Tutorial Idea

I'm trying to think up some ways to make some extra cash. I have one idea that takes advantage of my actual skills but I wanted to run it by you guys to see if you think it's a good idea or not. I'm thinking about making a game artist training series of DVD's.

I do 3d art for a living and I have worked at game companies. I see a lot of these "become a game designer" adds for schools and it really bothers me. They are very missleading in their advertising. These companies DON'T hire from these schools. They hire the guys that do this stuff on there own just like you and me. In fact, I talked to my buddy at EA and he said most of the game designers come from the testing department. This is an entry level position!

Anyhow, back to my idea. First off, I'm not a game designer so can't really teach that, but I do know how to do the art. Plus I have a lot of teaching experience. So I figure I can make a series of DVD on creating game content. Basically talk about things like modelling, texturing, and how to convert models to verious formats. I can also recruit my buddy in the industry to do addition dvds on specialized subjects like advanced texturing, and engine specific subjects.

I have most of the gear require to produce this kind of product so the cost would be very minimal on my end. I figure I'll use something like YouTube to advertise and create a web site for selling the videos. I think the dvds would be on average 4 hours long a piece and I would sell them for about $30 - $40.

So, what do you think?

I've lost count of the number of times I've tried to tell people that. I know any number of people enrolling for these courses, and I'm sure most of them are wasting their money.

If you're interested in this and you can do it, then it sounds like a good idea. How much time and expense do you plan to put into marketing it though? Without good marketing, it probably won't go anywhere for you, which would be a shame. If I were you, I'd talk to some of the sites that specialize in these kind of training DVD's and see if they'd be interested in a range of game dev themed ones.

Kurv Studios is one that springs to mind. Gnomon is another. In fact, I think Gnomon may already have one or two on game dev themed modelling or animation, so they would be good people to ask.

sounds like an excellent idea.

I'm sure there's a market for video tutorials on games programming using blitz3D too, it's just that no one's taken up the gauntlet for it yet

It is a good idea, especially in terms of how to pull together resources using art pipelines / exporters. There are hundreds of video tutorials on how to model characters, but very few that are geared to optimising poly count for games, or how to take stuff through from concept to a game engine.

Even better would be tutorials and tips on how to organise / strcuture a complex project, how to manage your code, models, sound fx and resources, as this is something that isn't immediately obvious.

Question would be whether to keep it generic (for all languages and modellers) or to focus on specific tools (e.g. Maya and Blitz3D).

Perhaps you should contact those who publish resources around game development, to see what kind of interest there could be, or even if someone would be willing to invest in your idea.

you would have to do a lot of research into your competition and come up with something better.
There are a lot of Maya dvd's out there already.

I agree its a very good idea and I'm sure would be welcome with a number of people. I am wondering, though, if it needs to also include at least some info about game design or some of the basics of game structure/concepts, and how the art you're creating ties in with how the engine works.

I also agree you'll need more than just a you-tube video to advertise.

The advice is great! I don't know anything about marketing this stuff so any ideas would be very welcome. I've actually thought about trying to do some DVDs for Gnomon, but I don't think they pay that well.

About the only thing on my side is the fact that I don't need to make a boatload of cash right away on it. I could just start with a web site and one dvd and just keep promoting it in different ways until I find what works.

Sound like a good idea. You can probably get a lot of sales from forums like this.

Send me an email. I would like to talk more about this.

For everything that can be explained with pictures better than with text (eg. modeling) it's a good idea. When it comes to coding I'd prefere a book tho.

Also, as soon as such a tutorial tells me to start maya, 3dsmax or any other expensive pro app, then it's kind of useless for me.

Alternative (noless pro) art paths would be more interesting. Eg: blender, gimp, various engines. Also: what are the components of a successful team, how to get investment capital, how to do marketing.

That's one of the things that kills many tutorials for me, they're too tied to a specific application to explain how abouts they do their own work, without offering any means of general techniques that can be applied to any program that you know your way around slightly......unless you dig into the tutorial itself to figure out how to implement their steps into your own app, which kinda defeats the purpose of the tutorial.