[DEVELOPMENT] Writing a Cover Letter

What I will be doing for my cover letter is basing it around a job which I have found through the internet.  It will be mainly for a dream job of mine, but it is just good practice to do and learn from it.

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Senior Concept Artist (Insomniac) – Gamasutra

A senior position is quite a hard one to get into, and in fact, requires you to have quite a lot of skill and talent that has been gained from previous, very big, positions. Insomniac is a very tongue and cheek company, but you still need to be as formal as you possibly can with a cover letter to get your own point across (even if it is about yourself).
I made sure to put down everything which I could have achieved during this appearance of job, and listed the key things which would hopefully get the attention of the person reading.

[NOTES] Creating a Sword in 3DS Max

[1] From the simple shapes, create a cylinder that is long enough to resemble a hilt of a sword. This will be edited later to be formed as a real looking handle. Make sure it also has 6.0 Height Segments which you can change in the Parameters.

[2] Grab the Scale tool, and with the Cylinder selected, make sure to scale it to shape so it looks comfortable to hold, like a handle should.

[3] Right click the shape which you have created, and on the menu that pops up go to Convert To and select Editable Poly. This will make the object editable.

[4] On the right menu, there is a tab called Selection. Under that, you can change to Polygon mode from there. This enables you to select polygons on the object. Move the camera around and click on the bottom polygon on the Cylinder.

[5] When you have the bottom of the Cylinder selected, right click again and click the little black box next to Inset. This will open another window, change the Amount to 1.0. This will give a small indent to the bottom of the cylinder shape. With the polygon still selected, move it down slightly. A small slope is just enough to give a rounded end to the hilt.

[6] Go back to the bar on the right, and under the Selection Tab, change the selection to Edge mode. On one of the horizontal edges, click on it, and go back to the selection tab. There should be a button which says loop; click on that and it shall select a loop around your object.

[7] The tab underneath the Selection tab is called Soft Selection. Open that up and tick the box which says “Use Soft Selection”. This will bring a rainbow like pattern onto your object and around the selection you have made. Where it says Fall Off, keep pushing that number upwards until the greenness of the colours is aligned with the top of the shape.

[8] Grab the scale tool and start scaling the shape between the Y and the X axis, to give it a small bump in the middle. This enables the shape to look like it is right for holding.

[9] When you are all done, untick Soft Selection. This stops you from accidentally scaling something wrong. From here, you can now begin to start making the hand guard.

[10] Go back to selection and reselect Polygon. Click on the top polygon of the hilt, right click and press the black box next to Extrude. Lower or heighten the Amount until it’s just above the hilt’s top edge.

[11] Select Edge mode again from Selection. Click on one of the newly created Polygon Edges, and select Ring, which is from the same area as Loop. When that is done, hold down CTRL and click on the Polygon selection. This will select all of the polygon’s around this area.

[12] Right click and click the black box next to Extrude. At first, it may seem strange because it’s all going by strange terms. Just above the Amount section is Group. Click on this drop down menu and change it to Local Normal. And as by magic, it’s all normal again. Give the amount as much as you feel the hilt should have and click OK. Use the move tool and move the selected Polygons slightly upward.

[13] Because of the new additions to the hilt, the polygons have seem to have taken on a jagged shape. You can change by the Polygon: Smoothing Groups (which is in the same right menu as Selection). Smoothing Groups make your object much more softer and rounder if there are polygons which are way too jagged. When you find the Tab, select all of the model and click Clear All, and it will clear all of the Smoothing Groups which have already been applied to the shape.

[14] Do this piece by piece: select the middle and press smoothing group 1. You will notice that it starts to straighten and smooth out the hilt again. Begin to do this to all of the separate pieces on the shape.

[15] Look back to the right menu and click on the Shape menu. Here, we are going to begin creating a spline which will result in our swords blade. Change the Maximize Viewport Toggle to the Front View. Click Maximize Viewport Toggle again and from the top bar of the main window and turn on Snaps Toggle. This will keep your spline from going any where else but the grid.

[16] Begin drawing your spline in the shape of a childlike sword. It may not make sense at first, but when we begin to give it some form, it will be easy to see what exactly will be done.

[17] Close your spline and come back to the Maximize Viewport Toggle, and move back to the perspective side. Right click the newly created spline and Convert To an Editable Poly. As you notice, it gives the shape a polygon in which we will start to Extrude.

[18] Go to Selection, which is in the right menu, and select Polygon. Click on the newly made polygon, right click, and click the black box next to Extrude. Make the shape as long as you need, but remember, this will become your blade later on, so try not to make it too long. When you are done, click OK and right click the shape again. Click Isolate Selection; this will move our object away from the hilt so we don’t accidentally make changes to that.

[19] Now go to one of the ends of your blade, preferably the open one with no polygon attached at the end, and go to selection. Here, select Vertex and begin selecting the points one by one around the edge of the end of the blade. Now use the Scale tool and start scaling the shape inwards so it makes a point at the end of the blade.

[20] Go to edge mode in the Selection tab, and drag a selection box (by clicking and dragging) across the top and bottom of the blade itself. Spin the shape around to see whether you have selected both sides of the object. When that is done, right click the shape and click the little black box next to Connect. Here will draw out a few lines which will go along the shape itself. Creating new polygons. Add as many segments as you wish.

[21] When you are done with that, and you feel like you have as many segments as you need, go to Maximize Viewport Toggle and go onto the side view. Whilst the Vertex selection is on, start playing with the vertices on the end of your blade to make it curve in slightly.

[22] Right click your blade, untick Isolate Selection, and begin to move your finished blade to on top of your Hilt. Move it around and change the shape of it by using the move tool and scale tool. Getting it right, and how you like it, is important.

[23] When you have done all of that, and you’re happy with how it looks, create textures and render it.

[RESEARCH] The Theory of Illustration

(These are just my notes, quotes and thoughts from the wonderful book Illustration: A Theoretical and Contextual Perspective by Alan Male.)

I chose this book because, as an artist myself, I have always been interested in Illustration and what goes behind the images produced.

The Difference between Research and research
Research in Illustration is key, fictional or non-fictional you will need to have a vast understanding of the world around you before making statements in drawings. This ensures that the person looking at the illustration slightly understands what it is on the page but they are still there contemplating on what the imagery actually means. This goes for any form of art, but because illustration is used to illustrate a certain subject or scenario, it is more key.
As this is a normal state of mind for illustration, the difference between Research (with a big R) and research (with a smaller R) determines that outcome of a concluded image. These terms are normally assessed at the “early stage of development” (Research, Illustration | 01 | Education, Alan Male, Page 32), meaning that tasks go under way to know how much time has been spent on one project to make it complete.
Now the difference; research (with a small R) consists of just gathering random images or products needed to make a final item, not fully ‘researching’ what exactly needs to go into the illustration; to make it a believable piece. This has been a “debate in relation to Art and Design” (Research, Illustration | 01 | Education, Alan Male, Page 33), according to Male, as it is unsure that whether this is a real way of artistic recreation. This debate comes from reference; references are often used to construct a being straight from other things which already exist in the natural world. Then this information, which has been accumulated into the reference, then draws the viewer to examine and create their own imaginative feedback. Without conducting research into reference and historical materials, things which are “influenced by something real” (Research, Illustration | 01 | Education, Alan Male, Page 33), then creates a problem with visual communication.
Research (with a big R) on the other hand, has more in depth detail which takes a whole new direction from just gathering relative images. Full of “academic discipline” (Research, Illustration | 01 | Education, Alan Male, Page 33), having the will to press on through hundreds and hundreds of historical, environmental and many other facts and files to progress on a piece. With Research, it broadens into a wide range of ideas that can be contributed into one single page, making it flourish with more development ideas that, previously, couldn’t have been possible with just selecting images for a lone illustration: “Illustration practice becomes more holistic” (Research, Illustration | 01 | Education, Alan Male, Page 33) – Research is more thurow and shows true companionship of examination with the artist and the illustration.
So when you figure that Illustration is all about teaching the viewer something spectacular, it is important that there is a historical meaning, a natural resemblance to our own world. Also shows the stages an artist has gone through, bringing forwards detail, understanding, and concepts that could trigger the imaginative mind.