Hey peeps! As you probably already know, Games is one of the most fast-paced industries to be in and having your ear to the ground on all the latest developments is kinda part of the job description. So, what makes it worthwhile you say? I personally got into Video Game Art after studying the ‘Video Game Art Production’ course at Escape Studios way back in 2010, after falling in love with 3D rendering during my Architecture degree (you could say I tried my hand at a few ventures). Back in those days Normal maps were the hot new technology, all lighting was baked (or hand painted!) and Realtime raytracing was an impossible pipedream and 1024 was a big size for a texture! Oh, if they could look at us now!
Right now, is one of the most exciting times to be in the game art industry that I can think of! The new technical updates are just coming thick and fast, from incredibly powerful (and affordable!) NVidia graphics cards that can be used to start to power the long awaited real-time raytracing technology to ground breaking Virtual Reality and a new console generation just around the corner, not to mention the very impressing Unreal 5 demo - I can't think of a better time to be starting a career in video game art.
Even just using the term video game art seems like a mistake these days as Realtime rendering is one of the fastest growing industries right now – moving into film for faster rendering and pre-production/virtual production, architectural and automotive visualisation and many more business use cases.