Games Guru, Andy Gahan, visits Uclan Games Design course

Games design students at Uclan recently enjoyed a fantastically informative presentation from games Guru, Andy Gahan of The Pixel Bullies. 
The students loved this frank and valuable advice from Andy who has 25 years of experience at the top of the games industry.
Former, Senior Development Manager at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and previously Art & Outsource Manager at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (Evolution Studios),  
Andy has extensive experience, which he generously shared with us. 

Andy talked about indie mid developed game companies, and what it's like/ that it's possible to run your own company in the current environment. This was such an inspiration to our aspiring students!

A big 'thank you ' to Andy from us and also to Nicola Eagleton and her team, Faye Grima; Chris Lishman; Bhavnita Parekh; Victoria Bradley; Whitney Griffiths, from Uclan Public Relations and Marketing course, who organised the event.

You can see part of Andy's presentation on the link below.

The whole lecture can be heard at the SoundCloud link below thanks to student, Oli Hughes

Games Design course visit from Concept Games Artist, Shaun Mooney

Uclan Games Design course was really pleased to welcome one of our Alumni, Concept Games Artist, Shaun Mooney, to the studio recently for a fantastic workshop day.

Shaun who has worked for several big name games companies such as Atomhawk, TT-Fusion and currently Playdemic spent a full day with us.
He shared his extensive experience and expertise with the students through a practical demonstration followed by a portfolio surgery session with students from a variety of year groups. Students  found the experience very valuable.
You can link to Shaun's blog here.

You can watch part one of Shaun's workshop by clicking the images below.

And for part two of Shaun's workshop click on these images below

 

 

Peter Field - Games Designer at Naughty Dog

Fantastic opportunity for Uclan Games Design students - in conversation with Peter Field,
games designer at Naughty Dog CA.
Peter is a graduate of the BA Games Design course at the University of Central Lancashire, UK, and has gone on to work on many popular game titles,
most recently 'Uncharted 3' and 'The Last of Us' with Naughty Dog in California.
Here, Peter shares his experience and advice about preparing for such a role and how to develop a portfolio and forge a great career in the industry.
Naturally, it was a real buzz for us all when Peter very generously took time out very early in the morning, on his holiday, to link up with us on Skype for a chat.
Click the image below to see the video of the QA session

Meet the Developer. Stephen Morris of Greenfly Studios

Uclan Games Design course recently ran a Skype QA session with Stephen Morris, Co-Director at Greenfly Studios

a small independent games company developing original titles for desktop and mobile platforms.

Luckily for us,  Games design tutor, Pete Bottomley, of WhitePaper Games introduced us to Stephen, so we were able to ask him to tune in on Skype for an afternoon chat session.
As the Technical Director / Lead programmer of a small company, Stephen gave students some really valuable advice about how to manage design work. He also has lots of useful ideas about networking.
We had an hour of entertaining and informative chatter which proved to be great inspiration for our games design students.

You can see the video of the QA session here:

Meet the Developer - Steven Thornton

Uclan Games Design course recently conducted a QA session with 
Steven Thornton, Games Designer at TT Fusion based in Wilmslow, Cheshire.

Big Thanks to Steve for hooking up on Skype and sharing his experience
as a games designer.
Steve is an MA Graduate from Uclan Games Design, so it's a great encouragement for students
to hear about his work in the industry and to hear what can be achieved.
Steve shared his knowledge of the development pipeline in creating design-based Pitch and
Games Design Documents.

Steve now has three years experience participating in team projects and working in a group environment as well as on individually driven projects.
In addition to a his knowledge of game balance, mechanics and design principles in solving
creative problems at work, Steve also participates in public speaking, verbal presentation and general organisation.

It was great to hear his answers to student questions on his role as a Games Designer.

See the YouTube footage here:

Double presentation by Alumni for UCLan Games Design

There was a double treat in store for UCLan Games Design recently when two of our Alumni,
Paul Bannon, Environment Artist at TT Fusion and Moh Z. Mukhtar of Playdemic
BOTH came to give a presentation together.
This was a fascinating and valuable insight into the worlds of two of our graduate game artists,
now working in two very different areas of the industry.
Paul is a 3D artist and he showed some fantastic examples of his current work
and talked about the required skills in his role and how to prepare a portfolio for best effect.
You can see Paul's website here

Moh demonstrated some of his amazing 2D art for Facebook game,
'Village Life' which he designed and executed for Playdemic.
His artwork for the game is so rich in colour and a lovely 'chunky' drawing style,
but Moh also does a lot of his own concept art which students
were able to see and ask questions.
Moh's website can be found here

Below are some shots from their Presentation
in the UCLan Games Design studio