Transferable skills in VFX, Games, and Animation

Specialist skills – be a generalist with specialist skills

Team work

Creativity and Efficiency

The ability to think about the big picture

Meeting deadlines!

Working to a brief

Respond well to criticism

Presentation skills

Knowledge of cultural references

Observation skills

Planning

Be able to draw

Be proactive and self motivated – always keep learning!

Be confident – ask questions

Know the language

Awareness of cinematography

Maths – trigonometry, matrices, vectors,applied mechanics, algebra, scripting, learning(and physics).

Computer literacy

Film theory

Knowledge of VFX history

Knowledge of Editing

Style and vision

Understand optics

Be innovated

Types of Companies

LBG:

A private limited company limited by guarantee, (LBG)  is an alternative type of corporation used mainly by charities and other non-profit organisations. LBGs usually don’t have a share capital, nor do they have shareholders, they instead have members that act as guarantors. It is common for companies to retain their profits within the company in order to re-invest in its operations instead of distributing the money to its members.

Other than charities, community projects, societies, clubs, often set up as a LBG, having at least one director and one member. Unlike companies limited by a share, a guarantee company can be exempt from having the word ‘limited’ or ‘ltd’ if it's set up for a certain nonprofit purpose, often charities. These companies still have to file accounts and annual return at a company house each year.



Ordinary Business partnership:

In a business partnership, you and your business partner personally share responsibility for the business. Every member can share the profits and each partner pays tax on their own share. A partner doesn't have to be a person, a limited company counts as a legal person, as well as a partner in a partnership. If there are debts within the partnership both parties are jointly liable for any amount that is owed and are equally responsible for paying off the whole debt.



Public Limited Company:

The standard legal designation of a company which has offered its shares to the general public and has limited liability. A Public Limited Company's stock can be acquired by anyone and everyone, open to the general public, holders are only limited to potentially lose the amount paid for the shares. It is a legal form more commonly used within the UK. All companies in the stock market are PBL's. Ubisoft, EA, and Activision.



LTD:

Look after everything to do with their business, its finances are separated from your personal finance.
Directors often own shares but they don’t have to. Shareholders cannot sell or transfer their shares without offering them first to other shareholders for purchase. Shareholders cannot offer their shares to the general public over a stock exchange.



LLP:

A  limited liability partnership (LLP) requires at least 2 other designated members, they can either be a person or company and will be known as a corporate member. Each member pays tax on their shares of profit like an ordinary business partnership, but aren’t personally liable for any debts the business can’t pay. E.g. One partner cannot be responsible or liable for another partner's misconduct. Unlike Limited partnerships, LLP’s only pay debts by how much they invest in the company. Whereas limited partnerships split the debt equally among them.

Sole Trader:

sole traders are people who are self employed, sole traders run their businesses as an individual, this means that they keep all the businesses profits after the taxes have been paid on them. Sole traders can employ staff and don't have to work alone, but the sole trader is personally responsible for any losses the business makes.

Tax Responsibility

as a sole trader you must:

-Send a "self Assessment tax return" every year

-Pay income tax on the profits you make

-Pay National Insurance

-You must also register for VAT if you expect your takings to be more than £83,000 a year

Unincorporated Associations:

An unincorporated association is an organisation that arises when two or more people come together for a particular purpose other than to make profit, but decide not to use a formal structure like a company. Most clubs, societies, groups, and some syndicates are unincorporated, as are most voluntary organisations.

You don’t need to register an unincorporated association, and it doesn’t cost anything to set one up.

Individual members are personally responsible for any debts and contractual obligations.

If the association does start trading and makes a profit, you’ll need to payCorporation Tax and file a Company Tax Return in the same way as a limited company.

How Companies are Funded and Make Money

Sales:

Initial sales are the main source of income for most AAA titles, big name companies such as Ubisoft and Rockstar will spend millions on developing and advertising their products getting the name out around the world. Rockstar spent well over $250 million developing and advertising GTA V making it the most expensive game ever, however in its first day on sale it hit around $800 million in sales.

Merchandise: Many companies sell merchandise such as shirts, hats, stickers, posters, phone cases etc. Some of these companies have their own stores to sell merch because this way they can decide the price and also how many to print/make but some, like disney for StarWars, sign contracts with websites/companies like designbyhumans.com because it means less work for them.

Publishers:


A Publisher is the company with the financial risk, so if a game flops they are the ones that lose a lot of the money. When a Development team want to make a game to release, the ask a Publisher for the funds to fund their production, if a Publisher agrees, the Publisher will give the Development team a budget to work on the game, while the game is nearing completion the Publishers deal with the commercial side of the game, which includes advertising to help sell the game which is why the Publishers are helping the developers, to make money. Another thing a Publisher does is pays game shops to clear out a section of the shop and fill it with merchandise of the game is the Publishers want to as it could cost them quite a lot of money to do this. So in turn a Publisher deals with the financial side of the game making process whereas the developers deal with the development side of game making.

Advertising and Sponsorship:

In-game advertising-

This is where they will advertise products in the gameplay of the game. This is generally a subtle way of advertising, e.g the product logo may appear on items throughout the game (billboards, posters, in game merchandise etc..) or the player may interact with the product several times in game.

Advergames-

This is where a games company will be paid to create a small game that will advertise the company, these games are generally small mini games on a company's website.

Through the line (TTL) advertising-

This is an uncommon form of advertising, where there will be links within games that will take you to the company's product and website.

FIG:

Fig works with developers every step of the way: from providing development advances funded 

through its crowdfunding campaigns to providing publishing and distribution support when games 

are ready for launch, all the while bringing the community of fans and gamers along the way.

FIG was created to change the way games are made it is a crowdfunding site that was formed 

from some of biggest crowdfunding game makers such as Tim Schafer and Feargus Urquhart. 

They made the syte exclusively for games crowdfunding and will have a board of people who 

review each game to decide whether to approve them.

Creative England:

Creative England has, for the third year running,  partnered with Microsoft to develop Green Shoots, a programme of financial and business support intended to stimulate the commercial development and growth of the games industry in the English regions, outside of Greater London. 

The programme provides investments of between £25,000 and £50,000 to games companies that demonstrate high growth potential.

The CE Game Development Fund is intended to stimulate the commercial development and growth of the games industry in the English regions, outside of Greater London, by providing investments of between £50,000 and £150,000 to game studios that can demonstrate high growth potential.

Through this fund investments of between £50,000 and £150,000 will be made for the development and commercial release of new game IP.  Investments will be made on a commercial basis under a revenue share scheme. 

Contracts:

A natural person, business or corporation which provides goods or services to another entity under terms specified in a contract.

Under a contract, the contractor agrees to give the money and supplies needed to the contracted company so they create a product (or in this case a game) and then gain profit from it to fund the next contract. The game company gains money by being supplied with the required amount to start a project and then gain a profit to support their company.

Patreon:

Patreon is a way to fund your favorite creators e.g. youtubers or twitch streamers, twitch streamers are paid by subscription from fans. The fans basically pay like $5 monthly to support their favourite streamers so they can still stream for your pleasure and some streamers also give the subscribers give benefits like sometimes they will play games with their subscribers and talk to them. Also streamers do competitions giving away expensive goods such as games headsets and even consoles to the winners. 

Crowd Funding:

The company sets up a kickstarter page and people from the public can back the project and pledge money. When the funding goal has been reached the backers credit cards will be charged when the time on the page has expired. If the project does not reach the goal no one is charged. Stretch goals allow more content in the game to be added even after the project has reached its original goal. Another way for the developer to get more funds.

Grants / Tax Relief:

Grant is an amount of money provided by the government, local councils and charities to an individual / business for a project or purpose. Whilst you do not need to pay a grant back, they are often difficult to have accepted as there is a lot of competition.

Advantages

Do not have to pay a grant back or pay interest on it
Do not lose any control over your business

Disadvantages

Locating  a grant that suits your specific project
There is lot of competition for grants
The applicant often is expected to match the funds you’re awarded
Grants are usually awarded for proposed projects, not ones that have already started

Application process is potentially time-consuming

Early Access:

Early access is a funding model used in the games industry in which customers can pay for a game in its early stages of development and obtain access to playable but unfinished versions of the game, while the developer is able to use those funds to further develop the game. Early access is common amongst indie games to obtain the funding to finish those games.

Example Games:

DayZ, A multiplayer zombie based game gained more than 400,000 sales within one week of being in Early Access

Kerbal Space program,  followed a similar model to Minecraft and eventually moved onto the Steam early access program where it sold millions of copies


Prison Architect, which has been able to raise about $8 million in revenue from more than 250,000 sales in early access

Presenting Games/Game Pitch

Throughout the year we have all presented 3 game pitches, starting back in October with BBB I'll go through how each pitch went and how I feel about them looking back.

BBB:

Big British Balls (genius title) was our first game we ever made, and pitched, we spent an afternoon working on it and then pitched it to our lecturers. We didn't really work as a team when making both the game, and the pitch which led to a dry presentation where we simple spoke about the things we as individuals had created. It wasn't something I was proud of.

Looking back, it was just a lack of communication that led to the pitch being as mis-matched as it was, it helped me as an individual to work with people I haven't known for long, if I was put in a random group today I think I'd do very well.



Wolfs Rest:

Wolfs Rest was our second pitched game, we spent a good few weeks working on the story, gameplay, and trailer, and a few days on getting a good presentation finished. When we pitched the game, I didn't have much to say at all, just a few lines introducing the trailer and answering questions about the trailer. At the time I was much happier just showing off my work and letting it speak for itself, I thought that talking about the trailer too much would just end up spoiling little things along the way. I wasn't a fan of speaking in front of a crowd, especially since I have a fairly quiet voice.

An improvement, but not a large enough one, I worked better on the project but not with the presentation, and instead of just speaking infront of the class I chose to sit at the back. Watching the other pitches made me realize that we were all in the same boat, and that being nervous and shy will get you no where.



Recent Pitch:

Again I had no trouble speaking, however the presentation itself was pretty bad. We changed the idea at the last minute then changed it back on the morning we had to pitch. It led to a mis-matched fumble in which we all had to speak without scripts, and despite the overall presentation being bad I actually preferred speaking without a script. It let me just talk about what I'd worked on and how I felt about it in general.

Some models + Updates

I've started using more than one shape in 3ds max to create models, as it was difficult to make some models that had multiple differing shapes. To kickstart the new plan I decided to create a room in 3ds max where every asset is a different shape.

I'm going to continue adding to this until I'm satisfied, (which'll probably include another room). I'd like to make a sofa and large tv with a stand.

I also modeled a sword using a new technique that builds upon the 'extruding cylinder from square surface' method. You pretty much do the same thing except you remove the lines connecting the circular face and then you chamfer the edges of the cylinder, this adds more polys and looks much better.

I also re-made the old 2d game I lost when my USB broke, (I think I talked about it before), and now with Chris and Ant here to help I think I can get a really good game made before the end of the month.

We're starting Flash again shortly with Chris which should be interesting, I've never gotten far enough into flash despite being a fan of the games you can get out of it. If I can make something even half as good as some of the games I've seen today I'll be happy.

Car Game Logo.

Our racing game idea finally has a name that we agree on, 'Wheelie Wheelie Automobiley'. And since we were in the mac room for a bit I thought I'd make a logo, I think it would look good as a loading screen personally.

I tried making some other pieces like this, taking inspiration from games such as Micromachines, however the outcome wasn't up to par, I think the image above is the nicest looking one I'm going to make. If we do need some variation I'll just change the background to different settings.

I made a basic looking traffic light for Finley that may or may not be used, it didn't take too long and needs texturing before I'll be happy with it, thankfully its not complex at all and shouldn't take long at all.

I'm hoping that our idea gets chosen so I can myself to make some complex car models, or just models in general, there are endless models we could make for Wheelie Wheelie Automobiley. Whatever gets picked as the class' favorite should have enough for me to do.

New Claptrap model!

Since I made the codsworth model a while ago I've tried re-creating other famous robots, however almost all of them haven't been up to par. I'm going back through my old models to see which ones can be remade.

I found my old claptrap model and decided that it needed a remake, I don't understand why I found it so difficult beforehand, claptrap is built from a simple cube with a shrunken base. Here's the finished re-made model.

I really prefer making simpler looking models and adding more complex textures, overall it makes the job easier, its simple to UV unwrap and allows me to spend more time making the textures. 

Anyway, the model looks nicer than the previous and since it has fewer polys I can unwrap and texture it fairly easily, I'll post an update on it shortly.

Canny Runner and Updates

I'm going to fill up my portfolio over the next few days so I need to finish some older projects, as well as some new ones. I've started making a new set of levels for CannyRunner, a game I made back in October, with a better knowledge of C# and a better understanding of Unity I think the game should come along nicely, here's the first new level.

I'm also going to finish the museum level for my models, as well as the models themselves, I really want to re-make the r2d2 model, as well as the recent Iron Giant model because I know that I can do so much better, I'll also have the codsworth model textured in the next few weeks, (finally).

I'll also be making new complex models every few days, I like the idea of having a bedroom level that contains all the models I make, things like monitors, a desk, a bed, consoles, tables, etc.

I'm also finishing my Slender game, I'm changing the setting from a forest to a set of eerie corridors in a hotel setting. I think it should look better because I can use some models that I've made instead of random trees and textures.

Of course I'll still be making my photoshop art pieces.

Starting Animation

Animation is something I'm not really used to, the only experience I've had with any kind of animation is claymation in school for a few days, and pivot, (a 2d stick man animation program). I'm good at VFX, 3d Modelling, texturing, Photoshop, Unity, and Unreal, but when it comes to animation I really don't know where to start.

We've started making a skeleton on Maya which can be used to make animations, the skeleton resembles some form of humanoid, the bone length and sizing isn't to scale but that isn't an issue right now. So far I have the full skeleton minus some fingers, but I'll add them later on.

We're going to continue making this on Thursday, however I'll download some royalty free characters and make some animations with them, personally I'm more of a fan of making the actual animation rather than the assets within it.

I'd like to make some claymation as well, or at least replicate it somehow something like Wallace and Gromit. Right now I haven't done enough with Maya, I'll see how I feel about it after a few days work are finished.

Every Piece of Vinyl Inspired Art

With the vinyl inspired art becoming almost a weekly hobby I thought I'd make a post that contains every piece, I'll add every piece of art I make.