Saturday, May 09, 2009
gsCEPT students at Framestore, London
This year 2 of our very talented students Fredrik Lindbom and Tomas Tjernberg started their career as animators at Framestore in London. Check out Fredik’s blog for updates ...
http://exjobb.gscept.com/fredrik/
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Fredrik Mäkeläinen, Senior Graphics Programmer at Recoil Games
#Where do you work and what is your job title?
I work at Recoil Games in Finland as a Senior Graphics Programmer and are currently involved in the development of “Earth No More”.
#What inspired you to/How did you decide to become a game developer?
I’ve always been interested in computers and the demoscene (http://www.scene.org for info) caught my interest when I was around 15 years old so I’ve been programming graphics since then. After working in the regular programming industry for a few years, after upper secondary high school I decided that games/graphics programming was something I wanted to pursue further, nothing beats having your hobby as work.
So I started studying at gsCEPT and after earning a Bachelor of Science I joined the industry as a graphics programmer.
#How is working as a Senior Graphics Programmer at Recoil Games?
It’s fun, exciting, sometimes very stressful but at the same time very rewarding. As a senior level programmer you have a lot of responsibility, especially since Recoil is a quite small company.
#Describe a typical workday?
I usually come to work between 09.00 and 10.00 and the first things I do is check my email, browse some newsgroups to see if anything of interest has happened and if necessary a morning meeting where current progress and planned tasks are discussed. Then it’s just work as usual for a while with research, problem solving, programming, profiling, bug-fixing, answering questions and guiding more junior programmers and artists. Some time during the day I usually do a fast profiling pass of the current level the artists are working on to see that they are using the technology as it’s meant to be used.
#Describe your latest project?
My latest released project was “Colin McRae Dirt” when I worked at Codemasters. It was quite hectic at times since we we’re building the technology from ground up while at the same time getting the game together, fortunately Codemasters have really skilled and dedicated people who love making racing games so it all worked out in the end.
#Any tips for people that are interested in the career path or people looking for work or students.
If you are trying to join the industry as a graphics programmer right after university studies make sure to.
- Know your linear algebra and data structures by hearth, since you just graduated you are expected to have a really good understanding of them.
- Keep up to date with the industry, get a firm understanding of the major graphics techniques used by developers, read research papers.
- Familiarize yourself with various debugging/profiling tools and if possible get some console experience.
- Use your university time to train on public presentations, you never know when you’ll be asked to present your work/findings at either internal company training or external seminars.
- If you supply a demo of some kind (which you will need to for a graphics programmer position) be prepared to answer tricky questions on how it works and why you choose to implement it in that way.
Making of Soldier by Olle Rydberg
Making of Soldier by Olle Rydberg
Friday, December 19, 2008
summer course 2009, artistic anatomy and sculpting
This course is one of our very popular courses with many applicants each year. It’s given in Swedish, starts in June and ends in August. There are only two “ecorche” courses in Europe, one at Florence academy of art and one at gsCEPT in Skelleftea, Sweden. Read more
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Enrollment Application 2009
Subject for this years sample work/arbetsprover is released and can be found here
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Monday
I was moving files from my old PC to my new macbook when I found a movie file called “monday”. It´s a short film from 2002, with some very cool special effects using very basic cameras and tools. Students who made this film are now professional CG-artists. Jon Noorlander and Daneil Norlund who were students at gsCEPT from 2002 to 2005. Jon is head of 3D at Man vs. Machine and Daniel is compositing artist at Fido film. One of the recent movies Daniel worked on is “Let the Right One In”. Check out his imdb entries for more info.
Click to watch the film!
Saturday, June 07, 2008
A cold beer at White horse, London
Recently a local magazine in Skelleftea interviewed a few of gscept alumni at White Horse Pub in London.
You can read the article on this page. It is a pdf-file and it’s in swedish. Just go to page 11 in the pdf file or look for title “arbetsFrån Skellefteå och ut i världen”
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Filmgate - Kenny Starfighter
Finally, eleven years after the TV series “Kenny Starfighter”, our galaxy hero Kenny now returns in “Kenny Begins”. The ambitions of the film, shot with the Red One camera, is to become the biggest feature film of the action comedy genre ever made in Sweden, sporting the full range of laser blasting 3D digital visual effects provided by Filmgate who are also co-producing this project with SVT, Nordisk Film, Film i Skåne and Johan Bogaeus of SFI…
read the complete story at http://filmgate.se/news/index.php?news=44
Monday, May 19, 2008
game projects update
Saturday, January 19, 2008
summer course, artistic anatomy and sculpting
This is a 10 weeks intensive course offered to our students, computer graphics, set design and prop making and other artists who are interesting in sculpting and anatomical studies. This course is divided in two parts, in the first part of the course students sculpt in clay an anatomical flayed figure beginning with the skeleton. Artistic anatomy is stressed with an emphasis on form and function. Every morning starts whit a lecture, various anatomical charts and books are used, and sometimes a live model is also made available. In the second part of this course students will sculpt a creature that they have designed. check out the information about requirements (in swedish)...
Friday, January 18, 2008
How to apply
To apply for computer graphics program you need to work on a given subject and send us your sample work/arbetsprover. This year we are using a small part of Frankenstein (1994) movie script. The applicants should read the whole script and other books or online material about the subject before starting working on the sketches. Most of the visual material on Frankenstein is known to most of us, we want to see how creative you are… please read more about the aplications and requirements (in swedish)