Special Guest: Wes Parker, Character Modeler

(In Photo: From Left to Right (Special Guest) Wes Parker, (students) Josh Carpenter, Richard Smith and David Maske)

On Friday, we had a special guest Mr. Wes Parker from Gearbox Software. Wes is a Character and Prop Modeler. We were classmates at the University of Texas at Dallas, as I was in the middle of getting my Master's degree he was finishing up his undergrad. He has been in the industry for over 7 years. He has worked on mobile games (before they were called apps). Currently he is one of the character Modelers for Borderlands 2.

He discussed how it was to go from a small size company to the size that Gearbox is now. How he went from a lead at his previous company to starting over as an intern to prove himself. As he continued his talk the fire alarm went off, we had to exit the building. He picked up us talk as we were standing in the adjacent building that we were escorted to (10 feet from the building we just exited). Once we returned to the building, he used a students prop to demonstrate the proper way to UV unwrap. His demo was with 3D Studio Max and Photoshop (the software(s) they use at Gearbox). Along with this demo of uv unwrapping, he also showed some of the ways he likes to texture. After the texturing demo, he had some time to show use his sculpting skills in zbrush. Some of his models have 250 different pieces to it or tools, I believe he called them. Very impressive work. He does a weekly video cast of his sculpting/modeling abilities. Click here for the link to his video cast The majority of the class uses Maya, but I believe after his talk they went home and fired up 3DS.

(In Photo: From Left to Right: Back Row - Anil Ghale, David Maske, Garrett Spurgeon. Middle Row - Richard Smith, Wes Parker, David Rodriguez. Front Row - Josh Carpenter and Richard Wilprit)

PS. I am sorry for the lateness of this post, I typically post the day of. But got behind in some work. I truly respect all my special guest and want to show them the appreciation and admiration I have for all of them.