I have a job in the games industry! - QA Testing at Tt Fusion

I am excited to announce that this month, I started my first ever job in the games industry!

I am working at Tt Fusion in Wilmslow as a QA tester until the end of May. My first day was on Monday 18th April and was a day that was 22 years in the making - I've dreamed of working in games for as long as I can remember so getting my first job in the industry was amazing and my first day was a huge deal for me.

I've now been there for two weeks and its great, I've already learned so much. I've been giving it 110% and I have been soaking up as much knowledge as possible - it's proving to be a very valuable experience for me. I feel very lucky to be employed by such a successful and inventive games company and I am determined to make the most of the experience! I'm only just making this blog post now because I've been very busy and have totally immersed myself in my new job and have also moved to Wilmslow for the duration of my employment.

QA testing has always been something that I have been interested in doing and I think that I have taken well to it. The nature of the work allows me to put my Games Design degree, game design knowledge and love of gaming to good use while also learning a great deal about QA, development and design, and of course, interacting with like-minded games industry professionals and gaining a valuable insight into how things work in a games studio.

Diner Update // The Canyonrush Crew Update - Pic Dump

I've been super busy with University work lately, check out where I'm up to:

Diner in the Desert

It's been two weeks since my last update on my game's design honours project. I've been working hard on this project and it's steadily getting there.

Since my last update, I've modelled a lot more stuff including bar stools, plates and bowls, cutlery and light fittings. I've also worked on the car some more, updating the model and texture. I've worked on many of the other assets textures (such as the walls, floor and bar) too. Finally, I've also created a basic desert landscape.

The scene is starting to come together now and I'm beginning to get excited for how it will look when it's done.

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And now for an update on a project that I feel like I've slightly neglected on my blog...

"The Canyonrush Crew" is the game concept that I've come up with for my other Uni module. It's a 3rd person action adventure game set in the Wild West, featuring 5 different playable characters. The last post that I made about this project was in January, so naturally, I've done a lot of new work for it.

For this project, I'm creating a 2D concept art piece for each of the 5 characters. I'm also creating a 3D model that "belongs" to each character. I'm also creating an interactive presentation explaining the user interface and menu system of the game. Here's some pictures of the work I've been doing for this project.

More updates to come soon!

Diner Update - Transition to UE4

I've finally taken the plunge this week and decided to build my Diner environment for my Honours project in UE4 instead of UDK. This is a big decision because I've not had any experience with UE4 before, but I'm feeling confident and I've already built the diner and some of its contents.... and it looks much better than before! I think that the learning curve will be worth it because my scene will look better in the long run, and experience with UE4 will be a great help for me when applying for jobs.

Here's a couple of pictures of how the diner is looking now.

THRONE ROOM - Progress Pics

I've made a bit of progress on my Captain's Cabin for the Allegorithmic Throne Room challenge this week. I've finally imported it into UDK and began to construct the scene. This means that I can soon start to make props for the scene, including the throne itself - the most important part of the scene.

There are a few things that need sorting - like seams in the textures and the lighting - but here's some progress pics.

Stay tuned for more progress pics!

Diner Update - Uni Work

I've been busy working on my games design Honours project lately and its starting to take shape. I've finally started to make interior props including the booth seats and tables. Here's a few pictures of how it's looking now.

Soon I'll be able to move all the assets into UDK and start to build the actual scene. Then I've got a car and a load of props to make, and loads of texturing to do!

THRONE ROOM - Progress Pics

Here's a few progress pics from my entry to Allegorithmic/Polycount's THRONE ROOM 3D environment challenge. I've been working on some 3D models in Maya.

I've created a Pinterest board for reference images and images of my own work: http://pinterest.com/theomclarke/pirates-throne-room/

Garage Scene (Work in Progress)

So I finished my 2nd year as a Games Design student at UCLan a few weeks ago now, and even though I only just passed, I'm happy with how this year has gone. I go into my final year in September and it's gonna be a difficult year, so I decided that instead of just go straight home for the Summer, I would stick around at Uni for a bit and do some independent work in preparation for 3rd year.

I chose to do an environment because I plan to specialise in environment art and 3D modelling in my 3rd year. My plan was to make a small, simple environment, that I would try and fill with as much atmosphere and interesting stuff as possible. I decided on a mechanics garage.

Unfortunately I didn't manage to finish the full scene before going home for Summer, but I did get a fair bit done and I've gained a hell of a lot of knowledge in the process. Staying these few extra weeks has definitely been worth it and I'm excited to come back for my final year.

Anyway, here's a few screenshots of my garage scene as it stands now!

and finally, a high quality render of the desktop props...

This environment is now on hold and I'll continue working on it when I come back to Uni in September

"Withdrawal" Level Design Project - Uni Work

Our latest Uni project has been a group project to create a game level lasting 6-9 minutes for use with the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. This has been a huge project that we've been working on for a couple of months and it's coming along nicely. It's involved more work than any other project and has called on all of our skills including 3D modelling, level design, digital painting, level building and scripting.

We've achieved a lot so far but there's still a lot to do. Here's some progress pictures.

First Post of 2014 // "Lights" Cover

2013 is now over and I find myself halfway through my 2nd year as a Games Design student at UCLan. This seems like a good time to reflect on what I've learned and achieved so far and share some goals for 2014.

2013 was a very busy year both in and out of Uni: At Uni, I found myself learning how to use programs and software that I didn't even know existed two years ago and I think I've done well to get to where I am without any previous education in Games Design. Outside of Uni, much of my time was spent playing music, and I finished my first tracks in Reason 5 and Logic Pro X. My love of music really blew up this year.

2014 will hopefully be just as productive. I'm going to try and make even more music and keep up my Games Design work. I'm also going to try and do a lot more drawing because I've been slacking on it recently. Some of my more short term goals include making another Fallout 3 mod and another independent game scene. I also need to start looking into getting a job when my degree is finished and I've already been researching jobs writing music for games and other media, and game environment artist jobs.

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My first creative project of 2014 was an instrumental cover of "Lights" by Ellie Goulding which took me a couple of weeks to complete and was finished and uploaded to my Soundcloud page yesterday. It was made in Logic and included acoustic and electric guitar and Midi keyboard and drum tracks.

Listen to it here: https://soundcloud.com/denimkid/lights-ellie-goulding-cover

I've also recently started an Instagram page: http://instagram.com/theoclarke4l

That's all for now!

Gas Pump Model Finished

Today I finished the Gas Pump model that I began work on a couple of weeks ago for a University brief. It's probably one of the highest quality game objects that I've made so far. I've learned a lot of new skills that I'm looking forward to putting to use in my independant projects. As usual it was modelled using Maya, textured in Photoshop and presented in UDK. I also tried to go the extra mile with the presentational sheet this time, hopefully this will pay off when it's marked.

Here's the presentation picture that I produced

Then the boring bit: the texture map and wireframes

First Year of Uni Complete!

Yesterday was my last day of my first year as a Games Design student at UCLan and I'm happy to say that I passed with a grade that I'm very happy with!

Luckily the end of the year hasn't caused me to lose my motivation, and I've now got a nice little 4 month Summer ahead of me before it's time to go back. I've already got plans for productive ways to spend it. First of all, I'm going to create some game environments/scenes, like the cellar/prison scene that I created earlier in the year. As I type, I'm downloading Maya and Photoshop so I can get to work on this ASAP.

On an unrelated but equally productive note, I'm also hoping to finally get round to writing/recording/producing some music over the Summer. Since starting University in September I've spent more and more of my spare time writing and playing music. Now that the year is finished, I'm going to devote even more time to this and get some stuff made!

Making a Corner Scene - Uni Work!

I am now at the end of the second semester of my first year as a Game Design student at UCLan and thought this would be a good time to get a blog up and running.

My most recent University project was the creation of a corner scene using the Unreal engine, from scratch, using Maya to model items, Photoshop to texture, and the UDK engine to present my assets in.

I decided early on that I would theme my corner as a prison/wine cellar style room as this would allow me to create some simple items, such as crates and bottles, that wouldn't be too difficult for me to model, as I only have a couple of months of experience with Maya. The scene's setting would also mean that I could make use of the lighting and use a contrast of dark and light areas in my scene.

After drawing up some preliminary sketches of what I wanted to achieve with this scene, I opened up Maya and modeled some items. I then UV mapped them and created the textures in Photoshop before important it all into UDK and fiddling with the lighting to get it looking how I wanted it to look. From beginning to end, this project took a total of about 10-12 hours over the course of two weeks.

The picture below is the presentation picture of the final project.

Making Stuff

Welcome to the first post of my blog!

My name is Theo Clarke, I'm a 19 year old first year Games Design student at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan). I enjoy creating things and have decided to create a blog as a means to document and showcase my creative projects. This blog will mostly consist of my work from my time studying Games Design, including Uni project and independent work, but I'm also hoping to make some music, videos, and so on, so hopefully this blog will also come to include projects from a variety of areas of media, hence the use of the word "stuff" in the title: anything goes.

Stay tuned to see me make some stuff! :)