For many a years have I been using 3d Studio Max to create models and different scenes, being greatly impressed by the things I could achieve. And I've always educated myself further through experimenting and following countless of tutorials.

Then, by a chance I discovered the existence of normalmaps, and followed a tutorial on Game-Artist.net on how to create them from highpoly models. It's later on while browsing around on the forum that I discovered I had no talent whatsoever.

Recently having been so proud of my work and then getting my pride crushed so suddenly made me very aggrevated. Upon that I decided "I can do this. I might no be great but I'll learn, and I'll become a real game-artist!"

I joined a lot of competitions and produced as many models as I possibly could, constantly going over and correcting misstakes while learning. And so today my skills have improved even beyond my own expectations, and I finally dare call myself a Game-Artist. There's still a lot to learn, but rest assured that I will!

I've been working within the game-industry for about one and a half year. Though that'd only be while bringing unpaid work into consideration. So I have yet to achieve in getting a real game-artist job, but I'm currently looking for one while working as a personal assistant.

How efficiently do I work?

I'd say that I'm able to work very efficiently, finishing rather big projects in just one day. Though there are of course times for each artist where it simply doesn't work out and it takes longer than expected. Though I have yet to failed keeping a single deadline on any project so far.

What's my workflow like?

Let me begin by saying that I don't have a strict workflow and work quite freely on different projects. Though I make sure to memorize my current workflow for that project, ensuring that my assets all have a coherent style.

While starting a project and having decided upon what I want to achieve, research is where it begins. I look up a lot of references and decide how I want it to look. Then I start creating my highpoly model if one's to be used, if not, I move directly onto the lowpoly.

If I now decide on moving directly onto the lowpoly and not projecting normals from a highpoly model, then I usually create a heightmap which will be turned into a normalmap.

This is then followed by tweaking and optimizing the model, making sure I don't waste any performance. After that I unwrap my model as efficiently as possible. There may be cases where my unwrap might not be too efficient, but then it's mainly because this were some sort of practice in a other area, or I did not end up finishing my model.

Then comes texturing which is all done in Photoshop, using photo-references and painting to get the desired look. I take a look at the model in my 3d app then and then to see if it could be improved in some way, and finally end up with a texture I'm satisfied with, which would mark the end of this project unless I'm going to get it into an engine.