Webinar: Development in the Game Dev Industry – 3D Modeling with Nikolay Naydenov
The second lecture from our “Webinar: Development in the Game Dev industry” took place on August 10th (Tuesday) at 19:00. The special guest was Nikolay Naydenov from Gameloft Bulgaria, who shared his experience and history as a 3D artist of heroes.
Nikolay’s professional path in the game industry began in 2007, when he became a 2D concept artist in the Bulgarian office of Gameloft. A few years later, he decided to change his direction and after passing an internal test in the company, he retrained as a 3D artist.
In addition to talking about the test, Nikolay also shared what level is needed to enter the game industry nowadays – much higher than 15 years ago, and it also depends on the place where you apply for a job. If you are targeting the big game studios like Gameloft, Creative Assembly, Ubisoft, or Snapshot Games, for them you will need serious skills to pass the interview. Smaller independent (indie) studios are also accepting people with less experience, but the trend is constantly changing, and the industry needs more and more experienced staff. The reason is that the development of a video game requires the presence of a certain minimum threshold of skills, regardless of whether they will be in 2D Art, 3D Modeling or Game/Level Design. If you want to start your professional path as artists and game designers, then you should certainly be aware that we need specific skills and knowledge in specific fields, even just to get a job interview.
For example, drawing is not a required skill in 3D modeling, but it is very useful to advance your work quickly. It most often involves a good knowledge of anatomy if characters are to be created, or composition and perspective for building the environment or world in the game.
“Some of the best 3D artists I know – character artists like me are actually good artists too.” – Nikolay Naydenov
After Nikolay’s career introduction, the lecture took the form of a discussion where the audience asked questions and Niki answered while working on a 3D model of a shark in Zbrush.
The last part of the webinar “Development in the Game Dev Industry” will take place on August 24 (Tuesday) at 19:00. The lecture will be dedicated to Game/Level Design, and its presenter will be Yasen Stoynev, who has worked on many big game titles such as Assassin’s Creed, The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine, Cyberpunk 2077, and others. You can register for the webinar at this link.
You can watch Nikolay Naydenov’s entire lecture in the video below:
