Widunder

Okey, this story is getting ridiculously long. But it’s fun to write so hopefully it’s enjoyable to read!
Part 5 today! Some good stuff about interviews, jummy! Today’s soundtrack is ‘Ulver – Themes From William Blake’s The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell’.

So, one day (21st of July 2009) I went up around 4 in the morning and took a bus down to Gothenburg, from where my flight was leaving. My trip consisted of going to Warsaw, sleeping at a hotel and have the interview the day after.

The next day when I arrived at PCF I was greeted by the producer. I got to sit down with a cup of coffee in a smaller meeting room. I had to wait a while because of stressful times at the office. After 15 minutes or so the producer came back together with the lead animator. We greeted each other and sat down and began talking. It was, again, a typical kind of interview with the questions of “what do you like to work with?”, “what have you done at GRIN and what was your responsibilities?”. And also some questions this time about what happened to the GRIN-studio. They asked me if I had any experience with the Unreal Engine, which I didn’t. We talked a bit about their work flow and pipe line for animation in general, and about the team of animators they already had there, which was two more animators except the lead. I got to ask a couple of questions as well which was mostly about how it was working with Epic and with the engine and also what my tasks would consist of etc.
After half an hour or so I got to sign an NDA (Non-disclosure Agreement), and finally they could talk about the game they were working on. We talked about for another half hour or so, I got to know the name and the core features. And also a lot about the actual animation work that was required for the project.
After a while the lead animator had to leave to join some other meeting, we said good bye and the producer told me that I was going to be interviewed by a couple of programmers and the lead level designer. This was different but interesting, since I had never been interviewed by programmers or level designers before. Luckily, it went fine. They asked me if I had any experience building animation trees (animation trees is what decides what animation a character should use at a certain time) and if I had any experience with  physics simulation for destructible environments and I had experience working with programmers and level designers in order to solve certain tasks and problems. We also talked about small stuff like what games I liked and what I did in my spare time.

After they were done with me they order me some lunch. I tried “pirogi” which is a famous polish dish. It was pretty tasty, but not brilliant. It’s basically some kind of dough filled with different stuff, there is a lot of fillings to choose from. The once I ate was filled with cabbage or meat. I recommend everyone to try it at least once if you have the chance.

When I was done eating I was led to a bigger meeting room where I got to meet the studio director and a producer from Epic Games in USA. The producer was the “supervisor” for the entire project from Epic Games point of view, so she worked both in Poland and in the states. The questions they asked me was kind of different from what I had been asked before. They asked me stuff like “If you could improve anything about the way that Terminator Salvation was produced, what would you do?” and “If there was one, what was the biggest problem you encountered during the Terminator-project, and what did you do to overcome it?”. I managed to answer the questions, but it was kind of hard to think of answers directly on the spot. But I guess you always have to be prepared for more difficult questions like this, and not only the “standard” ones. I also got to meet a publisher executive of some kind from EA, which was unexpected. He just happened to be there because of other meetings but we talked a bit about game developing in general and a bit about GRIN and what was going on in Sweden.

It was finally time for me to play the game. Something I had looked forward to since the beginning of the interview when they were talking about the project. I got to play a build that they had used a while back to show off the game to Epic Games and to EA, so it was pretty fine tuned. A real good experience and also I got to dig deeper into what I would work with if I got the job.

After this I got a tour of the office and then it was time for me to leave. I had been there for about 4 hours. So a much longer interview that I was used to, which usually only lasted about half an hour or so.
When I arrived back home in Sweden I felt some what satisfied with the interview but it was still a lot to take in. But I was sure that I could like it there, living in Poland wouldn’t be a problem for me and the people in the studio was really nice and the project was awesome. Still I had almost no time to breath out. Two days later I had to fly over to England for my interviews with Bizarre and Lionhead.

Because Bizarre couldn’t find any better flights, I got to fly over to Liverpool on a Friday and stay there for the weekend, and then have my interview on Monday. But in the last minute my interview with Lionhead was booked for the day after my interview with Bizarre. So my final plan was to spend the weekend in Liverpool, have my interview on Monday and then catch a train down to Guildford and spend the night at a hotel, and then have my interview with Lionhead on Tuesday, the day after

I must say it was rather boring to spend an entire weekend in England by myself. I walked around a lot and checked out some of the things there was to see in Liverpool, like a fairly new shopping centre and cinema etc. But it was a free vacation basically so I didn’t really mind.

The interview with Bizarre went really smooth as well. Just as in PCF I was there for several hours. I got to meet the lead animator, a couple of producers, the founder of Bizarre and also a couple of Swedish guys working there since several years back. I got to see the game they were working on, and an animator even showed me the workflow for their motion capture cleaning and setting up animation trees. They got some really nice tools going on there.
The actual interview part went smooth as well. The lead animator and the producer asked me, again, standard questions. And they talked a lot about Bizarre in general. What it is like to work there and how it was to live in the city, which was really nice to hear since that kind of stuff is easy to forget to ask about. For me anyways. Bizarre actually gave a job offer right there on the spot, which I had not expected at all. They already the knew that I was going for another interview at Lionhead and they understood that I wanted to keep my doors open. So they didn’t demand a decision right away. But I got the offer as a contract and they let me know that they hoped I would make “the right decision”.

At the end of the day I had been there for about 3-4 hours or so. So again a long interview. One of the HR-girls gave me a ride back to the station from where I was going to catch a train down to Guildford. Unfortunately I had several hours free until my train was due to leave, so I sat down in a café and read in my book. Good way to waste time it appears, because before I knew it I had to hurry to the train.

The ride actually took me down to London, where I had never been before either. The ride took about three hours. I had to take the subway down to another train station and from there take the train out to Guildford. Luckily the subway system in London was fairly easy to understand, so it wasn’t too much trouble getting to the right place and getting on the right train. The ride took about one hour from London to Guildford.

The next morning I took a taxi to the Lionhead Offices. It was bit further out from the centrum of the city. When I arrived I was greeted by the receptionist and after a couple of minutes the lead animator appeared and greeted me as well. He told me they had it a bit hectic so the interview would be pretty quick. We sat down in a meeting room and the technical animator joined us. We looked at my demo reel and I explained everything as it went on. This job was for a role as a Junior Rigger, so this was a bit different from the other ones. The explained to me very clearly what the role was about, and what my job tasks would include. Lionhead are working in XSI, so I asked them a few questions about the transition from Maya to XSI and some more questions about what would be expected of me etc. After just half an hour the interview was over and they had to get back to work. The lead animator gave me a quick tour around the office before he showed me the door. It was a nice place but a bit crowded. Cozy though.

It was time for me to leave Lionhead. They thanked me for coming on an interview and let me know that they would be in touch as soon as possible. Hopefully in a couple of days. I took a taxi to the airport and flew back to Sweden.
The next day I checked my mail and found that PCF had given me a job offer as well. And just a couple of hours later the recruiter responsible for Lionhead called me and let me know that Lionhead had given me an offer as well. I was apparently on a roll, sort of.

So now I had to decide. This was very new to me since I was used to only having one offer. It’s nice to have options but when I liked all of the offers so much that it was really difficult to choose. What it all came down to was;

• What project am I most interested in?
• Which offer gives me the most in terms of credits and experience to contribute to my career?
• Where did I feel most comfortable? What did my gut tell me?
• If I choose one of them, would I miss one of the other places? e.g. if I chose Lionhead, would I sit and think “I wonder what it would’ve been like if I took People Can Fly”

I was most interested in the PCF-project, and that job and the credits I would get would also give me most credit to put on my CV. The reason was that at Lionhead I was offered a Junior Rigger role. A junior role to begin does not give as big impact as a regular animator-role gives on a Resume, plus that a role as a junior rigger would take my career in a different direction where I didn’t really . And at Bizarre I would work on a licensed game, which does not hit as big as other new games (most of the time). My gut told me PCF, I don’t really know why. The place just gave me a better vibe, the way they had greeted me and really showed me that they wanted me to work there. The answer to the last question was actually also PCF, because of the answers to all of the other questions. So, my decision came down to People Can Fly.

End of Part 5 and end of “Getting a job in the industry”!
Next time around I will talk about what it was like moving down here and start working here.

So, finally the time has come to talk about how I got this job. And what happened along the way.
Soundtrack for this evening is: Engel – Absolute Design

So, July 2009. There I was, out of a job. I instantly began to work on a portfolio using all of the material I had so far. Including some new stuff from GRIN. I also wrote a new resume and wrote several cover letters and just sent everything out to different game companies. One mistake I did here was that I didn’t really ask people for comments and critique on my portfolio until after I sent my first batch of applications out. And the ideas and tips I got from my co-workers and friends helped a lot, so my second version of my reel was much much better than the first.

The first batch consisted of about 10 applications. These mainly went out to the bigger companies, such as Blizzard, Epic, Valve, Id, etc. I didn’t actually expect to get any decent answer from them. Partially because I was still “green” within the game industry. I was in my second year as a professional. And also partially because of the difficulties to get me into USA. If you don’t have something like a bachelor’s degree it’s very difficult to get the government to give you a work visa without a big amount of experience within your field.
During the following couple of days I continued to send out applications to every company I could think of. I sent some out to new up starting companies that people told me about. One of them answered fairly quickly; Ruffian Games, from Dundee in Scotland. They wanted me to do a test for them where I would animate standard kind of animations for a bipedal character in 3d Studio Max. Some examples of animations they wanted to see was walk cycle, getting hit, falling down, getting back up, etc. At first I accepted, but then I was lucky enough to get an answer from Epic Games. They wanted me to do an animation test for them as well. They had sent me a Maya rig of the standard enemy soldier from Gears of War.

Locust from Gears of War

The test consisted of three parts;

1. Run cycles
Knowing what you do about the Locust, create a run cycle fitting for his character.   Use one of the following moods for how he’s running;  fleeing run, attacking aggressive run, sneaking run, injured run, etc. (you can come up with your own, just let us know what you were going for)    After a few cycles, transition the run into a second type of run. (i.e. sneak run switches into angry aggressive run)

2. Mantle cover
Sticking with the second run type from part 1, have the Locust maneuver into cover and then mantle over it.    The in and out frames should match the first frame of the run cycle.   The cover_wall prop is included in the scene.  Please move the prop to where you need it.

3. Melee gun hit
Using the dummy punching bag (cylinder) in the scene file, have the Locust Grunt do some sort of melee attack on the punching bag with his gun.   This animation can be as long as you want, and there’s no limits on how far off the origin he steps.    The melee prop is included in the scene.  Please move it to where you need it.

I did not get any specific deadline, but they wanted me to send it in asap. I decided I could probably do in 4 days total and that I would do this test before the test for Ruffian Games. Mostly because I was more excited about the company itself. Epic Games isn’t something to sneeze at. And also because this test seemed more fun.
So, I did their animation test and sent it in. As I thought it took 4 days. I sent it in on the fourth.

During the time I was doing the Epic test I had been in touch with a couple of recruiters/head hunters. One from the company “UKGames” and one from “Amiqus”. Both had contacted me through LinkedIn (a career based community site, www.linkedin.com) and said that they could hunt jobs for me. As this doesn’t cost anything I accepted. One of them had quickly contacted Bizarre Creations in Liverpool and they was really interested in my work. I had a telephone interview with them which went really good. I wasn’t really used to telephone interviews so I was a bit nervous. But I focused on being myself and giving simple answers. The questions was kind of standard, like “what have you done at GRIN?”, “what where your responibilities?”, “are you exprienced with tasks like X and Y?” etc. In the end also wanted to see an animation test. They wanted me to do a guy lifting something heavy, which is another excellent exercise for an animation regardless if it is a test or not. It is also very difficult. I could’ve used a Full Body IK rig from their site, as they had details and supplies for this test on their website but I decided to use a free rig called “Max”. Creds to Peter Starostin for the excellent rig! This test took me about 3 days do complete the test. The problem was that I was off and on about it because several things being in the way. Such as planning to move back to my parents once again, and also a metal festival which included that 5 people would sleep at my place. I have nobody to blame but myself and this really reflected my work as well since I began working on it one day and finished several days later due to a “pause” because of the festival.

One of the following days after I sent the latest test in, I had to move out of my apartment back to my parents. Luckily I had rented a fully furnished apartment so it was a really simple move for me. Just one car full of stuff.
Anyways, once settled in at my parents place I just kept sending out different applications. After a while I kind of ran out of studios to apply to, but the idea was to just send stuff out everywhere. Even to studios who didn’t really actively look for animators. The good thing about this is that you don’t get stuck in a big inbox with thousand of other animator applications.

Several days went by. Then Epic Games sent me a mail and asked me some things about my workflow for doing the tests, and asking me if I had a Bachelor’s Degree since it’s difficult to get a work visa without one. I answered their questions and told them that I did not have a Bachelor’s Degree but hopefully it was possible to solve this problem anyway.
Another couple of days went by, and finally they mailed me again. They told me that the only visa I could get was good for 18 months, and that wasn’t worth it for them to sponsor me for this. Which I understood, it’s not worth it for them to pay a lot of money to the government to get me into the country, then spend a lot of money and time to get me into the projects and pipeline in the studio, and then send me back home 18 months later. In the end of this mail they asked me “If you are interested, we could send your stuff forward to our studio People Can Fly, in Poland”. I respectfully said “no thank you, I’m not interested to work in Poland”. Why? I guess because of all the prejudices I (and many other people as well I think) had about Poland, that it would be a very torn down place with very low living standard.
The funny thing is, they still told People Can Fly about me and recommended them to check me out. So a couple of days later I got a long mail from People Can Fly in which they explained to me that Epic Games had recommended me to them which basically never happens, that Poland isn’t a bad place and a little bit about the studio in general and a bit about the project. They invited me for an interview, and after a mail like that I couldn’t say no.

PCF Logo

During the same week I was also invited for an interview at Bizarre Creations, plus an interview at Lionhead in Guildford. Several days earlier I had a telephone interview with Lionhead which went well. Very similar to the one I had with Bizarre. So now I had three interviews lined up, so I was very fortunate. Several of my ex co-workers didn’t have any at all yet. This me be because of pure timing, and probably because I started working as hell the second we got fired, but I don’t know.

One of the recruiters also got me the chance to do another animation test, this time for Ninja Theory Ltd, also in England. The test consisted of using the rig they had sent me and do a series of melee attacks. They could be as long or short as I wanted to and could consist of as many or few punches/kicks/what ever as I wanted to. I accepted of course because I didn’t wanted to take every chance I had to get a new job. The problem was that I was very stressed and unmotivated about doing this test, since I was only thinking about my upcoming trips to Poland and England which was only 5-6 days away.

In the end I some how managed to finish the test but with a lacking result in my opinion. Since I just wanted to finish it I rushed through it without any decent planning being done. This is very clear in the result as the second half of the entire animation isn’t what it should be. I should really have took more time to plan ahead. Totally I worked on it for about 3 days, off and on. It’s not something I’m proud of at all and I don’t use it in my portfolio. I haven’t heard anything from Ninja Theory after I sent this in, I don’t know if it’s because my test was THAT bad or if it is because the recruiter that was my contact to Ninja Theory noticed that I already got a new job before they managed to answer me. I know however through a friend of mine that they filled the position about a week ago. Also, in the end I decided to let Ruffian Games know that I wouldn’t do their animation test, since that position was on a contract for a limited time. And these other jobs was permanent.

End of Part 4!
In the next part I will go through all of the interviews and also the making of a decision.

Time for part 3! This time around it’s time for a lot of GRIN (R.I.P).
Album choice this evening is: Samurai Champloo Soundtrack.

I had one month left at Massive, and I used all of my time looking for new jobs. Sending out lots of application everywhere. After a while I got an answer from the Lead Animator at GRIN (Now famous for Bionic Commando Rearmed, Bionic Commando, Wanted, Terminator Salvation) in Stockholm. He told me he liked my application and wanted me to do an animation test. The test was animating a guy climbing up on a wall and jumping down on the other side. Classic (and good) exercise of weight and timing. I did this during my last week at Massive, which was very hectic. So I had a hard time to focus since I had to think about moving out of my apartment that I recently had moved into. In the end, the result was so-so in my opinion. Unfortunately I do not have access to the video at this time, but I will updated this post and include it when I gain access to it once again (My computer is in Sweden and I’m currently in Poland, gg ey?).

Grin Logo

In any event, it was appearently good enough as I was invited for an interview in Stockholm. The following week after I moved back to my parents place (again, sigh..) and after a couple of days it was the day before the interview. I went up to Stockholm by bus which took me about 4 hours. Once in Stockholm I spent the night with an old friend of mine.
On the day of the interview I tagged along my friend on the metro, as it was a work day. We parted ways and I went towards the GRIN-offices in the middle of Stockholm. I was several hours early as my friend started work at 9 but the interview was scheduled at 11.  I walked around, looking into random shops browsing random stuff, trying to settle down my nervousness. It didn’t help at all.

The actual interview went really well. This time around it was a more friendly meeting than an actual interview. The Lead Animator took me around the entire office, I got to say hello to some people and I met some of my friends that I had studied with in College. We sat down in a conference room and we looked at my animation test and at my demo reel. He talked about what he liked and didn’t like about it. We talked about what I liked to work with and what it was like at Massive. When he asked me why I didn’t get to keep my job I was honest and told him the truth. He said he appreciated my honesty and we went on talking about other relevant stuff like how they worked at GRIN and that I would work Terminator Salvation if I got the job, the official game for the upcoming movie. I wasn’t really thrilled about this as license games rarely turn out any good at all, but at the same time I’m a fan of the movies (the first two anyways) and it’s a brand that is well known so I wasn’t disappointed either. He told me he wanted to place me in the newly started studio down in Gothenburg, where Terminator was being developed. Which I was totally okay with, since I didn’t have any ties anywhere. At the end of the interview he told me that he really thinked I was good for the job and that he would recommend me to the Gothenburg Studio.

A couple of days later, back at home, I was invited for an interview down in Gothenburg. Down there, I got to meet the producer, assistant producer and the Senior Animator (the Lead in Stockholm was also the Lead for the Animators in Gothenburg). This interview was more by the book, like the interviews at Massive. But they where very friendly, asking standard questions like who I was and what I enjoyed to work with, what my strentghts and weaknesses was, etc. They seemed pleased with my answers, and I felt very confident at the time. Before we parted they told me that they would be in touch with a decision, hopefully within a week.

A week passed and no call, so I decided to call them instead. I was told that the Senior Animator was on vacation so they hadn’t come to a decision yet. But that they would most certainly call me during this coming week.
Another week passed and still not a word from them, so I called them once more and asked about the status. They still had not made a decision. And this time the producer asked me to call him again during the next week, since it worked so well. So I called him again the next week, and gladly they had decided to hire me! I had to wait a long time for a decision but it had been worth it of course, it felt really good to be hired again.

Terminator Salvation

28th of July 2008, my first day at GRIN.
It was Monday. I had used the weekend to move into an furnished apartment which was located in the outskrits Gothenburg in the town of Partille. It took about 10 minutes by commuter train, so it was alright.
When I arrived at the office I was greeted by the Producer of the studio and he showed me around the office. There was around 26 people working there, so not quite as large as Massive (130 people when I left).
I was left at my desk and with the Senior Animator. I greeted the other two Animators and sat down at my desk. My Senior Animator told me to set up my computer and to install a lot of GRIN specific tools, to be able to work with the engine. I got a couple of DVD’s with Motion Builder tutorials. As this was the  main software the used for Animation at GRIN I had to learn it. I watched the DVD’s which took me the rest of the first and the second day, and the third day I began cleaning motion capture and tweaking animations. It felt really good to be able to start working so soon, and with a completetly new animation software that I had never used before.

Animating with motion capture for the first time was also quite different from animating “by hand”. With motion capture you get a rough animation that some actor has acted out, while being recorded. The data you get is very realistic and detailed, but there is always some issues with the data. Such as foots not touch the floor, attaching hands to the weapon, or the character not moving exactly as you want him to in order to blend to other animations in the game. So you have to edit it and make it look like you want to. I enjoyed it instantly and felt like I got a lot of things done quickly, since the Motion Capture data gave a sort of “start kit” for each animation.

Motionbuilder - scene obviously not from Terminator

The Terminator Salvation project was very enjoying, at first. My first thought was that we would be able to pull of a pretty neat game. Unfortunately GRIN thought it was a mighty fine idea to change leads, designers and producers in the middle of the project. In short; a lot of changes were made. People quit their jobs and other people were very disappointed because they lost the lead role or because of changes that were made for the game. All in all, I don’t really know if the game would’ve been that much better if they didn’t change everything. We basically only had 6 months to complete it, and because of all the changes there was alot of things that had to be done with on an extremtly tight schedule. But before all the changes were made the game felt kind of out of focus. There wasn’t anything about the game that was solid. It had no “core features” so to speak. This is just my personal opinion of course, if any of the other developer on Terminator reads this; please share your thoughts in the comments!

However, I feel that we did a good job conisdering the time that was given. The gameplay in the game is alright. It’s not brilliant and the game is very, very short. But still, for being developed on basically 6 months we did alright. Of course, it wasn’t only the Gothenburg studio that worked on this. There was a lot of people from the Stockholm studio on this, as well as Streamlines studios. Plus another couple of out sourcing companies.
During this project I got to experience the pain of making a movie based game for real. We had extremely little time to make the game and this is very, very common for movie based games. I long for the day when movie publishers can plan ahead and not just realizing during the last minute “oh! We need a game as well!”.

Shortly after the Terminator project was done, we got started on the next one. This is still unnanounced so unfortunately I can’t talk about it in detail. I will say however that it was a project for Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network that the entire studio was very, very entusiastic about. I finally felt that I was going to be a part of making a game that I would want to play myself, one I would’ve bought if not working on it.

We really enjoyed the starting of our new project. We really felt that this would become a killer game. And the new games that was being developed at the Stockholm studio and Barcelona studio was really interesting as well. Unforunately, Terminator Salvation, Wanted (game based on the movie, developed by the Barcelona studio) and even Bionic Commando turned out to sell very bad, as well as getting poor reviews, it wasn’t really difficult to see that something wasn’t going the way that GRIN had planned. A lot of stuff happened during the next few weeks and months. We got a very very low yearly salary increase, projects was cancelled in the Barcelona studio, etc.

One day our office manager called to a meeting, he told us that the studio was going to be closed down. As well as the Barcelona studio. I was obviously very saddened by this, as this was my first real job in the industry that I really enjoyed. I worked with real talented people on great projects, and I enjoyed my life I had there. It felt really awful to know that I would probably never work with the same team again, and that everybody had lost their jobs. In total around 100 people lost their jobs. 30 people in Gothenburg and 70 people in Barcelona. GRIN thought that they would survive their crisis if they got rid of some of the bigger expenses. As it turns out they did not make it, GRIN went bankrupt about one month after that the other studios was closed down. Really sad to see one of the biggest Swedish developers go down.

Also, I hated to be back to square one. I had to create a portfolio and search for new jobs again. Okay, not square one since I got some more experience this time around. But it’s never fun to hunt for jobs. This was in July 2009.

End of part 3!
Next part is about getting my current job! Finally!

Second post! Here we go! Coffee ready and album of choice this evening is ‘Septic Flesh – Communion’
Where was I.. Right! First real job in the industry! The title I would work was the expansion pack for World in Conflict, called Soviet Assault.

Massive Logo

So, in October 2008, when it was time for me to move down to Malmö and start my job at Massive Entertainment I moved in at my relatives place. They where kind enough to spare me some space in their apartment while I looked for a place of my own. I stayed with my cousin in his room. I had my computer with me and had a couch to sleep on. My cousin is a huge gamer himself, we had a great time.

My first day at Massive was very exciting and I was incredibly nervous. I didn’t really know what they would expect from me on my first day and I didn’t know what to expect from THEM on my first day.
When I arrived I was greeted by another Human Resources-lady. She told me there was going to be a morning meeting with everyone, something that they had every morning. So we went to the kitchen where I got a cup of coffee and got to meet the big boss of Massive Entertainment, Martin Walfisz. It was kind of intimidating meeting him as I had huge respect for his work. He was one of the guys that started Massive in 1997. One minute later the morning meeting started. Everyone gathered in the kitchen and listened to what Martin Walfisz and the producer had to say. They talked about what was going on at the moment with the company and if there were to be some big meetings. I also got to introduce myself to everyone. Talk about where I was from and what I had done. This was extremely embarrassing for me as I felt like a small fish among big sharks. But it went well I think and everyone welcomed me to the family, sort of.

Later, after the morning meeting, the Human Resources-lady showed me around the entire office of which where there at the time worked around 100 people. We sat down in a smaller meeting room and she told me about the company in general and about different things about being employed at Massive. Like working hours and perks etc. She then showed me to my desk and left me with the associate lead artist. He greeted me and showed me around once more introducing me to everyone in the art team.

Now it was time to get to work. I sat down at my desk and was told to setup my computer as I wished. Install stuff that I wanted to have installed and plug in my wacom, etc etc. This took basically all day as no programs was installed and there is always a lot of small things that you’re used to working with. To my great disappointment they had not yet got me a license for Maya, the main software I was going to use for work. But then I was told that I was going to mostly work in Lightwave anyways. This struck me as very odd, since they had told me the exact opposite at the interview. Oh well, no matter, I thought and asked what I was supposed to do as my first task. I was given some tanks that I got to animate. Animations such as fire-animations. Lightwave is a step backwards in 3d software from Maya, especially when it comes to animation, so I had a hard time adapting to everything that was different. The reason that they used this software still was that everything were exported to the game through Lightwave. The modellers used “Modo”, a great software indeed but there are no animation to speak of on there. So I was stuck with Lightwave.

After a couple of days I ran out of tasks to do. There was no assets to animate yet, as a lot of stuff was being built by the modellers and wasn’t ready to be rigged and animated. I was task-less for about 3 weeks, during which I spent all of my time learning more about Lightwave. Wathcing tutorials and trying to do different stuff. Finally I got a Maya license, and I was then told to try to rig an infantry unit and animate it. Just for practicing and keeping me busy, as this was nothing that was needed for the game. I did stuff like that for several weeks and it was then time for Christmas times. Massive was going to move to new offices during the holidays, so everybody got to pack down their stuff in boxes.

Massive Offices

A week later, fatter from all the foods from Christmas times, it was time to go back to work.
The Picture you can see above was the new building, 4 Massive floors, plus the entrance of course. My place was the window next farthest to the right, second window from the bottom.
The first day in the new offices we all just got to set up our work places and getting ready to work. It’s a great place with lots of space.

When I got to actually work on something I got to do animations for different stuff. Such as critters for different maps, airplanes duking it out in the sky on one map and a building collapsing. Also some character animation such as marines idling around a base at night. You can see some of this stuff in my demo reel at www.widunder.se.

WiC - Soviet Assault, the game I worked on

I had now worked for massive for about 4 months. My trial period was 6 months. And to be honest I had been feeling that something wasn’t right. I had this feeling of pressure in my stomach. I didn’t feel that I performed as well as I wanted to. Very much because of the limits of Lightwave, and how the pipeline allowed me to work with my animations. Yes, I had Maya, but everything had to go through Lightwave in the end. This was a complete nightmare. Curves was completetly restructured and parts of the animation could get incredibly fucked up when I exported an animation from Maya into Lightwave. These kinds of problems takes it’s toll, as the creativity I had died a little every time I had to redo something because of technical problems. I was almost never satisfied with the stuff I got into the game in the end. Another part of the problem was that I was on my own. I was the only animator in the team and nobody had a good grasp of the animation tools that were available.

When I had worked at Massive for 5 months, I had a meeting with the Art Director and my lead. Unfortunately, they told me they had to let me go. Because of several reasons. One was the the Art Director felt that I didn’t have the urge for quality that was needed, which was kind of true since I felt I couldn’t perform well under the circumstances given in terms of work flow with the software and technology. But two other big reasons was budget and no need for an animator at the time.
I was completely devastated about this, and felt like a total failure. I had no idea what I would do next and was about to give up on the game industry. But the day after, when the shock had settled down, I understood that one miss wasn’t much and I should just see this as an opportunity! I was eager as hell to get a new job, my career was only beginning.

End of Part 2!
Next part will be about me looking for a job and getting my second job. I choose to stop here as the post will be boringly long if I continue. Look forward to Part 3!

Alright, first post. This is going to be a big one probably. But please bare with me.
Album of choice while typing this post: The Project Hate – In Hora Mortis Nostrae

Widunder

First of all, let me introduce myself.
My name is Markus Hammarstedt, and I’m an animator. I currently work at a game studio called “People Can Fly”, also called Epic Games Poland,  in Warsaw. I am currently 23 years old and is in my second year as a professional game developer.
The purpose of this blog is to share my stories and thoughts about my life as a game developer and as an animator. I will talk about my life in general, showing wip’s of stuff that I’ve done and also my thoughts on different subjects withing the game industry.  Hopefully it will be worth a read.

To begin with, I want to talk about how I got into the industry to begin with. Let’s start from the point where I actually began studying something that is related to the industry.

The year was 2005 and I had just graduated from “Upper Secondary School” (as it is called in Sweden) and I didn’t really know what to do. I was 18 years old and I knew I wanted to develop games in the end, but I didn’t know how I should approach my dreams. Then I heard about a College called “GameMaker”, located in Arvika, Sweden. A school that teaches students about game developing. One could learn to be a programmer, artist or producer. I knew right away I wanted to be an artist of some sort since my interest for graphics and art was very big. So I applied and luckily got accepted.

Once there, we got to try out basically everything that had something to do with game related graphics. Modeling (building stuff), texturing (painting the models), animation (making stuff move), designing games, etc. I instantly fell in love with animation. For me it was the most satisfying part of doing art for games. Mostly because I felt that I got a result almost instantly, and also it just felt good making things move the way I wanted them to.

Before the second year, we were asked what we wanted to do. The school believed in students specializing in specific subjects to be as good as they could at what they do. This was entirely correct since this is the way the game industry works. Me and 5 others choose Animation as our subject of expertise. We got to study under an extremely talented Animator that has worked with animation practically before I was even born. Some of his resumé reads Darkwing Duck, Goof Troops, Might & Magic – Dark Messiah, Prince of Persia for the Wii. I learned a very lot from him.

One part of the education was to do internship in the industry. All of the students (of which there were about 40) had to create our own portfolios and send it out game companies along with our resumé and cover letter. It was very difficult to even get an answer from the studios since the application often just gets stuck in a massive inbox with thousands of other applications from other people looking for jobs and internships. And since we didn’t have any experience from before our applications wasn’t exactly the ones the studios looked at first.

In the end I got to do my internship at a smaller studio called Coldwood Interactive. It’s located in the northern parts of Sweden in the city of Umeå. We were 5 people from my education coming there to do our internship, and there was about 9 people working there already. I did my internship as an animator of course. I think I learned as much working there for 5 months as I did during the entire education. It was really fun seeing what it was like working with making games for real.

Coldwood Interactive

During my internship (year 2007) I worked on my portfolio on my spare time, and applied for jobs at different game studios. I didn’t know for sure if I would be offered a job at Coldwood since it was a small company and they had not given me any promises of getting a job after my internship.
I got responses from both FunCom in Oslo, Norway and also from Massive Entertainment in Malmö, Sweden. FunCom is famous for titles such as Age of Conan, Anarchy Online, The Longest Journey and Dreamfall. Massive Entertainment is famous for Ground Control and World in Conflict.

I was invited for an interview over at Massive. So I traveled down south of Sweden to Malmö. I have relatives there and I could stay at their place wich was fortunate. On the day of the interview I was extremely nervous. I didn’t know what to expect. I had never been to an interview before. When I arrived I got to meet the Lead Artist and the person responsible for Human Resources. We sat down in a big meeting room and they asked me alot about me and my time at Coldwood and about the education at GameMaker. At the end of the interview the told me they would be in touch. I was really eager to get a response but I understood I had to wait for them to look things over.

When I got back to Umeå from my interview I noticed that FunCom had mailed me. They wanted me to do an animation for them. It consisted of making an animation of a guy who’re walking and getting hit by a ball in the back of the head. Confused and dazed he stands up and picks the ball up. Looking around looking for the thrower and finding nothing. Furious over this, he throws the ball to the ground and walks away. I got 3 weeks and I could use any rig I wished.

After I was done with this, I got another mail from Massive. They also wanted me to do an animation test for them. Their test was to rig and to animate a marine model with weapon that they had sent me.
I had one week to do it.

Soon after I had sent this in, Massive invited me for another interview. They said I had to meet the producer.
This interview was basically the same as the previous one, except that there was one more person present at the interview, asking the questions.
I was also invited for an interview at FunCom, soon after this one. I was excited about that one as well.

After about one week, I got a phone call from Massive. It was the Human Resources-person. She began talking about that they had looked at the different people they had there for interviews. I instantly thought she was going to say something like “…and we’ve decided to go with someone else….”. But she didn’t! She continued to say that they had decided to give me the job! I almost jumped to the roof of excitement.
So, this was it! I had gotten a job at Massive Entertainment. Finally all of my hard work had given me something back. I was really satisfied.
As I really wanted the job at Massive, I turned FunCom down and didn’t go to the interview. Which I actually regret to this day. I should have looked at what they had to offer as well.

End of Part 1
Part 2 will be about me working at Massive, loosing my job, and getting another one.