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SUMO INDIA PORTFOLIO WORKSHOP – TOP TIPS FOR CHARACTER ART

by sumoindia | Aug 25, 2022 | LEARNING

Artists are the backbone of any game development studio, including right here at Sumo India Studios.

We when started with Sumo Pune in 2008, we were primarily an art studio. Eventually, we expanded to other departments including Programming, Design, QA and Management roles – but the Art department was there from the very beginning.

We have been expanding rapidly for the last couple of years, and with that our requirement for quality character artists have increased exponentially. We sat down with a few of our experienced character artists to share their viewpoints on what aspiring character artists can do to improve their portfolios – and maybe one day work alongside us at Sumo India!

ANATOMY AND AESTHETICS

Needless to say, the most important aspect of ‘Character Art’ is understanding the anatomy of the human body, as well as the aesthetics of character design. This will help you stand apart from others in developing your own character. It takes time but practice makes perfect.

FORMS

Forms represents things like muscles and how they work with bones, such as working with bigger shapes first and not jumping into pores and wrinkles like skin details too early. Forms come first, and detail comes later.

Before trying to move onto details, spend enough time improvising form. It doesn’t matter how many details you add – if you don’t have a solid base, the character will look never appealing. A character piece with really good form already looks amazing.

DON’T MAKE CHARACTERS IN JUST ONE POSE

Don’t present your characters in just T-Pose. Experimenting with different poses will make them look more detailed and will also reveal if anything requires more work.

TOPOLOGY

Topology is used to understand geometric objects that don’t change when bent or stretched. This is a must for any character artist to have a good understanding. Creating an animation-friendly topology is something an aspiring character artist needs to develop. This means that the low-poly model that is being created should have a mesh flow that is animation-friendly.

DRAPERY

The term ‘Drapery’ means the depiction of folds of cloth on characters. A good hand sculpting knowledge of drapery is a must. As a character artist, you will need to work on building those wrinkles into more of a realistic and believable asset.

OBSERVATION AND TAKING FEEDBACK

Last but not least, learn from other artists online. Everyone has their unique style, tips, and tricks. Observe them and do not shy away from taking positive criticism and feedback and improve accordingly. Other experienced and talented artists also went through the same.

If you’re an aspiring character artist looking for your next role in the games industry, check out our open positions on our Sumo Pune and Sumo Bangalore career pages.

SUMO INDIA STUDIOS HAD A BLAST AT SDC 2022

by sumoindia | Jul 1, 2022 | Uncategorized

Last week, Sumo Digital conducted its first-ever Sumo Developer Conference. People from all our studios gathered in Sheffield in the UK, and Sumo India also participated

SDC 2022 was our first in-person major collaborative learning experience. It happened on June 22 and 23 at the University of Sheffield where over 700 developers and 50 expert speakers from all our studios came together to collaborate and learn.

It was an unusually hot and sunny morning Wednesday morning last week when we everyone gathered at the event. The sheer excitement was seen on everyone’s faces while meeting and interacting with peers who they have been working with for so many years virtually.

The University of Sheffield is close to the busy city centre, and inside the buildings had been organized to host conferences and speeches in lecture theatres, with networking and demo sessions in the Mindsphere area. Presentations were given by both internal and external speakers at the conference with options to choose from disciplines covering Art, Audio, Code, Design, Personal Development, Production and QA.

After inspiring remarks and a speech from Gary Dunn (Managing Director of Sumo Digital), sessions started on various topics related to the various areas of game development, followed by networking and interactive get-togethers.

Sumo India Studios’ Principal Programmer Jithin Peter during his talk at SDC 2022

Each day, three hours were dedicated to meeting our colleagues, discussing shared challenges and successes, as well as learning and networking. Our very own Anubha Banerjee (Principal Programmer) and Jithin Peter (Principal Programmer) shared their knowledge as part of the Code talks.

Each of our people who attended the event also received a fantastic bag containing t-shirt, notebook, pen, pencil, water bottle and pin badge. The goodies were all eco-friendly and a great piece of memorabilia from the event!

After the first day of the event, we all gathered for a fantastic evening celebration at ‘Kommune’, which also houses the UK’s National Video Games Museum. With a wide variety of food and drinks on offer, and arcade and retro games galore, it was the perfect venue for a party for games developers.

SDC22 was exciting, exhausting, and full of expertise sessions, networking, interacting and meeting with the greatest minds in the video games industry. The event ended with Gary Dunn telling everyone that he’d see them next year for SDC23… and we can’t wait!

A big thank you to everyone who plays our games, and to our community – without you, we could have not reached where we are!

If you want to attend SDC 2023 next year, you’ll have to join the Sumo Digital family. Visit our Sumo Pune and Sumo Bangalore career pages to find the right role for you.

IN THE NEWS: THE FUTURE OF AAA GAMES IN INDIA

by sumoindia | Mar 15, 2022 | FEATURED GAMES PC

Extra! Extra! Read all about It!

Sumo India was in the news recently as we we featured on CNBCTV18 where we discussed the current state of AAA games in India – what they are and what the future holds for them.

Check out what Stewart Neal, Studio Director at Sumo India Studios, had to say on the emergence of AAA gaming in India, the roadmap for AAA games in this region, and more. You can find the story here.

USING UNREAL ENGINE AT SUMO INDIA

by sumoindia | Feb 24, 2022 | UNREAL ENGINE

Unreal Engine has been a pioneer and one of the most preferable game engine development tools for game developers to create top-notch AAA games. It was developed by Epic Games around 25 years ago and since then there have been several iterations and updates. Just recently Epic has come up with its new version – Unreal Engine 5.

Epic Games released its demo running on PlayStation 5 a year ago and it created a lot of buzz and gamers were awestruck after seeing it. Currently, the Demo reel stands at 16M views and needless to say, must have really helped Sony and Microsoft sell their latest new-gen consoles – PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

The Engine started as an editor that would enable Epic developers to build 3D games. Eventually, they built the rest of the engine around the editor so that artists and designers could easily use the tools to make incredible, alive 3D game worlds. The tool was able to do this with smaller teams. So many companies jumped into the bandwagon and have licensed it to create so many amazing games. Today, it’s been used by many developers including Sony and Microsoft and currently, their major flagship titles such as Microsoft’s Senua’s Saga Hellblade 2, Redfall is being developed using it. In the past Sony exclusives such as Days Gone, Concrete Genie have utilised various amazing functions of this tool to create larger, beautiful worlds for us to enjoy.

Sumo India has used Unreal Engine on several games including Spyder, Snake Pass, Hood: Outlaws & Legends and Sackboy: A Big Adventure. Among all the mainstream game engines of the day, Unreal Engine stands out mainly due to the sheer number of tools it provides for all game development disciplines. This is one of the major reasons large studios like ours chose Unreal Engine 4 for many of our games. The engine packs with tools and tech that spans almost all aspects of video game development. It is very easy for a beginner to get lost in the myriad of amazing features of the engine.

“I would suggest It will be best to keep in mind to try not to take in everything at once! Take your time working through small projects featuring a tech or two, and slowly expand out as you start your climb on the learning curve,” says Jithin Peter, Principal Programmer at Sumo Pune.

Level designers, Animators, Programmers, and technical artists (to name a few) all work on the same engine hence the features offered by the tool are equally vast. So, mastering the engine as a whole can prove to be quite a challenge. Instead, it will be ideal for one to select the discipline of their choice and explore various features the engine offers.

According to Udain Singh Tomar, Senior Level Designer at Sumo Pune. “I used Unreal Engine 4 for rapid prototyping using its visual scripting system. Its many in-build features also help in cutting down overhead for the same. There is a lot of free and premium learning material online, so it is hard to run into a wall midway through a project”.

It’s one of the best tools for any aspiring game development student to explore which can open a myriad of opportunities for you once you learn it.

Sumo India is looking for brilliant people to join its teams in Pune and Bangalore, with opportunities in various disciplines currently available.

WELCOME TO SUMO BANGALORE | STUDIO DIRECTOR STEWART NEAL TALKS ABOUT OUR INDIAN STUDIOS

by sumoindia | Sep 23, 2021 | FEATURED

Founded in 2007 Sumo Pune was the second studio opened by Sumo Digital and has co-developed multiple incredible titles, including Sackboy: A Big Adventure and Hood: Outlaws & Legends.

As Sumo Digital is set to expand and be joined by an exciting new game development studio in Bangalore, Studio Director Stewart Neal talks about the plans and his hopes for the future of game development in India.

Can you tell us more about Sumo Bangalore?

“Since Sumo Pune opened in 2007 it’s been a tremendous success, growing to a 150-person co-development team across Art, Programming, Design, QA and Production. Due to its ongoing success, the variety of world-glass games it co-develops and the global growth of its parent company – Sumo Group, the next step in the growth of Sumo in India is to open another studio.

“The new studio, based in Bangalore, will initially have a focus on specialist Engineering and Art, with other teams set to grow from this foundation.

“We’re so excited about this next phase for Sumo in India. Myself and my colleagues in operations and finance will be working with discipline heads across both studios to facilitate the growth and – most importantly – to ensure a seamless integration into both Sumo India and the Sumo Digital family, ensuring our working culture translates across both studios.”

Why did you choose Bangalore to open a second studio?

“Bangalore has been a well-established city for IT, software and gaming for many years, and has a wealth of game development, VFX and animation studios as well as respected Institutes developing world-class talent.

“There’s an existing pool of talent in Bangalore and I’m confident we’ll find good collaboration with municipal and academic players. The city has a commitment to digital development which is so important for Sumo and offers a good quality of life for those living there. All of this led to Bangalore coming out as top choice for the location of our next Indian studio.”

What sort of opportunities will be available at Sumo Bangalore?

“We’re initially growing the studio as specialists in Engineering and Art, and we’re already recruiting for a range of roles in these disciplines:

Engineering roles:
• Network Engineers
• Rendering Engineers
• Backend Engineers
• Physics Engineers
• UI/UX Engineers
• Systems Engineers
• Build Engineers

Art roles:
• Technical Animators
• Animators
• VFX Artists
• UI Artists
• Lighting Artists
• Character Artists
• Concept Artists

“We’re also looking to recruit for leadership in these areas, as well as roles in Production, HR and IT.”

When will the studio open?

“We’ll be working from home until at least the end of 2021 as the safety of our team is paramount to us. In the meantime, we are looking for an office space in Bangalore which we hope will be ready to move into early 2022, or as soon as it’s safe to do so.”

Along with the new Bangalore studio, plans have been laid out for Sumo Pune to expand. What can you tell us about it?

“We don’t shy away from a challenge! Whilst working from home over the last 18 months we have organically outgrown our current studio space due to the ongoing success of a range of projects we’ve been supporting. We’re also seeing further demand across all disciplines (including Art, Engineering, Design, QA and Production) as Sumo Group continues to grow.

“Sumo Pune has contributed significantly to console games, mobile/smart devices across all genres including first/third-person action/shooters, racing, adventure and sports games. Some of our titles include: Hood: Outlaws & Legends, Hotshot Racing, Forza Horizon Series, Crackdown 3, Snake Pass and Hitman 2.

“The incredible success of Sackboy: A Big Adventure – which saw major contributions from Sumo Pune – has also led to the expansion, as we want to continue to nurture the immense talent of our existing team in Pune.”

What does the expansion offer in terms of new opportunities for anyone looking to join Sumo Pune?

“The growth of Sumo Pune will further expand our commitment to console game development in the city and offer even more exciting opportunities to our people. We’re delighted to have secured additional office space in the existing Sumo Pune building, which will see us accommodating a further 90 people and allow us to grow across all disciplines.

“We cannot wait to share the design of the new space and will be releasing a look into the expansion on out social media channels. Watch this space!”

For anyone thinking about joining Sumo Digital in India, what sort of benefits and facilities can they expect?

“Sumo in India has always assured that its teams enjoy their work while maintaining their personal life. We’ve always prioritised employee wellness, satisfaction and job security. Here are all the benefits we’re so proud to be able to offer our people (and it’s a long list!):

• Flexible working hours
• Group Health Insurance Policy – Self, spouse and children covered up to 6 Lacs
• Term Insurance – 4 times of current CTC
• 21 days of paid holidays with four statutory days
• Five Learning days each year
• 4-weeks paternity leave, 6 Months Maternity leave
• Arrangements for bereavement, adoption and sabbaticals etc
• Monthly snacks amount top-up to your Sodexo card
• Competitive bonuses
• Relocation Assistance
• Industry-leading recruitment Referral Scheme
• Special Occasion Celebration & Celebration vouchers
• Timely care packages
• Regular socials including: Movie nights, Online watch parties, dinner parties, an invite to the much-loved ‘Sumo Big Day Out’ for you and your family
• Employee Assistance program
• Gaming events and activities which include team lunch/ team dinner
• Recognition of service length awards