Kenji180323_002 - DesignCinema

The speaker introduces their podcast, Design Cinema, and discusses their plans for the first episode. They mention that the concept design industry is quite hidden and they want to provide information about it. They talk about the history of the industry, how it has changed and grown, and the challenges of getting into the field. They also mention the misconceptions about concept art and the reasons why some students are interested in pursuing it. The speaker uses analogies of cars to explain the different perspectives on concept art. Today is 23rd March 2018. Welcome back. Hi everybody and welcome to the first episode of Design Cinema, the podcast edition. This is Phan Du speaking and it is a beautiful hot day outside. I hope to make this episode clear. About 2 hours is my time here to record it for you. I have no idea how long is it. It is probably over an hour in my test because it is a podcast. I will speak freely and relax. Just pretend we are in a classroom here and just randomly speak a bunch of things related to this episode. No video. I am hopefully trying to make it interesting as possible for you guys. I have never done a podcast before ever. So, it is going to be an experiment for all of us here. So, I am going to apologize. I have time for the guy's mishap, coughing and so forth. Because I do not want to edit it too much. Let's just make it as raw as possible so you guys can have a conversation. Alright. Let's jump to this episode. And by the way, I am going to speak a lot slower here because there is no video. Let me make sure the audio is nice and clear for everyone to hear. And speaking slowly actually is a challenge for me. I am so used to speaking at a really fast rate. So, I have to constantly remind myself to slow it down. Breathe. Breathe. Relax. So, you guys don't miss anything I am going to say here. Alright. For the first episode, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about the concept design industry. Because we got a lot of students that are in the show. Of course, we have a lot of professionals as well. But I think we have a lot of students who are trying to make their way into the concept design industry. But yeah, at the same time, the industry is quite hidden. Now, with the Internet and Facebook, all these kinds of things, all the art sites, all the books, this is a little bit exposed than before. But that exposure sometimes is not entirely 100% either. So, what I want to do about this episode is talk about a few things. Number one, a little brief history of the concept design industry in terms of from a point of view, how the industry is changing and growing. Then I am going to head into how do you actually get in. What are your chances? What are the odds? What are you actually prepared for? And what do you actually do, right? I am going to a section which if you actually get in as a concept artist, what do you do every day entirely? What do you prepare for in terms of portfolio or even things like do you work in the meantime to get yourself ready for this business? All right. So, let's talk a little bit about history. What leads to this episode? When I started this school in 2009, most of the students who applied to our school had a pretty good understanding of what the concept art was. They had done the research. They had other books. They had researched on the Internet. That's how they had an idea of what they are heading into. So, we don't have to worry about them. You get it. You are here. You know what this business is about. You know the arts. You know what you do every day. Perfect. Now, come today, 7 years later, we started to get a small percentage of students who applied who had absolutely no idea what this industry actually is about. A couple, maybe 10% of the students who applied just absolutely no idea. But, yeah, they want to pursue this, in my opinion, extremely difficult job or career path. So, they had to ask, what is there to do this? And I actually think this has to do with the popularity of video games as well as film in the past 10 years. Flashback to, you know, 1990s or even early 2000s before YouTube came along, before social media became a giant, enormous thing that took over our lives now. Video games and film were quite exposed in terms of reproduction, in terms of what was shown behind the scenes. And also, especially in video games, you would be seen as a very nerdy business to be in. If you tell your friends you're working at a video game present, you automatically get an assumption that you're a big nerd or geek and things like that. It just wasn't very cool to be in gaming. And then, somewhere in 2010, 2011, when a slew of video games got released, for example, Skyrim and Fallout, all of these games that received a lot of attention on the internet and brought the game industry to the mainstream. I think it did. But to that, only the nerds and the most hardcore gamers would know about these games. But then, you see on television, you start to see video blogs on YouTube having millions of followers just talking about video games. Skyrim alone probably had, I guess, 30, 40 million followers throughout all of these channels on YouTube. So now you have influx, hard exposure of video games to the mainstream audience and no longer is video games perceived as nerdy. I think now it's the most cool to go in-game. So back to the point of students, I think the small percentage of students would be like, oh, video games are cool, I want to do it. Which one, which job should I pick to get in? There are three areas, programmers, sound design, music, and animation. The effects, texture, and then there's concept art. I think a lot of them tend to choose concept art because from the outside world, this would be fun and maybe even perceived as easy because all I need is a piece of paper or Photoshop, my Wacom tablet, and boom, you're in. Back in concept art, you don't have to study, read hard C++ code, you don't have to know Maya, animation and terms, things like that. You don't have to learn Zippers or hardcore 3D software required to become a 3D artist. It just seems like an easy way in, at least from the outside, in my opinion. However, the truth is far from that. This job is equally as difficult as anything that's put in production of a product. This is just perceived as, oh, you don't have to do the education, you don't have to study anything, just draw. That's part of it. And I think that's why so many younger students are trying to apply to concept art even though they know very little about what the job does. So let's talk about that. What exactly is it? And it's confusing. Sometimes it doesn't lead to. I think this kid applies, who knows very little about concept art, think that what you do is just for fun stuff one day. You paint a character, action scenes and all that, and really, that's not what you do in the job. That has to do with sometimes marketing art or other books. That's a mix of stuff together, and I will cover that later in part two of what you actually do. But this has to do with, let's use analogies of cars. Okay. Okay, let's be patient with me here when I set this up. Again, this is a podcast. It's going to run for quite a while, so let's just keep talking. Pretend you were in California. The United States is powerful, right? You guys probably heard this. There are a lot of things going on right now, and the amount is $1.5 billion, okay? A lot of money over there. Imagine you're just some guy, some girl, and you win. You're the only winner. Now you have close to a billion dollars in the bank. As a tax, maybe you have $600 million, something. Crazy like that. And you want to go buy some sports cars. My guess is the sports car this person is going to buy, it could be probably a Ferrari, Lamborghini, maybe a Bugatti, but probably something like a Ferrari, Lamborghini. Very high chance that it's one of those two brands. Now, does this person know anything about the car? Probably no. But do they care? No. Why did they buy the car? Because it's expensive, it's very flashy, and so you have money. But in terms of normal history, the buyer doesn't have to care. They don't even know where Ferrari are made. You know? I don't think they care. All they know is it's freaking nice looking, it's sexy, it costs a little crap of money. Most people cannot afford this car. So therefore, when they try the car, everyone knows they have money. And that's the purpose in terms of why they buy the car. Totally fine, totally legit. No problem there. Okay. So scenario number two. Now you're a student trying to become a mechanical engineer to design high-end car engines. Okay. Okay. And you apply to a school that teaches you how to do that, how to design a high-level, high-performing racing engine. And now this school is going to interview you and ask you, what company would you like to work for after you're done? And your answer is Lamborghini or Ferrari. Okay. Totally cool. Recognizable company. Company. Make great engine. Okay. Let's tell us a little bit about this company. Why do you want to work for them? What kind of engine do you like? Which Ferrari model is your favorite? Let's see. I don't know. I just want to work for them. I have no idea. Okay. Do you know where the engine is mounted? Is it in the front, in the back? How many cylinders? No, I have no idea. I just want to work for them. Now you can see from the school boy view, you're starting to be like, wait, you want to choose Ferrari or Lamborghini? But, yeah, you have absolutely no idea what they actually do. But, yeah, you're choosing the true brands. What are true Ford? What are true GM? What are true, say, Lotus? What are those brands? Why Ferrari or Lamborghini? In my personal opinion, this is because those brands are the name brands. They're recognizable and they give you a lot of points in terms of social size. It's like, cool, work for Lamborghini. But, yeah, you don't know anything about them. Now, is there anything wrong with that? No, probably not. Choosing the good brands is important. You know what I mean? Make you happy to work there, sure. But I think what's driving that for the concept industry is not because you want to be a concept artist. You drive every day to work on product. Really long hours and a lot of stress. I think that answer comes in because they just want to play games. It's fun to be a company that makes cool games because the answer we get on our side, right, with the car mechanic. It's Lamborghini, Ferrari. Our side. What kind of student do you want to work for after you graduate? Number one answer, I think 99% of the time, probably is business entertainment. Followed by a couple of other brands like Bioware, I think. But that doesn't seem so much because I think it's a hard title to pronounce. So they don't promote themselves as much in terms of who makes the game and things like that. So you get like Bioware, business all the time. But yeah, will you ask your follow-up question or pull your favorite artist or pleaser or tell us about which game that you like concept art from or for Bioware? Which particular game did you find interesting in terms of design?