincing models.
There are too many dragons to slay and dungeons to be cleared ladies and gentlemen. Celebrating a decade of growth and exploration while my journey continues, I am both the traveler and the cartographer of this boundless realm of creativity.
WORKSHOP 