So today we visited Glass Egg Digital Media. This was the company visit I was most excited to attend, and it did not disappoint. We walked into the main room and all the artists were sitting at their computers stations working on the next big gaming project. I saw cars and characters in the early development stage and it was so cool to see what goes on behind the scenes in video games like Forza and Call of Duty: Black Ops, both of which Glass Egg designs the cars and weapons for. The talent of the 3-D artists is incredible, and it made me want to work there so much! We headed into the conference room to watch a presentation on the company and had a question and answer session with the COO and CFO of the company. They were both really nice and funny and I could just tell the work atmosphere of this company is what I want in my future career (a.k.a hire me)!
In the presentation, we learned a lot about the history of the company and the rocky start it had and how it got to be the successful company it is today. They focus on designing 3-D cars for racing games. If a client asks for a specific car model to be designed, Glass Egg can photo-realistically render the car into a 3-D model ready to be inserted into games. A problem they encountered when they first started up was differentiating their company – if a car was so straight-forward to make a 3-D rendering of, what makes clients want to hire them over any other digital media company? Simply put, they make the best quality and their impressive portfolio proves that. They landed big clients include EA, Microsoft, Namco, and more, thanks to the talent of their art staff. Another issue, and part of the reason why they focus on just cars, is when clients come to them asking for characters. Everyone has a different vision for what a character should look like, so subjective renderings are hard to match the vision of their clients and take too much time and energy from the company and artists. In Vietnam, they enjoy the benefits of cheap labor and also employee loyalty, as there are few other companies in the country that do the same thing Glass Egg does. And for that reason, they don’t see themselves expanding to other countries because the competition would be too high in places like China, which they briefly considered.
All in all, this was my favorite day so far. I know it’s only Day 3, but still. I love this company, what they do, and the people that work here! I’m going to get started on my art portfolio to apply to this company now….
Until tomorrow!
