Game Art student Michelle Lee on making a game for EXPO

n first year, I was introduced to the industry-standard software, such as Maya, Photoshop and Zbrush and was allowed the freedom to explore the different forms of Game Art. This allowed me to create aesthetically pleasing scenes and assets that tell a story, optimised for a real-time environment in games.

Then in second year I was given the chance to test the waters of working in game production, collaborating with non-art game students, such as programmers and writers, which prepared me for the project this year and my future career of working as a 3D game artist.

The Games Academy studio also provided PCs with 2 monitors that had the necessary software installed free for use during term time, along with ample space for team collaboration. I was also able to rent out equipment, such as controllers and tablets free of charge from the Games Academy store page online, which was really convenient.

After a simple induction, me and my team were also able to use the audio booth, which I am in right now, that has professional microphones, for voice acting to be used in our game.

We also utilised the 3d printing service to make coin keychains as merch for our game – which wasn’t expensive at all, about just 20p per coin.

Course staff were allotted to each team as supervisors, which gave constructive feedback to the game regularly and made sure everyone was on track. There were also regular crit sessions, where other staff and students would play the game to give feedback.

There were times when certain team members could not contribute due to unforeseen personal circumstances, which had a big impact as we are a team of only 8 people. Therefore, we often had to work out of our specialisms. For example, even though I mainly worked as an Environment Artist that created 3D assets and scenes, there were times where I took up creating elements for the UI, covering for the unavailable concept artists.

In the future, I will lower the scope a bit, since creating four different environments is a little bit too high of a workload for two Environment Artists. However, I had a lot of fun and am happy on how the project turned out.

The comedic moments (in our game) made me chuckle, and this has truly been an unforgettable experience that also helped prepare me for my future career.

Thank you for tuning in, and see you at Expo! Bye bye!

External links

Pay2Play on Itch.io

Find out more about the Games Art BA course.