Your Virtual Game Arts Studio PG Connects Digital #2

so next up we have crab it's so great create I've got asking because I always get this wrong I deliberately said it the wrong Mick tell me put me out of my misery how am I supposed to say it credits why don't we put Leon why do we do it was creative credits who's the idea but I think I think we were probably drunk when we came up with the idea but it's good it's finally and I deliberately knew I'd say it wrong last time so I had to make an effort not to do this time so girl me anyways talking point people talking about your brand that's always good so you're gonna you're gonna talk about my quotes cannot operate as your your virtual game artist you do I think yeah well and this was actually this is a

product that I was itself to you pretty much from the last the last Pocket Gamer Hofstra presents the question you asked us was we talked about 3d in the last one and you asked this what we had or was it relevant really force maybe smaller studios or indie Studios and we went away after that and thought we've had a few questions and we thought well actually there's a bunch of stuff we could do in this this product came from it so when we started it up and it's going it's going quite well so far so we wanted to offer it to the Pocket Gamer audience and it's gonna be gonna be a quick presentation so I'll get you back you take your time I know I expect the check in the mail full but anyway I would see we're over to Nick in a late stage okay let me just share my screen [Music] so I hope you can see it it says it's

screen-sharing we did a test it should be working so I just the first couple of sides just a quick recap of what we did before I spoke at the Pocket Gamer event in London in January and then we did the born in April now we're doing the one in June I still haven't had my hair cut since then lockdowns been quite a good excuse to let myself let myself go a little bit but the first time we spoke about what we do credits as a company I'm and we spoke about creative direction and mainly about audience insights and how we do creative based on audiences and based on personas hat and how you know doing it by category or by country was not the best way to drive performance on platforms such as Facebook Google snapchat so so making more nuanced creative depending on the audience's you were targeting the last

time we spoke about 3d for user acquisition we've got a fairly unique workflow via the platform that allows us to create 3d and CG videos for a fraction of the typical cost which allows more clients to run new CG every month for much more cost effectively and again this is with a with an eye or with a view to performance marketing and getting the best out of auction based digital media platforms but as I mentioned before Chris asked us last time was this something that would be relevant for indie developers smaller developers and the answer was yes and no it really depends on where they were at all depended on whether they were they were and whether they were self-publishing or not so we had a chat and we realized that we were actually start we were actually doing a lot of game art as well as marketing art so we

thought why didn't we make that a proper product so as of the last couple of months we launched credits game art and it's it's it's kinda cool so far as a surprise to us because we hadn't really thought about it so again thanks to you Chris for the for the idea so the general general idea is that we we have a bunch of talent Oller all over the world on the platform that have typically come from studios come from game studios work in although all the tools that a game studio will use and more and more working our 3d is going through game engines and going through unity and unreal so the asset creation is part and parcel of that so we're breaking that out and offering it to the market as a as a product so any existing assets concept our 3d production animation any other kind of modeling and asset creation that's necessary we can pretty

much provide it through the platform so the idea would be pretty much the same as the way we do marketing art we connect you to the talent scope out the project you can buy a certain amount of credits that's the name or a certain amount of pieces or you can contract people buy ours through the platform or guaranteed and fronted by our teams in around the world in in the US UK Japan and Singapore and we aim to be a virtual kind of top up studio to help you tweak assets create new assets access some access talent on demand effectively for a set game art and we are using the same as I mentioned earlier we're using the same teams from all over the world from China to the US and everywhere in between the same people that we've been working with on the marketing in the 3d CG stuff actually that most of them are from game studios there's a lot of guys that were working with in the

Philippines who were working at large studios and went to set up their own one and are looking for looking for people to work with and doing a lot of this stuff as a hobby and with us on the marketing side and on the game outside there they're kind of building their own games as they go so the skill set is there the talent is there the and the cost is very when thinking about other places in the world if you're looking at Philippines getting Matsui or Indonesian game on studio Brazilian game arts to you and then as ourselves we are as I mentioned early we're in Japan US UK and Singapore so we would help to do the scoping the account management the quality guarantee so on so forth one of the things that came out when we were working with our first couple of clients was getting the art style right first time fitting into the workflow and the technical needs each project each game is slightly different as we're connecting customers

with people who are already game designers game developers they're in their own right we tend to cut down on a lot of the friction a lot of the back-and-forth that happens maybe if you're looking to do freelance game bar for hire so on so forth again as I mentioned earlier concept art rigging animation texturing lighting specialist integration rendering pretty much any anything you might need the teams are ready and available to do to do what you might want and I've got a bit of alpha coming up at the end after I take you through a few examples so I think the five key areas that the five key areas and this is this is this is a straight sales pitch Chris this is not - there's no more that's not much audience they'll market inside here this is pretty much letting people know what's available but the teams are scalable there is there's a lot of people on the platform you can plug and play it's cost-effective and they can pretty much do work with any technology so if you need if we've got

pretty much everything covered and here are a few examples and I always threw a few of these I can send it round to anyone else who's interested afterwards 3d models of all shapes and sizes humanoids ogres humans renders weaponry objects and accessories heroes this was done this was concept art that was done for to to the model to the animation also with a bit of mocap so the the sort of standard animation cycle animations plus range of ten or twelve other animations from specific parts of the game that was all done by the teams here modern warfare new to the modern warfare anime if you if you need some sort of Japanese anime manga or art style again different teams different locations have bits from all over the world and that is really it like I said it's going to be pretty quick and it's a pretty much does

what it says on the tin we have an offer for anyone who is attending this or would be interested to talk that we're happy to do a free asset for anyone for any game if you've got a project and you wanted to test it out that the teams are ready and willing to do a free proof-of-concept to get it going and then and then yeah if you're if you're happy with it you can go from there and that's it that's that's me in action that was super short you can ice coming I've got a Kiev that was incredibly compact thank you for that um but yes I that was a cheeky sales pitch but that's okay we can flirt we've throw not to make ourselves but it wasn't it wasn't it was a nice sales pitch and a great offer free stuff I like free stuff well it was it was I said it before were tongue-in-cheek but it was it was legitimate we we said a sales pitch but what we would what we found when we spoke to a lot of people afterwards was they they're the marketing art stuff was

quite interesting but a lot of them are either not publishing or nowhere near being able to publish but they were all struggling with getting stuff just done you know they had their they had stuff so we were like well we can help you with that and a lot of them you know budgets budgets were tight so we started to do some stuff for free just to help them get going so so rather than sales pitch we're trying to help you in the naval air it's it's not it's not actually some things for free is not hard it's not hard core services as a whole but I mean gee I mean do you think I guess segwaying back into something I said that the intrud star obviously there's a lot more remote working now so whereas once before we would go well you know we've got use our team in the office for everything now at the team isn't in the office and the sense I get is it might be some time with four teams as a whole get back in on this if some like never in the same way so do you think for kind of out sourced sort of services you know like

like my credits and that's it's a it's a good time really isn't it because people you know if they're already if everything's already happening remotely then this is less we'll pull to have to it's less stretch to send yo its let's use a third-party service to to fill in a gap in you know I think so I think we kind of draw the line but we not game designers obviously you know we we but the skill sets for a lot of the creation is the same so as long as there is the lead and the brain and the direction and we are so there's the way this sort of we see ourselves as the hands and feet of the you know getting the stuff getting the stuff done if there's if the idea is there then I think that works quite well if you're trying to collaborate on something very complex you know of globally distributed then then it's a slightly different problem than fixing hey I've got this I need to make I see myself very much to the face I was gonna ask because you

obviously work on on you know creatives for advertising as well are you seeing has been a lot more demand when we saw last time we talking about how the ad output was increasing exponentially as people needed to you know reached keep keep sending up more and more different treatments to the same games I'm seeing that certainly the biggest games are in the pool are you seeing a any particular demand increases or changes yeah yeah [Music] across across across most gaming genres I think I think I've been reading a lot recently about how it's all playing out longer term but certainly short term a lot of creative demand has increased in terms of variations of volume specifically for us people have been asking to maybe test concepts that they weren't 100% set on before but they were taking this time to sort of cast the net

wider and test things that maybe would have been a bit too outlandish or maybe a bit you know 50/50 they're kind of building every anything in everything right now to throw into the mix and see what happens so yeah that we're definitely seeing that um okay I've got a very specific question you she might be also answer it's a question about creative contracting if I would need an outsourced development new project how much money should i acquire to hire such services is an interesting combination of very very correct English there but I mean what I guess it you would say you're doing stuff for free ups that's quite a low bar but like most cheaper than lot cheaper than that you know but obviously I'm sure I guess it's how big the project is in the specifics of it is that yes it can be it can be either way actually one of the one of our big sort of beliefs as a company or big sort of pillars of the company is providing opportunity to people all over the world no matter you know man no matter where

they are so it really depends on the talent but there's always somebody free we vouch for the quality in the guarantee so in terms of whether it's a project or per hours base it really depends on what what suits the studio best to answer the question for the I think it was Marcus - it can be like $1,000 to $10,000 it really depends on the complexity there and what needed I would say probably on average $5,000 would be if you're going to outsource enough work to make it worthwhile then you're probably going to do $5,000 worth but there's no minimum from our side it really depends what they need like I say I'm free free for the free for the first asset for any Pocket Gamer attendee where you go on that um I've got one final question here from yes seen um and she says thank you for your presentation I was wondering you have any internal

tools and authorities that you provide to your community yeah we do so we have a workflow tool for idhe from the concept in part through to the production where you can kind of annotate and feedback on the look and feel the design song so forth when it comes to the actual production of the asset that really that's really down to the individual team on you know what tools they're using or what's familiar and what's coming into scope what it needs to be what the assets need to be built in effectively okay cool well on that notes then you were very short and very sweet and I hope you get I've got no new business ideas this time I sort of think I didn't realize I didn't realize I was gonna I was thank your time and hope you have elective mister show and you get plenty people taking it upon your someone hopefully paying you as well as the free stuff so thanks Nick film credits go right

you