SG Gaming Work Experience

Summer 2016 Work Experience 

SG Gaming

Introduction

Over the course of the summer I intended to gain valuable work experience with the time I had, to further my learning in animation and the industry. I applied to a number of places both nationally and internationally, and I was fortunate enough to be offered a week of work experience as part of the ‘SG Gaming’ company. 

Who are SG Gaming?

SG gaming are a company which produces gambling games for larger companies. You can find more information about the company here: http://www.sg-gaming.com/. 

Examples of their games include: Rainbow Riches and many more with recognisable franchises including: Monopoly, Rocky, Spiderman, Iron Man and more. 

Creative Director; Peter Tyldesley offered the work experience to both Siobhan and I for the week, where we worked with two different teams and spent three and a half days with each team. The two teams were the 3D team and the Concept team. The 3D team consisted of modellers, animators, riggers, etc. who create the 3D aspects of the game including: background, characters, titles and their animations. The Concept team directed by Peter receive ideas from their superiors and develop the ideas into reality through visual concepts. An example of this could be the superiors want a game about dogs: therefore the concept team would produce layouts and designs of what the game would look like. We spent whole days working with the teams from 9-5 and presented our work to the rest of the day at the end of each day.  

We also spent time to famalierise ourselves with the games by testing a numberofthem in their demonstration room. These would later become great references for our work. 

3D work

I started the first half of the week as part of the 3D team; I was assigned to create a number of animations for a new Rainbow Riches game. I had to create a number of idle animations for the Leprechaun character who would feature in the game. He would stand next to a well; he would turn the wheel of the well to present the bingo numbers. However when he would not be turning the wheel, he would still have to passively express life and character; otherwise he would look like a statue. 

Therefore I thought about the character of the leprechaun and what he would do if he was waiting on someone. I had to consider the time of the idle animation; that it was not too long, in addition I had to consider that the animation may be cut short because the player may decide to play at any moment. Therefore I had to think of movements which were not too extreme which could snap to the wheel turning animation at any moment. 

I created a number of short animations with the fully rigged character model provided by the team: 

I learnt a great deal about Maya during the time as part of the 3D team. I learnt how to animate a character within Maya and a number of useful tools.  

Concept work

After I had worked with the 3D team, I moved to the concept team. I was given the job from Peter to create concept designs from a number of names given to me. As he was given themes such as ‘Jungle’, or ‘Crime’ he had to create names of potential games. One of which were ‘Amazillions’. I started with sketches and initial ideas. I took the concept further by not creating the expected; the first thing that came to mind was the zillions was associated with gold and lot of money (the quantity). I created the concept of a lost lizard tribe called the Amazillions, and the player would take on the role of a treasure hunter discovering the lost tribe and their hidden treasures. By adding this depth, I wanted to give the player the opportunity to immerse him/herself in a whole world.

From there I began to create the interface for the Amazillions game. Using previous layout designs as reference, I created the Amazillions interface inspired by Amazonian jungles and South American ruins. 

Working closely with the Concept team, I changed and improved the design over the days as they showed me fantastic new tools within Photoshop which improved the quality of my work significantly. 

As Peter liked a number of my ideas which were often unorthodox, including the ideas that the player’s winnings could be taken away from them, and stacked bonus’s. 

Conclusion

Overall I found this a valuable experience and gained a fantastic insight into the professional working environment. I did find the work tiring, and was frustrated when things did not work properly, however I spent the time and with help with colleagues these problems were solved. I believed I worked effectively and intend to find future work experience again soon.  

I believe my work was significantly lacking compared to the professionals within the company; however I feel that I have improved significantly thanks to this experience, and wish to continue this in the future. I believe I worked well within the team and produced what was asked of me.