Industry veteran Rick Davidson is joined by Yasmin Curren, to talk about making short films, music videos, running live events and other creative activities that you can do with Unity, Unreal or your engine of choice.

Yasmin is inspired by technology and driven by creativity. She’s an enthusiastic storyteller, game designer and content creator. In her own words, she is “a media magician of creative concoctions!” 😁

(*Rick has more than 14 years experience in the game dev industry, working on IP's that include Mario, Transformers, Captain America and Mortal Kombat. He's done it all, from Game Designer, Producer, Creative Director and Executive Producer to GameDev.tv's very own Instructor extraordinaire).

Listen to the whole chat here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1Q-pjIE7lg

Our 'AHA' moments

  • Make use of 3D assets
  • You need patience while learning game dev
  • Pick a focus and double down
  • Look at movies and other games when designing levels

Working With Concept Art and Using Photorealistic Assets (24:12 - 26:45)

When working with a concept artist, Yasmin gets a ton of reference images, documents and envisions everything before modelling concepts in a 3D Environment. The more detail you have, the more accurate your models will be.

However, not everything needs to be created from scratch. There’re plenty of assets out there that include photorealistic models, if you’re creating a realistic environment in Unreal Engine 5, Quixel is an amazing choice.

Pick Your Focus and Double Down On It (48:06 - 50:32)

Patience is something most of us don’t have a lot of, but to be successful in this industry it’s something you’ll have to learn. If there’s a particular area of game dev that you love then double down and focus on it. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, what your background is or your circumstances, anyone can do this if they work towards it.

It can take 2-3 years to become really good at something, but being patient will really pay off for you in the long run.

Cinematic Level Design and Moments (1:09:19 - 1:12:50)

When designing levels, Yasmin looks at the design from a filmography point of view. Such as what’s in the scene, the angle of the camera and the movement of the dolly track. Watching movies and playing other games will give you some helpful ideas on how to approach and design your levels.

Include moments in your level design, this also improves the player experience. This can include moments where you’ll have to make a very big jump to cross a huge gap and fight off 3 difficult enemies instead of the standard enemy. Be sure to tie these moments into the context of the story.

We hope Yasmin’s experiences help you in your journey of learning game dev.

Follow Yasmin on Social Media

https://www.youtube.com/user/yagmanx
https://twitter.com/YagmanX
https://www.linkedin.com/in/yasmincurren/

Check us out on social media

https://www.facebook.com/GameDevTV
https://twitter.com/GameDevTV
https://www.instagram.com/gamedev.tv/

Remember, we host live develogy livecasts every Tuesday at 10pm BST on our YouTube channel. You can catch all the recordings, including this episode, in the Devology Livecast course - it's free to join, and also on our YouTube Channel.

Until next time, happy dev'ing!