INFINITE Creative

Hi.  Welcome to INFINITE Creative.  My name is Justin Prazen and I’ve created this web site to help people achieve their dream of starting a career in the games industry.

Now, first off, why did I name this company INFINITE Creative?  Is it because I think I am so amazing and infinitely creative?  No, I can get artists block just like any good artist.  I named it this because of my creativity, your creativity, everyone I have worked with and everyone I will work with in the future.  By sharing knowledge of how to use these 3D tools, we can create entire worlds and Galaxies.  Entire lives that play out at the touch of your fingertips.  No one person can do it by themselves, but working together, there is nothing we cannot achieve.  Our combined creativity becomes Infinite as we learn and grow and share our knowledge with each other…  and so the name was born.

I’ve played video games ever since I was a kid, and now, I have been doing 3D graphics professionally for over 12 years.  Whenever I talk about my job, the most common thing I hear is “Wow, man.  You have a dream job.”  And it’s true.  I love my job.  If I were to win the lottery and never have to work again, I would continue to do this job.  That’s saying a lot, but it’s true.  The reason I like my job so much is because I get to create things that you could never see in this great big place we call reality.  3D artists create the heroes, monsters, sets, scenes, props, places and special effects that tell the stories that entertain us.  Stories have been around as long as humans have been keeping records, because that’s how history was passed on throughout the early ages.  Storytellers would gather people around a campfire a spin a tale of something great and magnificent.  Story telling began to be so popular that the storytellers were asked to perform and reenact these tales over and over again.  Before long, it would take several story tellers to tell different parts of a single story.  This was the birth of the theater.  Plays, operas, and musicals were at the cutting edge of entertainment.  Then a new technology came along that changed everything.  The film projector.  This device displayed animated pictures of performances that could be duplicated and watched over and over again without having to rely on actors to perform the play every time.

As you’re aware, this technology has grown by leaps and bounds in its efficiency and quality.  Film has taken us from the center of the earth, to the farthest reaches of outer space.  Movies have brought us into the stories unlike anything ever has before… Until, the birth of the video game.

Video games started out as a few pixels on a screen imitating a ball bouncing back and forth.  The game was called Pong.  It was one of the first video games ever made.  They have since grown to unimaginable proportions not only taking us into the story but allowing us to participate and affect the outcome.  Video games don’t just TELL you about the hero.  You ARE the hero.  Or maybe you’re the villain.  The bottom line is that it’s your choice.  This new form of entertainment has only just begun and I’m telling you right now… It needs people.  People like you to make the monsters and the heroes.  People like you to make the scenes and the sets.  When you become a 3D artist, you become the Storyteller.  From there, your creativity…  becomes INFINITE.

You still with me?  Ok, so now what?  Well, you need to decide what part of the story you want to tell.  Are you going to create the shape of the warrior’s muscles and armor?  Do you want to paint the mossy walls of the castle?  Or would you be more interested in showing people how the ugly Ogre lazily crashed to the floor after losing its fight to the young hero?  We’ve got to talk about the different areas of expertise in game art development.

  1. Concept & Design
    • Concept and design should happen before anything else in the entire process.  Here you come up with your ideas and work out all of the details of how everything is going to come together.  You’d draw pictures of characters and environments.  You’d write scripts for cinematics.  You’d design puzzles and levels.  Everything that you see in a game was someone’s idea.  Someone’s creation.
  2. Modeling
    • Modeling is the actual creation of objects in 3D space.  This is where things start to take shape.  It’s a lot like sculpting but instead of using clay, you’re actually sculpting lots of small flat surfaces that we call polygons.  These polygons are made out of mathematical data to define their location in 3D space.  It may sound technical, but trust me, it’s pretty simple.  Whether you’re modeling a monster or the stone floor that its walking on, they’re both made out of the same stuff.
  3. Texturing, UVs, ZBrush and Shaders
    • Everything that you create in 3D needs to be “painted” to show what its surface looks like.  Is the metal shiny or rusty?  Is the skin smooth or scaly?  Well, as a texture artist, you get to paint your model to be exactly the way that you want it to be.  Texturing is a lot more than just painting colors.  You’re also painting cracks and bumps on the surface so those little details will actually react with the lighting and appear to be more realistic.  You will also be defining surface properties like how shiny or reflective something is.  There are many ways for a surface to react to light and its surroundings.
  4. Character Setup (Rigging)
    • When you’re finished modeling and texturing a model, it is basically a statue.  It can’t move at all.  You need to give it the ability to move.  A Character TD is the person who builds the animation system for any given character and then attaches the character to the skeleton of that system.  We typically call this system a rig.  A well built rig will automate as many complex motions as possible so the animator can focus more on the character’s performance.
  5. Animation
    • Once you have a great character rig in your hands, now you bring it to life with a performance.  By moving the different pieces of the rig and telling them where to be at certain times you create motion.  This method of animation is called keyframing.  When you animate for games, you must create many small clips of animation that can piece together to create one long, fluid animation.  In the design phase of animation there will be a big flow chart made to define which animations the character will play in which order.
  6. Lighting & Rendering
    • Lighting and rendering can make or break a scene.  This is an area that is often overlooked by audiences unless it’s done wrong.  Lighting not only illuminates the objects in your scene, but more importantly it needs to create the mood.  Rendering is basically taking a picture of the final models, textures and lighting.  Or you may be taking many pictures that animate over time to show the motion of the characters.  It may sound like the press of a button, but there are many things to take into consideration when rendering.  Lots of setting that increase the quality of things like shadows, reflections and refractions.  When you increase quality you increase render time.  A great render artist will get the best render in the shortest amount of time.

Well, there you have a brief overview of each of the different parts of 3D art creation.  Take your time and think about what you’re really interested in doing, but remember… the more you know about each of these different skill sets, the better you will be at yours.  Knowing how to animate will help you make better character rigs.  Knowing how to texture will make you a better modeler.  And vice versa.  I definitely recommend learning as much as you can about everything in 3D.  These skills will make you more valuable to any of the games companies out there.

Alright, I’m done talking for now.  Once you know which path you want to follow, come back to the site and I’ll show you what we have to help you get the skills that you need to be INFINITELY Creative.