The best is yet to be

That's a pretty deep title for a first post, but without looking ahead to the next challenge I won't keep growing as an artist. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree from Full Sail University's Game Art program. The program was great and I learned a lot about the game industry and the pipeline used to create assets and games. While things do move fast in the video game industry, I went through the program during more of a transitional period where everything was moving from the last console generation to the current one. As a result, a lot of the skills I developed were outdated not long after I graduated.

The last two years in the video game industry brought a LOT of changes. Photogrammetry is enabling people to model and texture objects by taking pictures and never opening a modeling program or Photoshop. Unreal 4 and Unity 5 have moved to a Physically-Based Shading model which changed the entire texturing pipeline. Polycounts on models are a a lot higher than before. VR is about to go mainstream. Subscription-based MMOs are dead. AAA games are in a state of decline while Indie Publishers are on the rise. In any technology field you need to keep your knowledge current and that's my aim for this blog.

When it comes to blogs this isn't my first rodeo. I still occasionally post on DED 'ARD, a blog that focuses on the Warhammer 40K hobby. Writing about 40K helped me solidify my thoughts and become a better hobbyist. It's my hope that writing about 3D art and video games will similiarly help me brush up on my skills and become a better artist.

This isn't the first time I wanted to show work in progress or talk about the video game industry and I did have some of that content on my portfolio site. In hindsight, that was a really bad idea. Art Directors are super busy people that don't have the time to sort through all of that or read that the super rough environment you're showing off has only been worked on for a few hours. Inevitably, it's that so-so piece in your portfolio that can cost you a job opportunity. If you want to see my professional portfolio, you can head on over to: www.artbyv.com If you want to see the down and dirty process of what goes into making a 3D asset this is where you want to be.

I want this blog to be a place where people can read about my process of 3D asset creation and see my work before all the polish when everything comes together. This is also a learning experience for me as I get up to speed on newer software packages like Allegorithmic's Substance Designer and Epic's Unreal Engine 4. I'll keep the comments section open if you have questions and I'm also available to chat via Twitter as well.

Thanks for dropping by. I'll do my best to keep my posts informative and entertaining.

–V