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Our art track focuses on traditional and digital work. We look for an art background that is grounded in traditional mediums: drawing, painting, sculpting, etc. You should be comfortable with observational and life drawing. While in college, take courses that will lead to a degree such as a Bachelor's of Fine Arts (BFA).

Resources:

•  — One-stop source for student learning versions of 3DStudio Max, Maya, and Mudbox with helpful forums, program support, inspiration, and reference.
•  — Downloadable version of the latest Unity engine with support, tutorials, and access to everything needed to dip your feet into one of the easiest to learn editors out there. Feel free to make an account, you’ll need one when classes start.
•  — Physics based rendering and integration with Substance Painter and Designer allow you to render your game art in stunning clarity and realism. More complex than Unity, but offers forums, video tutorials and a support base that make it approachable.
•  — The most popular concept and texture creation tool. Free trial, tutorials, and support are available.
•  — Where all game, concept, entertainment artists seem to archive their work, this is the place to see where commercial art is at now and will be in the future. Incredible resource for inspiration as well as custom Photoshop brushes, 3D materials, and process videos.
•  — Great repository of game art with references, tutorials, and critiques. A central location for new game artists to network and grow with a decent community to bounce their work off of for feedback.
•  — One of the best web-based 3D content viewers. Allows you to upload your own work for critique and see 3D art up close. Great for uncovering creation secrets, getting inspiration, and process investigation. Integrates with 3DStudio Max via a simple plugin.
•  — The best realtime 3D art viewer out there. Supports PBR (physics-based rendering), has an available native Unreal 4 shader, and offers tutorials, support, and a gallery of incredible sample art.
•  — Good source for video tutorials for any and all tools we use to create game art, like Unity, Photoshop, Unreal, 3DStudio Max, Maya, Mudbox, and Zbrush — most in multiple languages! The first place you should go for time-sensitive support. If something isn’t work correctly, you can be sure others are having the same issues, and some of them have created videos on how to solve the problem. Subscribing to the Autodesk, Unity, Unreal, and Photoshop official channels is a must!
•  — Excellent 3D sculpting tool similar to Autodesk’s Mudbox. Offers a trial version, tutorials, support, reference, and samples of detailed sculpts and uses for Zbrush.
•  — Hit or miss as far as content goes... Some great art, and some questionable work as well. That said, this is still the best source for custom Photoshop brushes, swatches, and other presets that can make your Photoshop experience even more enjoyable. Great tutorials for concept artists as well.

Design students come from a wide variety of backgrounds. Many come with undergraduate degrees such as architecture, mythology, creative writing, computer science, fine arts, history, psychology... even music! Combined, this diversity provides a broad perspective that inspires creative concepts and designs to appeal to a variety of gamers.

Courses in English, creative writing, programming, psychology, and technical art are helpful in preparing for our Level Design track. Familiarity with level modification using free game editors and programming languages like C# and LUA is valuable. Designers need to be able to communicate well both verbally and in writing, so pursue courses that enhance those skills. In addition, artistic skills of any sort are useful, particularly experience with digital art creation tools like Photoshop, 3DStudio Max or Maya.

Resources:

• Digital art creation tools: , , 
• Free game engines: , 
• Game editors:  (Skyrim/Fallout 4),  (Half-Life 2/Left 4 Dead 2),  (Dying Light)
•  — Good source for video tutorials on a multitude of topics

Production students come from a variety of backgrounds. Many come with undergraduate degrees such as business, computer science, fine arts, psychology, communications, and more. Courses in business management, project management, entrepreneurship, accounting, organizational behavior, communication, monetization, marketing, and academic writing and research are helpful. Producers need to be able to work well in a team environment, so courses that teach project and team based learning are valuable.

Resources:

•  — Post-mortems of AAA game development, discipline-specific methodologies of game development
•  — Educational resource for entering the game industry. Features industry facts.
•  — Resources for learning the art and business of making games. Also offers job postings and developer blogs.
• Issue and project tracking software: , , , 
• Digital creation tools: , , 
• Free game engines: , 

The video game industry is heavily dependent upon C++ (for performance, power, and portability), so the single most valuable preparation for success in the Software Development Track at Ë®¶à¶àµ¼º½ Guildhall is solid C++ experience. Our curriculum provides a great deal of intermediate and advanced C++ guidance and practice, but doesn't teach the language from scratch. You will have a much easier time absorbing all of this if you are already comfortable with C++ to begin with.

If you have yet to choose your college, find one whose computer science curriculum includes plenty of C++ based classes. If you've already started college or don't have the luxury of choice, try to do as many classes and/or independent projects where you can use C++. In the end, it doesn't matter which course, book, or project you embark on, as long as it provides ample exposure to learn the language and gain experience in constructing larger programs, and wrestling with the issues that brings. The larger the project, and the more complex data structures it involves, the better.

If you come to C++ from Java, make sure you embrace its more low-level nature and get intimate with memory allocation, memory layout, pointers etc. Failure to do so can make life very hard when progressing through the more complicated topics later on. Conversely, if you come to C++ from C, try to embrace the power of thinking and coding at a higher level while remaining mindful of what’s actually happening “under the hood”.

In addition to writing your own code, we also highly recommend reading others’ code. With Open Source, plenty of C++ code is out there for your reading pleasure. Pick a project, get its source to compile, and make an effort to see how it works internally. Place breakpoints, step through it in the debugger, and see what it does. Tinker around to modify or extend its behavior.

Resources:

•  — The most thorough reference, written by the designer of the language. It's not exactly an easy book to use in learning the language from scratch, so you may want to accompany it with a more tutorial-style book.
•  — For those who feel they have weak experience with C++'s low-level nature.
•  — Provides an excellent coverage of the topics and tensions within C++. You may or may not agree with everything in the FAQ, but you will become a far stronger C++ programmer by reading and considering its contents.