About Me

I am an aspiring 3d Level Designer/Artist looking to land my first position as a Junior or Graduate Level Designer or Level Artist. Since Graduating Lincoln University studying BSc Games Computing I have thrust myself into improving my skills in all aspects of Game Designing and 3d Artistry building on skills I have developed during my time at University and by self learning alongside learning new techniques and methodologies at every chance possible. All my time and effort at the moment is devoted on getting my first opportunity within the games industry. I am also heavily in the opinion that to be a successful designer it is important to have an artistic understand in terms of technology and creativity. For that reason I devote my learning for both these aspects as I believe I will be better for it.

Current Projects

Obsidian Edge 2 - I Recently become part of the team for a Crysis Mod which has official support from EA and Crytek along with use of a pre-release version of Cryengine 2. I have taken on the role of Level Designer/Environment and Prop Artist. More info of the mod can be found at http://www.obsidianedge.net/

Working in collaboration with John Newton a programmer from Digital Extremes on the XNA Platform which we are currently experimenting and prototyping unique and potential game design ideas for future prospects.

Continual Working on my 3d Portfolio and Designing Skills

Gaming Philosophy

My passion is for the creation of environments in terms of Artistry and Level Design as I believe they go hand in hand to providing a unique gaming experience. If I was to have a Gaming Philosophy it would be for gaming to be sophisticated and be able to engage gamers on the whole spectrum of human emotion from love to adrenalin induced experiances. Ideas need to be given life and developed by its correspondence with how its perceived on a basic human level. What I mean by this is that humans have a set of instincts/emotions which can be stimulated by videogames and it is the knowledge of these instincts/emotions and how to manipulate them that can lead to great game design.

Gaming so far to me has seemingly only exploited a limited range of emotions and far too often try to be "cool" and not enough games are designed around human response, reaction and perception with emotions. From observations I have made games are too often following trends in level design providing similar experiences with different "settings" and that will only lead to the saturation of the types of games available on the market. Only very few studios are looking at gaming from an emotional perspective but without a doubt it is the way forward as I see games being more "emotionally designed" then action designed in the future.

I feel games need to focus on providing gamers a more gratifying experience with greater sense of build up from lows to highs which then intensifies and emotional engages the gamer taking them to the brink of an emotion climax. This can be done utilising various methods such as story, game mission/quest scenarios and level design(the type of environment at a given point for how you would want the gamer to feel can have a massive effect but it is not being exploited enough I find). Developers I feel are not making the connection fully of emotion and environment and are too focused on action.

Another design aspect I feel not being targeted according to emotion is sound. I feel sound needs to be more dynamic and be linked with player action on screen and emotion rather than just environment. This can open a whole new feature to game design being able to heighten moments of anxiety, fear, happiness or even comedy to the limits rather than staying at a consistent level for that period of game. Alot of this is down to technological barriers but with a couple of upcoming games I have noticed the addition of dynamic sound.

I haven been massively influenced by my Aunt Gurinder Chadha director of "Bend it Like Beckham", Bride and Prejudice" and currently working on the Movie Adaptation of "Dallas". From her I have gained a Film development insight and gained alot of knowledge in terms of approach and design philosophy.

I have a distinct view on how I believe games should be in the future and the types of games I'd like to see and I want to be at the forefront of the creation of this incredible and high potential medium.

Skills and Abilities

C++: I have a good knowledge of C++ in terms of Games programming. During University I developed 3d Space demos and a 2d version of Carrom Board along with many text adventures.

3ds Max: I have extensive knowledge of 3da max in terms of high poly modelling, Modelling for games, UV Unwrapping, Normal Mapping creation.

Photoshop: Strong knowledge for the use of creating textures with such abilities as Tiling, painting, brushes, masking, overlay techniques, selection, photo referencing use for games ,use of layers and effects and much more.

Zbrush: Some knowledge of the use Zbrush has been learnt due to it importance of creating normal maps for characters but also environmental props such as trees, rocks and other organic objects.

MudBox: Currently evaluating and gaining knowledge of this piece of software as it shares much of the properties of Zbrush.

Valve Hammer: Worked extensively with this Level Editor whilst at University for project assignments and also community mod work. Scripting skills were also learnt during my University time from which i developed gameplay scenarios.

UnrealEd: Good Knowledge of creating levels in UnrealEd for multiplayer mods.

CryEngine1/2: Extensive knowledge of this engine and currently in the process of developing a mod in collaboration with EA/Crytek.

Jatinder Malhotra