120 Self Promotion Ideas

http://www.allgraphicdesign.com/graphicsblog/2007/11/28/120-self-promotion-ideas-for-graphic-designers-freelancers-free-or-almost-free/

While trying to talk about my self made business I found this website which shows some good, and not so good ways to promote yourself. I just think is a good find and could help when you need to get yourself out there.

Artist Tutorials

Thankfully on the internet there are plenty of artists that have worked in the industry trying to help people like myself get better by showing some skills they have used and tips they have learnt from mistakes or just good tips.

Two main artists I look at are Feng Zhu, and Xia Taptara.

I have followed Xia Tapatara’s work a while now as I originally found his tutorials on youtube. While having good tutorials for free he also has good paid ones with more detail in, the biggest thing perhaps is that he has set up an “Artists arena” where you are given a brief (such as real life powerpuff) and you compete with amateur artists such as yourself, you also get great feedback from people and while probably critical it all helps.

Feng Zhu was shown to me by Jake Neal on my course, Feng zhu’s tutorials are great if not better than Xia Taptara’s as he works with more things such as sillouettes and angles, topics more devoted to the lore and learning of painting/drawing. I found his tutorials I have watched very useful.

Both artists are great for inspiration and I am always keeping an eye for artists like these that show different painting styles, and perhaps give away some few tried and tested techniques!

Game Artbooks

Recently I bought the Guildwars2 Artbook, can you guess i’m a fan? 🙂

This artbook is really good and although it cost me £20 I think its worth it jsut to see some of the process they go through and the small comments they make can be quite useful. The art is very beautiful and you can see the art styles bewtween all the artists as it lists thier names with each one. There are also charater turnarounds and its nice to see the professional standard of them and compare your work to thiers. There are also many different type of artworks from sketches to full works. The perspectives of the drawings are most impressive, they are often slanted/at an angle so the picture catches your eyes more and looks dramatic!

Using our skills as a Designer

Something a bit different in this post but I stimbled across some designs by a designer and in a way many people on my course could draw these as it is very thier style.

http://www.graphicdesignblog.org/oliver-appetizer-plates/

Above are two designs that show a charcter “Oliver” on many dishes with images of food coverted into an activity or scene. They are quite querky and funny and would be good to sit down at the table and see art as well. Something like this might appeal to me depending on my path I take, if the idea is there then I will do it.

F2P Game models examples

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Playing many MMO’s in my time its interesting to see how they adapt a F2P model and how it differs. heres a few examples I will talk about, I have only chosen these 4 as I have experiance with them. They are Guildwars1, Lord of the Rings online, Age of Conan online and finally Teamfortress 2.

Guildwars 1 model is probably the simplist and has least choice as since GW1 was a free game originally they can only charge for added content. This shop allows players to dress characters or open slots for you to “recruit” your other chracters into your group, basically one of your characters is controlled by AI. The best thing about this shop is that it does not create any disadvantages to other players in pvp no matter how much you spend. The downsides are they are expensive for what you get and there is less choice than others.

Lord of the Rings was a big mmo and still is, it brought its f2p model in due to perhaps subs dropping and also the view that f2p is a better option. Lotro is perhaps the best model I have seen so far as you mostly purchase items or ares that link to your acount and never go away rather than some offering time based unlocks. The costs are also quite proportionate and give lots and lots of items to choose from. There is also the ability to gather enough points to buy stuff in game without buying points, however this takes a long time, the option is still there. The downsides are probably they are always coersing you to get a subscription somehow and you sometimes feel pressured into getting a sub.

Conan has a very aggresive f2p model, its impossible to gain free points and even when you sub you get such a small amount each month its more like a bonus to when you pay for points. The choices though are good. The bigegst problem is you can never “buy” content only rent it as such with month passes etc, and kinda of defeats the object of the store.. why not just sub. The biggest problem I faced was without a subscription you cannot enter the expansion zones EVEN if you have paid for it! To me the f2p model is nice if you dont mind playing the lower levels and getting a hang for the game, if you want all content and abilities that help you in game… get a subscription.

Finally Teamfortress 2 turned f2p I guess when they released the Mann o store, valve obviously saw it as going to be sucessfull and thought by giving a good game for free they will get more micro transactions… which they have. The Teamfortress store is brilliant, it offers players the chance to play/trade till they get the items they want, or just buy it. It doesn’t really change the game unfairly and there are alot of cosmetics, including player base made items. The bigegst fault is the prices of new items charging ridiculous amounts for a hat. As a casual player I would never really use this store. However it shows how sucessful this sort of thing can be, look up Valves Valentines ring for teamfortress 2… crazy!

Splash Damage and Brink

I persoanlly saw a prensentaion from some designers at Splash Damage during the Bradford Animation Festival, talking about thier design of Brink. Back then it seemed to be a very nice concept and design, the reality I was told when released was it is good, but nothing special. However an article on industrygamers shows how it was not a flop on any account.

“Brink sold 2.5 million units worldwide. ”

“…the game is “estimated” to have generated between £120 million and $140 million in revenue for Splash Damage since it launched last year. ”

While most of this goes to the publisher this has given Splash Damage a bit of a better name for itself and it has gotten a new publisher under Warchest. This is a f2p publisher and it seems this is the way to go for alot of game designers nowadays, the idea I suppose being that people expect less from a game they havent paid for and there is also a killing to be on buying items.

I am loooking forward to thier new title “RAD Soldiers” it looks like a mix between Teamfortress and Worms. The idea of being able to play cross platform I think is good but its better from the designers view as thier game is more accessable and able to be played more.

A Game to Remember

Recently as a gamer I have found I have been buying less and less of computer games and actually playing older games I had such as command and conquer the originals etc. For one I believe the standard on PC has slipped dramaticaly due to ports from consoles. Even when I had a console I never really believed alot of the games were worth the “new” price that was given to them. Partly I think its due to a hard economy and publishers are just running on old sucessful ideas such as COD or Halo… boring.

This post is however to talk about a game that in my books is the best game I have played in a few years… Deadspace2.

My reasons for this is that this game had me hooked, it had an ok storyline but enough to make me wanting to see the end, this may be enhanced by the fact I never played the first game and so I wanted to find this “marker” even more. This game also had beautiful room designs and sound, these being the main things that make this game the game it is I give a big bag of kudos to the sound designer and enviromental designers. The last game that really scared me I remember was probably Tomb Raider 3 when I was considerably younger, Metro 2033 scared me a little for some parts in the game but nothing that I was afraid to run around everywhere. Deadspace 2 is another level, I literally walked around the whole game with my flashlight scanning every corner, I watched my ammo and generally it made me play through fear. It made me jump more times than I can remember and I think there was a hint of neck cramp where I was so immersed my body was tensed.

Reasons I think it was scarier than most was for one how easily you die, I played on “Normal”, I am a gamer I expected it to be a breeze… I was wrong. I would not even attempt this game on Hardcore mode.. not if you paid me. With the concept of dying so easy you are much more causious, unlike games like Call of Duty where you can take a few clips to the body before finally falling to the AI. The second reason and a big part is the ammo/money in the game. I was scared when my gun ran low and I was even more scared when my choice was between buying a health pack or some ammo. This mechanic also meant I spent more time checking rooms for loot and making sure I stomped on every alien I could, to make sure it was dead mainly! The puzzles in this game also give breaks to the non stop action of just blanking aliens and while being sometimes difficult to see at first are actually not too hard.

For a game with such beautiful animations, textures, sounds and just well polished I have no quarries with the disc change half way though, infact I think more games should adopt it! I prefere a better product over easy of use anytime. For one I never played online but this game had a superb single player, the downside only being you can only really play it through 2-3 times before really getting bored (it loses that fear factor after a few goes through). 9 hours of first time play though is not bad money for a game like this, especially as single player games drop considerably after a few months of release.

Steam vs Origin

Today I read an article released about Gabe Newell talking about Origin, EA’s new online distribtor service. One thing people will always notice is that programs like Origin and Steam are essentially the same, because they both want thier service used you will be accustomed to pop ups, having to load it before you can play your games, and generally more hassle for the user. However saying that Steam was the bane of buying steam related games in the past, now, people accept it and don’t mind as much. Origin I feel will become like that, however the pain becomes when you have to open 3 to 4 different programs to have access to all your games. Due to competition different games will be limited to only certain programs for example Battlefield3 was only perchaseable on Origin.

“Valve’s Gabe Newell has advised EA that creating a digital distribution platform for its customers should not be “a zero sum game.” ”

Personally it feels as if Gabe is annoyed at an attempt to knock his “steam” from its state of total monopolisation. While it would be nice to have to only open one program for games EA would not allow anything like that soon as I assume Steam would be the popular at the moment, mainly due to habbit.

Maths of a Console Developer

“That basic math is why Sony and Microsoft were willing to lose hundreds of dollars per console initially, and it has proven to be a solid investment for both companies in the long run. Nintendo has had the luxury in the past of not having to make that investment, but if there was ever a time to do so, it’s now. Nintendo could even make it more dramatic: Price the Wii U at $199, drop the Wii to $99, and watch Sony and Microsoft squirm as they try to match those prices. ”

Taken from an article off http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-04-20-wii-u-a-strategy-for-success this article had a concept that I had never really realised happened, it actually makes a lot of sence. usually with any product you sell you aim to make a profit, however with games consoles it doesn’t neccesarily have to be like that to start with. The idea talks about Nintendo (who still have a big bank of money) releaseing the Wii:U for a price under the manufacturing cost, for example it costs Nintendo £250 for each console they make, yet they release it to the public for £200 or even £150, even though they will originally lose alot of money with a console widely used more games are released and the market for it grows. Each game developer pays a small fee to Nintendo for each game and in the long run Nintendo make their revenue back. However the risk is your console doesn’t pick up and therefore it is very make or break depending on the loss your making per console.

I just thought this was an interesting concept, as I would say, passing back to go forward.

2.5D

Anatomy of a 2.5D Shot – Inside Scott Sigler’s Nocturnal Trailer from Kevin Capizzi on Vimeo.

Keeping with the little theme I currently have someone posted this little video on the group wall, it gives a slight idea of the time it can take to rig an image and make it 2.5D (which is essentailly a bunch of 2D layers that move to create a 3D effect). While I think its a cool idea and facinating, the amount of time this person spends on this picture I reckon could have been shortened. I don’t beleive a rig was perhaps needed, instead just use different layers and move them to simulate joints.

Here is the below finished video and I do however really like the finished version so I can ‘t complain at the time he spent, as it was well spent. What I like is the way the animation works with the 2D images, the modd and lighting of the drawings are also nice to look at.