How do you get into technical art?

Professional
1

Hello everyone, my name is Alex and I’m currently a senior in high school. I’m interested in becoming a technical artist but don’t know how. First, though, I’ll tell you about myself.

Since the beginning of high school I’ve been involved in art and love videogames. I knew that I want to be involved with the development of games but didn’t know what I wanted to do. I decided to be an artist and am taking as many art classes as I can at school. I’m good with computers and I enjoy making stuff that looks cool, but I’m not the kind of artist who draws every chance he gets.

Recently I’ve been thinking about programming, but I already have so much invested in art and enjoy it. I’m currently thinking about going to Ringling College of Art and Design for Game Art and Design. On the other hand I could go to a university for programming. The idea of a technical artist seems cool to me because it’s like a hybrid, but I have no clue what to do.

Any suggestions? or could you share how you became a technical artist?
Thanks,
Alex

2

Embrace the art you have learned, but switch to programming.

The ‘Art’ in Technical Artist is awfully misplaced.

I spend 95% of my time in programing related areas and 5% in what could be considered real art.

Programming is where it’s at :slight_smile: Your mileage may vary though.

3

Gotta agree there, most of my time is spent programming as well.
I fell into the Tech Art role by being the art guy that can fix stuff, and even though I’m doing fine, I wish I had some more fundamental programming background sometimes.

I came from an Art and Design background, but manage well enough with the programming side of things :slight_smile:

I would say do what you enjoy. There’s nothing stopping you focusing on more technical things alongside your studying.

4

Tech Artists roles and responsibilities vary from studio to studio; but be sure there are some common threads. It’s actually one of the things that makes the field exciting, there are people from all kinds of backgrounds.

As for me personally, I was the guy that could make art work within whatever tech constraints there were. I spent some long hours over a couple years as a lab assistant after gradating Full Sail that really forced me to fix problems and collaborate technically. That’s what truely started me on the path as a tech artist.

Rigging is part of the job for tech artists (usually, again depends on role and studio) and art certainly informs rigging. You’ll need to understand anatomy as well as animation, etc. You can learn a lot about rigging online and through some solid resources such as the Animator Friendly Rigging DVD’s.

A lot of the work in tech art is to make sure artists are able to be efficient and effective, so working with artists and understanding the way they make art and the tools they use is pretty vital, imho.

As for programming, yes! start learning it now. Start now with Python. Here’s why: It’s free, it runs on everything, it’s easier to learn, good community, it’s embedded in most DCC apps, or can be used to partially control most of them, people actually use it in the industry, it’s awesome. Once you understand the basic programming fundamentals in python, you can branch out to other languages as needed.

If you want to start making games now I suggest finding Game Jams or a small group of like minded people to start making games or at the least art for games. If you want to make functioning games, use whatever tech you have access to (i.e. cheap) and keep the critical path to the art short… Don’t try to make a huge game with full rez 3D characters now, focus on getting the game to work. There are a lot of good resources for this kind of stuff online, Boston has a pretty good community http://bostongamejams.com/. If your community doesn’t have anything like this, start it :slight_smile:

Find like minded people to work with
Make something with them. Small parts that get competed are way better than a huge thing that never gets fnished.
Get feedback on your art and tech art work (this is so vital, not many students actually do it)
Whatever path you follow be sure to enjoy the ride.

5

because there is no direct definition of technical art, there is no good answer for “how to become something that has no definition”.

I’d say focus on what interests you, whether its art, programming, scripting, design and learn as much about the technical aspects of your interest. This way if you ever do become a TA, you’ll bring some perspective, which is one thing that all great TA’s have in common.

6

Even if you don’t end up studying programming full-time, an artist that knows scripting and python is very valuable to most studios.

7

[QUOTE=Cyberdogs7;8069]Embrace the art you have learned, but switch to programming.

The ‘Art’ in Technical Artist is awfully misplaced.

I spend 95% of my time in programing related areas and 5% in what could be considered real art.

Programming is where it’s at :slight_smile: Your mileage may vary though.[/QUOTE]

Agreed. When you find yourself programming all the time, you may wonder if you are a tech artists or true programmer, but an important difference between a “programming heavy” Tech Artist and a “real programmer” is that we get to make our tools in and for the Art Applications (Maya, Mobu, Max). Somehow this is way more fun than writing up a game engine authoring tool or database from scratch.

This is great, rewarding work, but if you combine it with the tinkering, R&D-ing, and figuring out new, tricky, complicated processes in these apps, then you get the “Art” side of the job. I don’t do any real ‘art’ ('lest you considering rigging ‘art’, which it really isn’t). I just figure stuff out, put out fires, optimize processes, make peoples lives awesome. And that’s good enough for me. :p:

8

It’s really difficult to be a TA without any programming knowledge. Some TAs are not programmers of any sort, but artists with expert technical proficiency in the tools their studio provides. You could go that route, but you might find the limitations frustrating. You’d develop a strong expertise in all the ways the tools are broken and how to work around them, but no expertise in how to fix them. Also, bear in mind that not every studio uses the same tools, so expertise in one tool doesn’t mean you’ll be useful somewhere else. That could be a bit scary when job-hunting time rolls around. Programming is a much more versatile skill.

There’s a big focus so far in this thread on TAs who write tools for artists, but there’s another path, the one that Chad hinted at: the TA who figures out how to make new visions possible. I’m not just talking about how to work within the constraints of your game engine and target platform, but full-on look development. This can mean working on four distinct things:
-the look, prototyped however is easiest
-the test content
-any shader or engine changes (in leafy code, let’s be reasonable)
-the tools for authoring the new style of content, if needed

And sometimes this means making final content, too.

My days are split near 50/50 for art and programming. Most of the time, any programming I do is actually still making art. Procedural art, if you can consider shaders or automatic mesh manipulation/processing in that light. Usually I’m working on both art and programming concurrently to reach a particular artistic and/or gameplay goal.

It’s really necessary to have programming skills be useful in this capacity, obviously. It sounds like you’re not sure if programming is for you. There’s really no way to figure it out except to try it. Maybe you could take an intro programming course at a community college over the summer, just to get a feel for it – the language doesn’t really matter – or if you’re good at being self-motivated, just jump into Python in your own time. Then you’ll be in a better position to make a decision.

There’s more schools out there that provide split art/programming degrees, but all the programs are pretty new. We’ve got a few students and recent grads on the boards here; maybe a couple of them might chime in about how they like their programs. Alternately, you could design your own education. Study programming for your degree, sure, but pick up some art workshops or evening classes, too. Or vice-versa. Ultimately it’s up to you to make sure you’re prepared for the job market. You can’t just leave it to your program coordinator. Though you must have figured that out already, since you’re here doing your research. Good job!

If you decide on studying programming exclusively, your artistic abilities won’t be wasted. There’s so many ways to apply that knowledge that don’t necessarily mean “drawing every day.” Maybe you’ll discover you want to be a graphics programmer. Or maybe you’ll end up on a small game team where you contribute in a bunch of different ways. Or maybe it’ll just be one of the many experiences that will help you make good decisions as a gameplay programmer or game designer.

Bear in mind that none of us ever stops learning. You won’t be able to learn everything before leaving school. You have to learn enough to get your first job. Then it’s a whole new learning experience.

9

As one of those students that Bronwen mentioned I can give you my thoughts. No matter which direction you go, programming or art, you’re going to benefit incredibly by understanding the other side. I’d argue that even as a regular artist/animator/modeler/etc. You’ll benefit a lot from understanding a little scripting to speed up your workflow and make some things possible that weren’t before. Or just to understand the tools that you’ll inevitably be working with that were made by your favorite team of tech artists and tools programmers :wink:

I go to a school that teaches both the art side of games and programming side. Though even here you won’t find what you need to be a technical artist from the classes alone. No matter which side you choose there’s always going to be self teaching to pick up the other. If you really enjoy the art side, start digging in to understanding why everything works and if a problem comes up for you or any of your friends you get the opportunity find the solution. That’s the part that more often than not revolves around scripting.

If you go the programming way you’ll get a better founding in a big chunk of the work technical artists do, but from my experience at school it’s not as easy for straight programmers to understand the problems that artists have and come up with solid solutions that an artist will use. That second part is important, you can make the best tool ever that does everything but if it’s not friendly to artists they might not use it and all that work will be for nothing. Though if you’re already going down the art path you may already be able to get past that.

Ultimately, I agree with what Mecha said, focus on what you enjoy and dive into everything technical about it. Take an intro to programming course if it interests you and see how much you enjoy it. No matter which way you go it’s a valuable use of your time to understand programming.

One thing I’ve seen in common with just about every technical artist I’ve met is the drive to keep learning to be better at what they do and finding new, efficient, and innovative ways to do it.

10

For me technical art is all about finding solutions to problems in the field of computer graphics production. Solutions that are elegant, efficient and emancipate the artists from unnecessary repetition in their work. By focusing on the problems you might find yourself more interested in the invention of novel workflows and tools rather than novel work and art itself. Theres no need to box yourself in as an artist or an programmer, thats for narrow-minded people like employers :wink:
An eagerness to learn new things is a necessity. Personally i consider programming the easiest bit. Art and math skills on the other hand dont come cheap, they require time and effort. If you’re a curious person who loves to find new ways to do things in computer graphics, and you loved reading “The Way Things Work” with the mammoths and all as a kid, then I believe the technical art path is definitely for you :slight_smile:

11

[QUOTE=eggmoe;8059]I’m currently thinking about going to Ringling College of Art and Design for Game Art and Design. On the other hand I could go to a university for programming. [/QUOTE]

The Most Important Thing: Go to school for what you want to go to school for.

Ringling is an absolutely phenomenal school and I’d recommend it over a mediocre CS department.

You’ll have more avenues to do TA work in art Art program but will have a harder time if that’s all you want to do (you’ll be expected to produce an animated short or similar as your final project). Depending on the CS program, you can have limited interactions with artists and designers.

12

[QUOTE=Count_Zr0;8087]Agreed. When you find yourself programming all the time, you may wonder if you are a tech artists or true programmer, but an important difference between a “programming heavy” Tech Artist and a “real programmer” is that we get to make our tools in and for the Art Applications (Maya, Mobu, Max). Somehow this is way more fun than writing up a game engine authoring tool or database from scratch.

This is great, rewarding work, but if you combine it with the tinkering, R&D-ing, and figuring out new, tricky, complicated processes in these apps, then you get the “Art” side of the job. I don’t do any real ‘art’ ('lest you considering rigging ‘art’, which it really isn’t). I just figure stuff out, put out fires, optimize processes, make peoples lives awesome. And that’s good enough for me. :p:[/QUOTE]

That exactly describes my technical artists life. Even though we’re too small for me to really do 100% programming I’m the one that builds the tools, help people out with weird problems, fill a scene with 600+ characters neatly seated in a oval shaped theatre, with offsetted random animation. And even when I have to do some boring logo animation I find a way to do it with a script and animate at least 1000+ objects with it, because I can! Tech art is the best art!
“Make peoples lives awesome” That should have gone on the tshirt! :wink:

-Johan

13

I think the title “tech artist” is very malleable, which causes a lot of argument about definition on the internet. I’ve been 100% art my whole life, and recently started trying to pick up some programming out of sheer curiosity. Despite this, I still fall under the tech artist category at work.

My advice would be to study what you enjoy, and you will find a niche for it. No matter your skill set, the world of tech artists is one huge gray area. The more programming, the more marketable your skills. C++ and python are GREAT places to start. Learning Max, Maya and as many game engines as you can is also very important.

14

[QUOTE=Count_Zr0;8087]I just figure stuff out, put out fires, optimize processes, make peoples lives awesome. And that’s good enough for me. :p:[/QUOTE]

Amen! Nothing beats the gratification that comes from knowing that your efforts have improved the quality of someone’s work life. :D:

15

Amen to that too.

I wouldnt mind talking to you about it if you can come and see me. (not knowing where you are from really)

16

I’m a current Senior in the Game Art major at Ringling, so I may have some relevant things to say here. I can’t speak too much about the relevance of my education to having a job as a TA, as my only experience has been my internship at Volition.

Something that seems to be super important, though, is a feel for the way that the artists are working (feel free to correct me if this is a bit misguided, folks with real experience). A tech animator needs to not only rig a skeleton so it deforms properly, but they have to have a sense for how an animator would intuitively animate that skeleton, and try to shape the rig around that. same with tools for modelers and level designers and so on and so forth.

I’m basically set on Tech Art at this point, and there are parts of my courses here that, from time to time, feel less than relevant (I’m working on my thesis right now, and it’s excellent practice if I was going into modeling or texturing, but working 16-20 hours a day on modeling wears on me when I really would love to be improving my workflow or learning HLSL or something of that nature). It doesn’t mean that what I’m doing is not relevant, but I get a little myopic and wish I was working on other things sometimes, but when it comes down to it, what I’m doing right now will probably be very valuable to me as a tech artist, because I’m broadening my understanding of being a content creator.

I didn’t know about Tech Art until my sophomore year here, and you will be taking a scripting class then, which is focused on teaching the artists to think computationally. It’s a class that, for most students, will allow them to talk to a Tech Artist or a programmer and communicate what they want in a clear and logical way, so as to reduce iterations needed to create the optimum solution. Some students really latch on to it though (much as I did) and start becoming go-to problem solving people.

I may be wrong, but it seems like it might be easier to pick up the programming/scripting side of things by yourself. If you spend 3 years intensively working with content creation tools, you’ll have a pretty good intuitive understanding of content creation, which seems like it would be harder to learn from tutorials and such, which is how I started picking up Python. From what I’ve gathered from listening around, perfect style isn’t as important as being able to problem solve, and a CS degree doesn’t guarantee problem solving in the slightest.

If you do go to Ringling, do a group thesis. Doing a solo thesis was one of my biggest mistakes. If I had a group of 4 people, it would be doable for me to do things like write a script to automate X or build a tool to streamline Y, but as it currently stands, I don’t have time to write scripts that are of significant size and challenge because if I take a day off of content creation, I’m way behind.

But yeah, in the end, Rob is spot on (even if he is irrelevant). Go to school what you want to go to school for, and keep your passion and your drive to learn up.

Feel free to get in touch personally if you have any questions about the ringling thing, it’s by no means a fit-all sort of place, but hopefully i can give you a feel for the place to make sure it’s for you.

best of luck :]

-t