Schooling?

[Alex Eskimo]

I'm back with another question about the makings of a virtual world! Now I am wondering, what kind of schooling did you (tony, alex, emmanuel) take to create Kingdom Island? What was your major and what kind of courses did you take?

This question is mainly for Emmanuel, but I would also like to know about Tony and Alex.

[alexronay]

I was drawing ever since I could remember. In college I studied industrial design, though I was always illustrating and making graphics. Quite honestly, I didn't learn much from my major that contributed to my graphics or illustration, though it did teach me time management and team building skills. What I did learn a lot from is stock photography and illustrations. Currently I'm on a few stock sites selling clip arts and illustrations. In that market you learn a lot about what sells and what the new styles are. You also learn from observation. You see a lot of artists that are at your level, higher level, or lower level, and you get to see their work and why their work sells. The programs you use are not really that important, I realized this in college when they had me buy a really expensive program to draw things I really could've drawn better and faster through other free programs.

As far as courses, any graphics course will give you new insight over new techniques. Of course there are courses that you can take that may enhance your skills. An animation course can help you redraw objects in different poses or positions that may help you in the graphics world when it comes to drawing things in the best eye pleasing manner.

Artwork is the first thing people see in a game like this. It's almost like a theme park, nobody knows really how much work went into creating it, they just see the final result. Maybe it took 5 years to create an interface and only an hour to design a character. But at the end of the day, if your character is ugly or unreliable, less people will play your game.

I am a jeweler in real life now, a fourth generation jeweler. I can tell you that 9 times out of 10, people will buy one diamond over the other because of the way it looks. They don't care about the inner workings of why it sparkles more or how long it took to form a diamond, they just go off of visual PERCEIVED VALUE. If your game looks like a million bucks, it will most likely generate more play.

[Alex Eskimo]

Thanks for your reply Alex. Its funny how you say "Maybe it took 5 years to create an interface and only an hour to design a character." because it did take me 5 years to create my interface and today I made new characters which only took like an hour

What I'm really trying to do is make a virtual world. I have everything ready: the rooms, the characters, the story. The only thing I cant do is programming. I am completely lost on it. My praise goes to Emmanuel for being able to do that.

BTW Alex, when did you discover drawing on PowerPoint? (I learned in 3rd grade after watching a little penguin tutorial by a guy named qazar )

[alexronay]

Thanks for your reply Alex. Its funny how you say "Maybe it took 5 years to create an interface and only an hour to design a character." because it did take me 5 years to create my interface and today I made new characters which only took like an hour

What I'm really trying to do is make a virtual world. I have everything ready: the rooms, the characters, the story. The only thing I cant do is programming. I am completely lost on it. My praise goes to Emmanuel for being able to do that.

BTW Alex, when did you discover drawing on PowerPoint? (I learned in 3rd grade after watching a little penguin tutorial by a guy named qazar )

I discovered it many years ago, I'd say around PowerPoint 2003 I noticed the tools were made for drawing, and it just so happened that most of the tools I was using gave me the same effects than in optimal programs.

[Tony]

Emmanuel won't be able to answer this as he'll be away until Octoberish but him and I had regular meetings so I know how he got started. Maybe he'll chime in when he's back but I know he's self taught.

As for myself, my graphics ability came from working on DragonPlay. I was signed up to work on the project years ago to work on the website (I thought making a website was easy to do and actually had no experience working on them at the time). After trying as hard as I could to make DragonPlay graphics (they were never to Alex's ability) I decided I liked making things on the computer (especially UI and logo designs) and that's what ultimately led me to becoming a 'professional' in the 'branding' field.

I accidentally started a profitable business and am still going with that. With extra cash and project management experience, I decided I wanted DragonPlay to get finished so I invested and used business knowledge that I acquired over a few years and actually got Kingdom Island made.

What's cool is that now this game actually has money, is in full production, and the old team (Alex and I) are more excited about working on this game than we were back in the DragonPlay days.

On the technical side for this website I taught myself (took a class in high school but that didn't do a lot). Took one in college and knew more than the professor which led to me dropping out after the first quarter...

Graphics or 'Branding' also self taught. Trial and error and just seeing what looks good and what works for other companies or competitors taught me a lot.

[Alex Eskimo]

Cool! I'm happy that we are all more excited than ever for the production of KI.

And that's really impressive that Emmanuel taught himself. I'd really like to know more about that and how he taught himself. I'll have to remember this so I can ask him in October! Thank you for these answers, my friends.