"I just like to make stuff that when you look at it you're like, “天哪, 那很酷,’”Nicole Gorny说. 幸运的是, she gets to work on jaw-dropping video game demos every day as an Environment 艺术ist for Epic 游戏. 她对团队合作的承诺和她 计算机动画专业毕业 帮她找到了令人羡慕的工作.

Nicole originally enrolled in the 电脑动画 program because she wanted to make characters for Pixar or Disney Animation films. But that changed when she took a shading and lighting class with course director Shawn Rinehart. Nicole loved the challenges that came with perfecting the look and feel of an environment. “这太难了，但真的很有趣. I changed course from character art to shading and lighting because of that."

Nicole still had animated films in her sights until after she graduated in 2013. She landed her first job with multimedia company Cypress Inheritance and wound up helping their video game team and learning the Unreal game engine. “那时我就想，‘酷. 我想我要做游戏。”她说.

Nicole got good enough at Unreal Engine to teach other people how to use it, and a company called Cubic hired her to help them transition from CryEngine to Unreal Engine. Her first project straddled the fence between games and real life; it was a training program for Navy engineers. 她的团队负责登船, 用3D扫描仪捕捉每个部分, then turning the scans into usable geometry that could run in a game engine. The results helped engineers prepare to navigate the ship before they ever set foot inside. 她说, “这就像是第一人称游戏, and they have to go and know how to turn these switches and hit these valves."

合同结束后, Nicole freelanced to build up her video game portfolio, then wound up at Crystal Dynamics just in time to create environment art for 惊奇的复仇者. 给妮可，正在工作 复仇者 meant more than a flashy credit: She got to work alongside experienced video game artists and learn from industry veterans.

(我最喜欢的部分)是, 诚实, learning from everybody else… Even though I had done film before, 游戏仍然有些不同, and there's still way more people that know way more than me. 我总是喜欢学习新的程序, so learning the engine that they use and figuring all that good stuff out was fun,她说.

In 2019, Nicole made the jump from Crystal Dynamics to Epic 游戏. She's currently an environment artist on their demo team, creating that "wow" factor that draws in potential players.

Nicole's typical day at Epic involves modeling new buildings, 风景, or anything else the environment needs and working closely with her team's other artists. 因为妮可的团队很小, she needs to help out with a lot of different elements of game design and set her coworkers up for success. 她在满帆的经历让她做好了准备.

"满帆 was great, especially with teaching you a little bit of everything. Even if you don't think you're interested or ever going to use it, 知道它是如何工作的是非常有用的, so that way when you hand it off to the next person, they don't have to figure out what the heck you were doing,她说.

Having those generalist skills is very useful when a small team is running up against deadlines. "I don't rig every day but knowing how to do rigs is super useful because I can jump over and help them if I need to. I model and do all of that stuff, but I also jump over and know scripting."

Nicole owes a lot of her success to her tenacity and willingness to learn new things from the people around her. She encourages 满帆 电脑动画 students to keep plugging away at difficult concepts in their classes to discover new interests and help teammates. "You never know what you might have to end up doing or what you might find interesting later down the pipe, because you're in month one or two and think you're going to do this, [but] by the end of the month or by the end of your course, 你可能完全改变了你的想法."