ellebrooke
04-30-2009, 03:09 PM
If you neglected to go to the Triangle Game Conference yesterday, you missed an awesome opportunity to listen to some of the greats at Epic talk about what they know (and love!) best.
Tanya Jessen spoke at length about the incredible cinematics in Gears of War 2, detailing everything from filming the motion capture to how they organized the production. Her presentation was rife with clips from Gears of War 2 in all phases and backed up with charts and flowsheets of the production.
The lecture hall for keynote speaker Dr. Michael Capps was so packed with people they had to close the doors. Even then, I was one of the ones standing in the back of the room, pressed up against a wall, with five other people touching me at any given time. Despite the claustrophobic conditions, it was well worth the discomfort to listen. Dr. Capps detailed out his philosophies on employees, hiring and what he feels sets his company apart from the rest. I left the room with the feeling of “I want to work THERE!”
But with the last lecture of the day I left feeling inspired and wanting to run home to my PC to get to work. Even today, I feel really motivated to get creative, and excited about my upcoming classes. Andrew Bains was the presenter for “Level Design in the Gears of War Series.” As one of the senior level designers at Epic, his talk was more of a walk-through on the design of a level. From his initial sketches to the final end result, it was all there, each stage of the production along with a narrative of what had been done and which department it was headed for. He capped off his lecture with a run-through of the hiring process at Epic, which was just whipped cream on top of an already perfect sundae. Anyone looking to get into level design (or even environmental art) who missed this, really lost out on the most informative (and entertaining) talk of the day.
A big thank you to all four of the Epic presenters at TGC.
Tanya Jessen spoke at length about the incredible cinematics in Gears of War 2, detailing everything from filming the motion capture to how they organized the production. Her presentation was rife with clips from Gears of War 2 in all phases and backed up with charts and flowsheets of the production.
The lecture hall for keynote speaker Dr. Michael Capps was so packed with people they had to close the doors. Even then, I was one of the ones standing in the back of the room, pressed up against a wall, with five other people touching me at any given time. Despite the claustrophobic conditions, it was well worth the discomfort to listen. Dr. Capps detailed out his philosophies on employees, hiring and what he feels sets his company apart from the rest. I left the room with the feeling of “I want to work THERE!”
But with the last lecture of the day I left feeling inspired and wanting to run home to my PC to get to work. Even today, I feel really motivated to get creative, and excited about my upcoming classes. Andrew Bains was the presenter for “Level Design in the Gears of War Series.” As one of the senior level designers at Epic, his talk was more of a walk-through on the design of a level. From his initial sketches to the final end result, it was all there, each stage of the production along with a narrative of what had been done and which department it was headed for. He capped off his lecture with a run-through of the hiring process at Epic, which was just whipped cream on top of an already perfect sundae. Anyone looking to get into level design (or even environmental art) who missed this, really lost out on the most informative (and entertaining) talk of the day.
A big thank you to all four of the Epic presenters at TGC.