A day in Blitz studio

Hey Everyone,

I just had the best day of 2012 yesterday as I was given the opportunity to spend a day with other like minded students in the Blitz Studio.

Blitz Studio worked on games such as the Puss in boots and Yoostar on MTV and has been in business since 1990.  Blitz currently consists of over 200 staff.

The day started with all the students signing an Confidentiality Agreement, just in case we saw something that we're not supposed to see.

This was our agenda for the day:

There were 17 other students who were selected for this particular day and the group consisted of 2d and 3d artist, programmers and audio guys and girls.

It was awesome to sit through all the discipline talks to get the feel of for the different roles in the industry and to see what a working day would be like for these professionals.

The break-out sessions were awesome as it gave all the 3d artist a chance to speak to Simon Ible, who is the senior character artist in Blitz. I showed him some of my portfolio pieces and getting his feedback was really beneficial for me.

I was notified about this day from Nia Wearn (Uni lecturer), so props to her for keeping all the students up to date. To apply for this open day, all students were given a small brief to which we had to submit some work to. I was working on Julia Chang which I just handed in for my uni project so I decided to spend a little longer on it and get it upto the best it can be.

These were the 2 pieces I submitted:

This was the re-worked model after I handed in the assignment and I worked through pretty much the whole  of Christmas on this piece. It all worked in my favour at the end.

The tech demo of their Blitz engine was epic along with all the presentations made by the senior staff in their respective discipline.

The team also showed us a demo on how the Polar bears were controlled in the Coca Cola's Super Bowl event. How the one off events were triggered, and the use of 360 controllers to move the bears.

We also had a look around the studio and got to see some 2d artist and 3d artist working on their projects using massive Cintique screens.

Before the day wrapped up, we were handed in questionnaires to fill and for the first time in my life I couldn't fault anything in the programme. The way the day was planned out was perfect and I really couldn't have asked for more.
We also received a goodie bag which contained a pen, a cup, playing cards, some postcards on Indie city and a big fact sheet about Blitz studio.

The day ended with us all heading down to the nearest pub where the whole Blitz team was invited to chat to  us. I got to speak to some of the senior Concept Artist who spent more than 13 years in this industry. The CEO of Blitz and also Del Walker http://drawingyourdreams.com/ who used to be a Character Artist for Blitz and now works with Sega.
Del gave me some precious feedback on my portfolio and also told me that he was a good friend of Mike Knowland (Lead artist for Naughty Dog), who was a student from Staffordshire University.

Apart from Global Games Jam, this simply had to be the best day of 2012 and I got answers to all the questions I had in my mind since starting uni.

I really can't recommend these open days enough if you get a chance to get some real industry feedback on your work.

Gagan