But I will blog about one more thing from the day, which was the tour around the DCA’s Print Studio.

It proved a fantastic opportunity to check out what facilities they have to offer and what classes too. I never knew you could get workshops in Japanese Woodcut Printing!

The example work they had on display was lovely and really inspired me to consider screen and/or lino printing it up at this studio. I remember dabbling in it in college and naively looking into the prices of owning a screen-printing machine. So, I got the impression that this is a really good environment to develop those skills, amongst talented professionals.

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To find out what Dundee Popup was all about or to read more reviews & blogs  from the day, click here.

Realtime Worlds the awards winning game studio makers of Crackdown invited a select few people from Central Station to visit their studio and have a tour.

Colin McDonald gave a great introduction to the studio and let us in on some interesting stats information about how a studio that size starts and runs down developments that last somewhere in the region of 4 years.

As you might imagine the studio in Dundee employs quite a few people, for their latest game APB, which should launch in 2010, they currently have about 200 full time staff working on the game, though the studio in total is about 300. These developers, designers, artists UI experts etc have mostly been sourced from Scotland but about 40% of them have been brought in from around the world as good people are hard to find Colin explained.

Colin then led us out of the board room, where he had given us the intro, and we passed banks of Xboxs, PS3s and a full Rock Band setup. First stop was the testing area, here there were banks of game testers driving, running and most definitely shooting their way around San Paro, the city from APB.

This room was quite amazing, not only did each member of the team have a couple of monitors in front of them, but on 2 of the walls there were 4 meter projected views of the game shown.  On the other walls large screens showing what I can only guess were game stats and information about exactly what was going on in the virtual world at that time.

We then moved up to the sound studio areas where apparently on some days you see the unfortunate site of some poor chickens being punched to record sound effects for the realistic sounds of fight scenes. Colin also explained that some lucky sound engineers, when the studio was working on Crackdown, went out on location around the world to record sound for the different gangs.

Onwards and upwards we made our way up a few flights of stairs to the area where it seemed everything else happened. At Realtime Worlds rather than the teams being split by discipline, everyone is mixed up so concept artists, designers, animators and developers all work in pod type areas of maybe about 15 people. These teams work closely so they are able to share ideas on the part of the project they are working on.

This is where our tour came to an end, I’d really like to thank Colin and the guys at Realtime Worlds for taking the time to let us in to their studio and show us around. As a big fan of Crackdown (the reason I got an Xbox!) it was great to see where the magic happened and to get some insight into their new game APB which does look fantastic.

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To find out what Dundee Popup was all about or to read more reviews & blogs  from the day, click here.

Earlier today we spent somewhere near an hour in the Dalziel + Scullion studios in DJCAD. Matthew chatted to us about some of his live projects, talked us through how the commissioning and making process usually works for him. Very refreshingly, he discussed profit-making frankly, without any embarrassment and / or pain. How does an artist make enough to sustain him/herself and his/her work? How do you learn about contracting and working with all the various other people necessary to make particularly big installation pieces? No answers…just a tip to talk to people, to take advice, to think forward.

Dalziel + Scullion’s work is pretty wide-ranging. To classify what they do is pretty tricky – Matthew finds it hard. But he does say all their work is united by theme. Their work focusses on all things ecological, man’s place in the natural world. Which has proved to be pretty useful in a political environment that’s increasingly interested in the climate. They’re talking to the government about projects, have recently made a piece of work for the HBOS headquarters etc etc.

As well as working to commission they also make self-initiated, often smaller pieces of work. Including these beautifully printed bark tubes (I’m sure that’s not what they’re called.) The images are Dalziel + Scullion photographs that are then printed up in Dundee at the Print Studios. They’re made into tubes, sent down to London and sold through a gallery / shop. I think I’ve got all of those details right.

They were initially made for a show in a now closed gallery in Skye. It was part of a dispersed project that happened across the world, and all invited artists in the various countries were briefed to make something that could be sent through the post. And it’s kept going. It’s a nice small project that makes the guys some money. One of the questions asked – how does that make you feel? Working the same piece up over and over again? Does that make you a designer rather than an artist? Matthew says no not really. It makes you someone who can earn through his art, and there’s nothing wrong with that. And if someone wants to talk to them about turning the tubes into a commodity, say a lamp pendant, well they’d be more than willing to do that. Why not?

Last thing. They’re looking into setting up an MFA in Ecology and Art. Sounds interesting eh?

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To find out what Dundee Popup was all about or to read more reviews & blogs  from the day, click here.