About me
Hey there everyone! My name is Rajesh Parmar, I’m 18 years
old and I’m in my first year of studying Game Art Design at De Montfort
University. I live in Leicester, so that’s right I didn’t need to move to
another city and do the whole student move thing cause DMU is in my home town.
Woo!
A Game Artist you say
now!? How did that all begin?
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| Demontfort University |
Well it began in a strange way, I wasn’t always aspiring to
be an artist when I was young; in fact I had never even taken art at GCSE’s.
Art was just a side hobby for me which I loved to do, although I never really
took it seriously. I thought I would end up doing science or computing and
eventually end up in some dead end office job so I could have a “normal life”
just like the rest of the herd. At the time I was really confused and in limbo.
Being forced to decide your future so early was quite scary and worrying.
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| Arena time in WoW |
But it was all thanks to one game which changed my whole
career path the biggest MMORPG around at the time and I think everyone knows
what I’m talking about. Yep. You guessed it. “World of Warcraft” Now I wasn’t the type of person who thought “OMG I want to
work for blizzard and make 3D models and draw landscapes and characters and
SHIZ! Drawing concept art all day!”
It all began from
wanting to make videos of me player killing in WoW since I’d seen other people
post a lot of amazing videos of them doing some crazy PVP (player vs. player)
in WoW with crazy video editing shots. I thought to myself that’s what I want
to do. I want to be a video editor and create awesome CG effects for movies and
TV shows when I grow up. But by the time
I had realised this I had already chosen what my work experience placement was.
And it REALLY was an eye opener. I actually went into work experience working
for a financial aid company as a clerk…
…Well let’s just say those were the most boring 2 weeks of
my life and I thought to myself I don’t want to be doing something like this
for the rest of my life. It was driving me crazy! I thought I don’t care about
money? What’s so good about money if you don’t have happiness? Especially if
you hate going into to work every day. The thought of doing that for the rest
of my life was horrible. I could only see misery. So like most people on earth
I was on a quest for a happy life.
So a year later I decided at A levels to fling myself into
Art to pursue this career of being a CG animator, luckily I somehow got in
thanks to a C in my D&T grade at GCSE and I have to say painting for the
first time after 12 years was strange. But I was used to all the drawing with
pencils. What kept me going was my competitive attitude. I really hated being 3rd
or 4th I wanted to be the very best like no one ever was! (8)… wait
what..?
It did help me quite a bit but procrastination got the
better hand of me.. All my life and still to this day I had never put in my
full 100% of potential. I was a particularly lazy person who would leave things
to the last minute like an idiot. I hated having things unfinished and I don’t
know why… I left things till the last day or 2 all the time. I really developed
this laziness during summer and I really want to curb it and destroy it.
During the first term of sixth form college, I saw a random
advert on TV called “Train2Game” and it was basically offering a course on
animation, programming or game development to get into the games industry which
intrigued me and I had to find out more, I saw that the games industry was booming
at the time and I did some research and eventually came to the conclusion I may
want to work in the games industry, but I wasn’t entirely sure.
A week later I heard someone was coming from DMU to talk
about the Game Art Design course they had, Heather actually came down to our
college to talk about the course and I thought what the hell is this? Some kind
of divine intervention from the gods of gaming?
I skipped my maths class to go hear her talk about being in
the games industry and I was the only one who was asking all the questions when
her lecture finished, everyone else looked like zombies. I was surprised when
she mentioned the employ-ability after university; even if it didn’t have the
most amazing pay it looked pretty nice to get into, especially in the economic
climate, having a job in the games industry straight after university would be
awesome.
So I came to the
conclusion that I want to work in the games industry. Sure does beat working in
some crappy office block filing reports on the computer and this would probably
be the best option after choosing to do an art career.
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| Megaman X - My Favourite SNES game |
While like most other people on the course I grew up with
games thanks to my older brother who got me into gaming with the SNES, Still my
favourite console up to this date, I used to spend hours and hours playing
Megaman X, Super Metroid, Super Mario All-stars and many more classics on that
lovely old box and never got bored of them. That was until I discovered the
wonders of PC gaming. I think the PC shaped me to be who I am today as all I
would be glued onto the screen for days and days. The first game I had on PC
was an indie 3D space arcade shooter called “G-TOK” the graphics looked
absolutely amazing cause I’d never seen 3D before and then my first real time
strategy games, Worms Armageddon, Total Annihilation: Kingdoms, then came Quake
3 Arena :3 But enough about games cause I could write a whole list of games
I’ve played but I will save that for a later blog entry.
What about other
interests?
I think my other main obsession apart from games would be
watching anime and reading manga. That was and still is a big part of my life,
I just loved the Japanese cartoons so much more, as they were so much more
serious and cooler than the normal stuff you see on TV nowadays. It was like a
whole new interesting world out there. I loved it so much that in fact I
started to write my own manga novel out. It’s called “Warlock” but I haven’t
worked on it in a year and it’s still pretty much just random idea’s and plot
twists. But when I do have time I really want to write a story out in future.
It’s just something that I want to do even though I haven’t read that many
books. I just love stories. I wish I had read more books when I was younger but
I always put them off.
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| Code Geass - The best anime ever! |
My favourite anime is “Code Geass” at the moment, the amount
of thought put into that is just crazy. The plot, characters are so unique and
amazing. It’s something I’ve never seen done before.
Though I have been watching other big American drama series
like “Breaking bad” and “Dexter” which are amazingly thought out. I love a good
plot twist. And I love anti-heros!
My favourite movie at the moment has to be Star Trek 2009.
That movie was brilliant and action packed right through to the end! Even
though its star trek its nothing like the TV series. It’s a must watch.
When it comes to music, I was mainly brought up with rock
songs from my brother when I was younger, with bands like Foo Fighters, Blink
182, Sum 41, Nirvana, Queens of the stone age etc. But that developed into more
metal when I started playing WoW and everyone put heavy metal songs on their
PVP videos.
At the moment, I listen to a lot of anime and games original
soundtracks, anything goes really, apart from most RNB and Hip hop music. I
even like Jazz, As long as it sounds good then it’s cool with me whatever it
is. Be it Lady Gaga or Take That. But I still love my rock and metal roots.
What kind of Game
Artist then? Where?
At this moment in time I was hoping somewhere close to
Leicester, hopefully in Cambridge working with Jagex or with Rockstar gaming,
as an environment artist. 
Though I will only know as time
goes on, at this stage I’m not sure if I want to be a character or a vehicle
artist or an environment artist or even an interior artist. I’m leaning more towards
vehicle and environment since there are more vacancies available for those two
compared to character, and I can understand why character artists are all
taken. And if I become a vehicle artist, I could work for a big motor company
as well, like BMW or Nissan. Just as
long as I can get a job at the end of the course then it’s all good, that’s all
that matters to me at the moment, I need more of a taste of what I really like
doing.
Sources:
http://technutty.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/DeMontfortUniversity.jpg
http://mikebbetts.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/ss14.jpg
http://i.chzbgr.com/completestore/2009/12/25/129062495099320221.jpg
http://www.mangaphoenix.com/anime/code-geass/cg.jpg
http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100125232438/waroflegends/images/f/fb/Jagex_Logo.png
http://media.nintendo.com/nintendo/bin/lSnBXEH2eQz-BeDzEOwIkvwJBzzlhc5W/dqZHaDRq12_m6Pj3VEEacGxHQvtqifpF.jpg
