“The Mentor Coalition Experience” by Patrick Ziegler

Mentee Patrick Ziegler breaks down his Old Pharmacy project, discusses his experience with The Mentor Coalition and the Discord community, the value of the Mentorships & Career Coaching he participated in, and how it helped his career path and his growth as artist.

Introduction

Hello there. My name is Patrick Ziegler, I am from Switzerland and currently working in the UK at Dambuster Studios as a Junior Environment Artist. I got into game art about 2 years ago when I first heard about Unreal Engine and then started learning all the necessary skills to build my portfolio.

I stumbled upon The Mentor Coalition via Josh Lynch’s tutorial page on Gumroad somehow and it caught my attention. I took a Weapon Art Mentorship with Ethan Hiley, the Career Coaching with Josh Lynch and finally the Environment Art Mentorship with Chris Radsby.

Weapon Art Mentorship Experience

During the Weapon Art Mentorship with Ethan I learned a very efficient way of doing a proper weapon from start to finish. We went for the Thompson 1928 and also added a sling, which gives it a stylish addition. Ethan gave me great feedback through all the stages and we went through my files together and he could show me real time on my model what to improve. I implemented his feedback accordingly.  I learned a great deal about hard surface modeling and the implementation of ZBrush to get a clean and crisp high poly, realistic textures and some good renders.

Environment Art Mentorship

With Chris Radsby I dived into the whole process of how to build environments efficiently. We went through so many useful steps that really enhanced my overall knowledge of the process. I learned a lot from Chris about tiling textures, composition, lighting, materials and color. We went through a lot of steps in terms of modeling, unwrapping and how to properly assemble a scene in UE4. Chris really pushed me and my skills grew a lot during his mentorship. Here a screenshot of the environment before the mentorship and then after:

Chris taught me a lot about realistic spaces and generally how things would be built in the real world. As you might see in the second image, it feels more grounded, realistic and a space that feels more navigable. It draws in the viewer more compared to the “before” image. There was a lot of back and forth to create the desired outcome, but that’s how it usually goes in environment creation. I am happy how it turned out and the knowledge I got from Chris was very valuable and I took that with me to create my next project which actually landed me my first job in the games industry.

Old Pharmacy Project Breakdown

The goal for this scene was to create a victorian-age pharmacy that I would be working on with Chris. Victorian Age Interiors always intrigued me and I thought this would be perfect to tackle as my next scene.

I collected as much reference as I could to fit the visual style I was going for. It was tricky at first to find some good pictures but Chris gave me a couple of good pointers of where else to look. For example the wand-shop from the Harry Potter movies, which has a similar look to that Victorian Style. 

Chris pointed out to me that it was very important to get the big structural elements looking good first and that they are using the correct scale. If your scale is off slightly, no matter how many nice props and elements you add, something will always look a bit off. This is why a good blockout is key to any good environment. Also on an important note: Keep your environments small and manageable. I see a lot of people (and I was in the same boat) tackling too big environments and therefore lose a lot of quality because they have to focus on too many aspects of the scene. Make a tight space and get it to look as good as possible. Start setting up some nice camera angles you would like to use and work from there.

Scene Blockout & Lighting

This is how the blockout looked in the beginning. Very basic, but all the main shapes are in place and I even did a first lighting pass to get a better sense for the scene.

Glass Shader

Chris helped me to set my priorities in the correct order. Basically, the more something in your scene exists, the higher it’s priority. Since there are a lot of glass bottles in this scene, this was the first prop I would take on. The glass bottles use basic geometry and mostly consist of the glass shader who does all the work.

It took a long time to get it right. It was mainly just trial and error until I got a result I was satisfied with. I tried a lot of different grunge masks and contrast values.

Props

After I got the glass shader to the right level, I started working down the list of props I decided to make (there were a lot!). Some props only use a tiling texture and aren’t baked. The other props use a typical high-to-low-poly workflow and were textured in Substance Painter. During prop creation, I always checked back in with Chris to get some feedback. It’s important that you get some eyes on your work in between. You look at something for too long sometimes while texturing and it can help to get some visual feedback. Also, take breaks, go for a walk, hit the gym or just relax. Give your mind and eyes some space and let it rest so you can go back to work full force.

Lighting Setup

For the main light, the sunlight, I use one directional light with a slightly orange tone to simulate early sunset times. I also play around a lot with the “Indirect Lighting Intensity” to brighten up the fill light in the room. 

The directional light didn’t fill the room enough though and I missed some blue light that would be reflected by the sky at that time of day. To fill the room more with light and to generate some nice color contrast, Chris gave me a good idea with using bounce cards. They also use that approach quite a lot in photography.

Just create a default plane and place it in front of your window. Then use spotlights and play around with the settings (intensity, radius, angle and indirect lighting intensity) until you get the desired effect. You can either change the colors of the spotlights or of the plane itself to get the color you want.

The Mentorship really helped me to flesh out this scene in a professional way. I got great feedback from Chris and the community along the way. A mentor really can push you further than you might expect and can save you a lot of time in the end.

Career Coaching Experience

In between the weapon Mentorship and the Environment Art Mentorship I took the Career Coaching with Josh to give me a new perspective on the big picture of getting into the games industry. We looked at my portfolio together and talked a lot about how to actually create a portfolio that is appealing to recruiters and employers. It’s important that you think about how you present yourself online. Make it easy for people to find and contact you. Show that you have the skills necessary to start working in a studio. Josh gave me great advice on how to take my portfolio forward. We also looked at my cover letter, my CV and strategies on how to go on a “job-hunt”. It was great and I felt very comfortable afterwards to go out there and start applying, once my portfolio was ready.

Another important point to me was just having someone to talk to about my insecurities when it comes to my portfolio and getting into the industry. It feels good to have someone encourage you to keep working and that they were in the same place once.

General Takeaways and Thoughts

Mentorship is something very valuable. Someone helps you in your specific situation and holds you accountable as well. I worked way harder during the Mentorship because I had a person waiting for my work to review the next week. The Mentorships equipped me with new tools, workflows and general techniques on how to create art for games on a AAA level. Ethan, Chris, and Josh were all very kind, understanding and pushed me to the next level. It was a sweet balance and I had a great time with these guys!

After a few months of the Mentorships & Career Coaching, I found my first job in the industry. It feels great and I’m very excited to work at Dambuster Studios. If you feel stuck or don’t know what to do, do a mentorship. It’s the best way to push yourself to the next level. Don’t think about it. Just do it. It’s important that you put yourself in the employer's shoes and ask yourself, what kind of person with what kind of skills you would want to hire. And sometimes that can be hard because you don’t know what you could do better. So having another experienced person look at your situation and give you feedback on it is really beneficial. I felt supported all along the way by my mentors and I knew that if I have some questions, I can always send them a message. You can build great relationships with your mentors if you are open-minded, show that you are willing to learn and improve and apply their feedback. I really recommend The Mentor Coalition, there is something for everyone.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me anytime on Artstation or on Instagram. Best of luck!

- Patrick

Mentorships Taken