The project I’m on is a small-scale MMORPG. As is typical in this type of game, your character is always on the hunt for newer, better pieces of armor. That requires a significant investment in creating new art assets for these armor pieces. There has to be a lot of them, they have to be varied, and they have to look cool. They also have to visually represent different levels of quality. i.e., common armor, special magic armor, and super rare awesome hard-to-find mythic armor.

The problem is — how do you keep track of that many assets? How can I show them off and make sure the visual progression makes sense and that each fits the game’s art style and color palette?

I struggled with that for awhile and one of NCsoft’s head art people worldwide showed me the character tree. It’s a giant table full of characters, each character occupying a single cell of the table. Here’s a mockup very similar to what I use:

Horizontally, the tree is divided into sections by the player’s class: Mage Armor, Ranger Armor, and Fighter Armor. Underneath that are class-specific armor types. i.e., Light Cloth and Heavy Cloth for the Mage, Light Leather and Heavy Leather for the Ranger, etc.

Vertically, it’s divided by the quality level of the armor: Normal Armor, Unique Armor and Mythic Armor. The lower you go on the list, the higher the quality the armor is.

It’s further divided up into yellow and blue cells. The yellow cells indicate an armor set that’s complete. The blue cell indicates an armor set that’s still in production and not yet complete.

When I put the characters on the tree, I place them visually where I think they belong in terms of armor quality. If one piece of armor looks dramatically better than another, then I’ll move it further down the table and leave gaps in between them. Seeing those gaps shows me visually where the progression of low quality armor to high quality of armor breaks down. That way I can know where to start concepting a new armor set to fit in and maintain that logical progression.

I have a five foot by five foot printout of this character tree on my wall. I refer to it constantly, put Post-Its all over it to give me notes, and I have a special template that I can paste new armor sets onto, print out, and cut out to paste individually into cells instead of replacing entire sheets simply because I updated one asset. :)

The biggest benefit of this character tree is to be able to see at a glance how many armor pieces are in the game, how many are completed, and how many are still in production. I can see how the different pieces of armor relate to each other visually, I can see what the name of that asset is, and I can rearrange it easily.

Seeing the entire series of character armor sets in the game was tremendously valuable and has helped me plan art production more effectively and keep track of things like never before. Having it ALWAYS on my wall instead of in pure digital form has been vital. It’s also helped me realize some mistakes I made in other areas.

One of the initial mistakes I made on the project was choosing exactly which armor set was what quality at the outset of production, and naming it that way. i.e.:

Human Male - Mythic Leather Armor 2

All the filenames would reflect that:

Human Male - Mythic Leather Armor 2 Helm
Human Male - Mythic Leather Armor 2 Boots
Human Male - Mythic Leather Armor 2 Body
Human Male - Mythic Leather Armor 2 Shoulders
Human Male - Mythic Leather Armor 2 Gloves

But if I place that asset on the tree, and it looks more Unique than Mythic, and I decide to move it, I have to rename it. You can’t call a Unique piece of armor Mythic! It gets confusing, and creates two names where there was previously only one. In the game it may be Human Male - Unique Leather Armor 4, but all the data still points to files that refer to Human Male - Mythic Leather Armor 2. That requires renaming the MAX file, renaming all the textures, renaming all the materials, re-exporting the model, then going through all the multiple data files and renaming everything and testing to see if it all still works. It’s HUGE pain in the ass.

I didn’t realize it was a problem until I started moving characters around on the tree and they took on drastically different roles than they were originally intended, even though they were called something else using the same terminology. So, in the interest of flexibility, I started naming the armor sets generic names like Cloth 1, Leather 2, Plate 3, etc. That way, the designation of quality (Normal, Unique, Mythic) is totally stripped from it and it can be shifted around easily. The filenames are also shorter, take less time to type in and are less confusing overall.

I never would have realized that if I didn’t have a way of visualizing all our characters and quickly rearranging them! Once you put them all together, the difference is incredible.

Other things I have added or will soon add to the character tree is a text readout of how many characters there are, how many are finished, and how many are still in production, how many color variations exist, and so on. I’ll also have small color-coded tabs on each piece to show what color variations exist for that piece of armor. There’s no reason to waste 10 cells on a single character in red, blue, green, purple, etc, when I can show the normal version and have small color swatches tell me exactly that while taking up less space. :)

I also have a version of the character tree for creatures, which organizes them by race (Orok, Mutant, Fade, Whisker, etc) and role (Melee, Ranged, Caster and Boss). It makes coming up with new monsters incredibly easy when you see one race missing a mage, or a giant bruiser!

I’m also going to develop the same type of visual progression for all our weapons. These constructs have been immensely valuable to me in doing my job better, and I’m still refining them.

Does anyone else work with data like this? If so, what other types of meaningful information might I include on these trees to help me direct better?

Here’s a peek into what I do day to day and the things I’m learning, from broad concepts to specific ideas. I don’t know how informative it’ll be, but I’d like to document it anyway.

I currently lead a team of 11 remote contractors, down from a peak of 14. Sorting out the data they send me is starting to get pretty tricky. The way I’ve BEEN doing it is by organizing them with a directory structure like this:

Bob Contractor
- submission01 (unique male leather armor 1)
- changes (helm modification)
- submission02 (unique male leather armor 1 fixes)
- submission03 (unique female leather armor 1)

The ‘changes’ directory is where I modify the file myself, save it, and send it to the contractor. I put it in a separate directory so I can better sort through the files I save myself, and the files the contractor sends me.

The main problem with the way I’ve set it up is that I get SO many separate directories under each contractor. I’m up to ’submission30′ for one of my artists, and the sheer amount of files is overwhelming. Files can get mixed up sometimes and it’s hard to tell what the latest version of something is.

An idea I’m toying with right now is custom naming every file with a date prefix and dumping it all into one large directory. So it’ll look more like this:

Bob Contractor
(01-19-2007) File 1.max
(01-19-2007) File 1.tga
(01-19-2007 JJ) File 1 changes.max
(01-20-2007) File 1 fixes.max

It’ll all be in one directory, sorted alphabetically AND by date because of the filenames I gave them. Files I’ve sent back for changes have the ‘JJ’ flag, because those are the initials of my name. When I approve an asset, I already have to resave and rename the files and move them to the project directory, so giving them different filenames here prevents me from accidentally assigning textures to the model outside of the project directory (which gets ugly in the game). It fits in pretty well with my existing workflow, while also giving me a quick at-a-glance view of every contractor’s assets and the last time I received a submitted asset from them.

All I have to do to maintain it is, when I receive an asset submission, add the date onto the filename as I save the file to my hard drive (which I already do anyway, so it’s not an extra step).

I don’t know if this is the best way to do things, but it’s the best idea I have right now and I’m moving forward with it until I get a better idea. :) Any thoughts or suggestions would be welcome.

[UPDATE] I talked to some more people about it and the most stupidly obvious answer eluded me — set up an FTP account, give my artists some basic file naming convention directions, and let THEM do it. No more sorting through old assets, no needing to rename everything… just let THEM take care of it. Problem solved! Can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner, but I’m glad I asked around. :) [/UPDATE]

This is a really important one that I only touched on briefly in my Your Portfolio Repels Jobs article.

If you’re emailing your portfolio around, or even if it’s just on your website, name and watermark your images. Put your name, site URL and email address in the corner of every image so it’s noticeable but not annoying. NEVER cover up what’s in the image.

Also name it something helpful like Jon_Jones_Character_Artist_ManWithAxe.jpg. Keep your name in it, and on it.

This is the way to think about it: If this image were removed from my website and sent around at random and was removed from ALL context, how would someone that looked at it be able to find me?

Make it as easy as possible, and don’t assume that people will want to try very hard to find you. Even if they WERE willing to try really hard to find you, make it easy anyway. Take any advantage you can get, no matter how small.

Be accessible!

This one should be pretty obvious, but most people don’t think about it. I see this a LOT. I’ve even done this one before. :)

Think about it: If you’re applying for a job and include an art test in your portfolio, that means you failed it! The result is that YOU look like a failure.

Avoid the appearance of failure! Look like a winner!

Secondly, realize that you’re not the first person that’s done that particular art test. You’re also not the first person to put it in your portfolio. That means that the company you’re applying at has probably seen this exact art test already, done by someone else, and possibly done better. So, not only does the person reviewing your portfolio see something you failed at, but he might also think “Man, that other guy did a better job.”

Ideally, your portfolio should be full of unique content that can’t be directly compared to other peoples’ work. That’s why that, although it’s tempting to model the coolest characters or enemies from every popular new movie or TV show, that’s what EVERYONE else will be doing, too. Be unique and set yourself apart.

Avoid comparisons! Be incomparable!

Finally, if you received proprietary materials for the test and you include that in the material you show in your portfolio, that’s very bad form. Even if you’re not under a non-disclosure, be respectful.

During the course of my day, I access many, many different directories at the same time. I hate having to navigate to them manually through Windows Explorer (My Computer, C:\, project directory, art directory, avatars directory, male character directory, texture directory…) I also hate having to type in the entire thing by hand.

So I found a very simple solution. On my desktop I made a folder called ‘WORK.’ I open an Explorer window, navigate to a commonly-accessed directory, then right-click and drag the directory into my ‘WORK’ folder, and click ‘Create Shortcut Here.’ I repeat this for every directory until I have a small list of instant shortcuts to the directories I want.

Now, anytime I need to access a directory, all I have to do is open my ‘WORK’ folder and double-click on the directory I want. Voila! No more wasting time navigating to the directory every single time. I’ve saved time!

Where else can you save time like this?

If you ever find yourself waiting on something consistently and have nothing to do, try to find productive ways to fill those small amounts of time instead of wasting them. You may think “I can’t do anything in only five minutes” but you’d be surprised. Also, at the end of the day, all that time accumulates in a big way.

At work, I have my personal laptop right next to my work PC so I can work on it while my work PC is busy churning away on something. When my work PC is busy and I can’t do anything on it, I’ve been checking out courses on the Morningstar Online Investing Classroom which has 172 free online courses about investing, stocks, funds, bonds and portfolios. Each one takes 5 - 10 minutes to do, I learn a lot in a very short span of time.

That way my mind’s always working, I’m essentially doing two things at once and I maintain a high level of mental energy and activity at all times. At the end of the day, I go home having learned something about a subject that interests me, AND having kicked ass at work.

I used to have a business book open next to me to read as much as I could in small snatches of time. There are a lot of things you can do like that if you think about it, and don’t raise the barrier to entry too high. If you think “I can’t read unless I have two uninterrupted hours to myself” then you will probably never read. Get what you can out of every minute!

What are other ways you can fill your small pockets of downtime?