Creative Update: February 2014

The last few months have been busy at best and I've accomplished much. While I have a few Video Game reviews I could post this week, with the start of the new year a quasi self-reflective post on things I'm working on seems healthy.

Photo by Tiffany Mueller

Random Encounter has evolved so much in the last two months that it's barely recognizable to me as being the same individuals or even an offshoot of the band I started so many years ago. I'm extremely proud of my bandmates as Rook has taken to professional bass lessons (far surpassing any skill I once may have had on the instrument), Kit got a huge promotion at work (I'm really proud of him) and has significantly increased in his recording abilities, Konami has really picked up a lot of the "band leadership/motivator" role & writes/arranges with me, and Moose is rapidly improving as a drummer, far surpassing the physical limitations of what he once thought was possible. We've become extremely organized... for us... We have some extreme goals for 2014 we intend to accomplish which I can't really share for awhile but we have some really exciting upcoming shows across the state, and at the shows we've played so far we've been very in-sync with one another to the point where I feel extremely comfortable in our performances... Something I never feel as a solo performer, and don't feel performing with other musicians. Sure everyone in the band (but me) is catching a variation of the MAG-flu, but all in all this will be a great year for Random Encounter, though I don't expect we'll have anything to show the public for our efforts for quite some time beyond live shows.

Careless Juja is also chugging along nicely. We're well into production of the Layton album and while many would find 4 hour recording sessions stressful, I really enjoy them in this creative outlet. Where Random Encounter is something that HAS to sound professional, I am not under the same self-imposed stress with CJ and can experiment as much or as little as I want to. To explain, I'm not particularly concerned if I don't become popular here so the only person I have to really please is myself (and Juja). My goal with CJ is to record music I want to hear, the way I want to hear it and I get that other people might not be interested, which allows me to try new things which I ultimately allow me to really grow as a recording musician. Most of the tricks I used for LMTYAS were things I discovered on accident while recording stuff for CJ. As CJ, when it stops being fun I stop recording, and when I run out of ideas I do something else. Juja's much the same way, we like the same things for the most part, and though we have a specific goal in mind that would seem taxing, recording what's left of 34 tracks in three weeks, I'm glad that we'll soon have a quality product of our musical friendship that we can share with the world.

Early Character Concept

The Liberty comic book series has seen its greatest developmental growth over the last two months than it's seen in the six months prior. There have been a lot of changes, so I'll start from the beginning... The comic book story takes place hundreds of years after the planet "Atrius" was colonized. Adam (the co-creator) and I sort of set an arbitrary marker for the "present" as being "roughly 600 or 800 years", what we thought was enough time passing to justify the social changes that would be required to make our story believable, but we didn't really have any idea or framework for the events that took place between the "present" (year 713) and the initial colonization of the planet. To fix this, and also to clearly compile a list of all government organizations that would be required to make the totalitarian Inner City function (with their respective job functions, key personnel, and jurisdictions) I put together a book called A Citizen's Guide to Atrius. The intent of the book was to paint an outline to the city's events and a (now very colorful) history over the course of 50 pages while giving bios for key figured, places of interest and the like, without giving so much detail as to make writing future books or comics about those events seem excessive. It's sort of like how I read the Wikipedia entry for the Crucible and was still captivated when watching it performed at a local theater, being genuinely surprised with the outcome of the trial despite knowing how it was supposed to end. The Citizen's Guide is effectively written (taking up most of my December), being edited by someone with a working knowledge of the Chicago NB format. The illustrations for the book should be done sometime in March and if there's enough interest we might do a limited self-publishing run, but I'm skeptical anyone will want a background book to a story that hasn't been published.

Recent Character Concept by Adam

With the sudden existence of a detailed history we had a make a large number of revisions to the comic book script to ensure that continuity existed between the history book and the script itself. As we've not published anything we're thankfully free to make revisions unlike authors like Tolkien (who i'm told desperately wanted to go back and rewrite the Hobbit), or Lucas (who everyone was angry at for revising the cannon of the expanded universe) which took the bulk of my January to accomplish. While I was working on this Adam developed a line of "standard issue" firearms for the Inner City, departmental color schemes, and a general color scheme for the comic, settling on an uncommon color scheme we think will be most visible on a comic book store shelf. We also added a dedicated cover artist for the entire series to our creative team, which we're really happy about. In the short-term we are also working with concept artists to create a unique sense of fashion in the world, a designer to create logos for each governmental division/department, and an archaeological illustrator (my girlfriend) to create a legit archaeological illustration of one of the city's key buildings, as well as an awesome 3d rendering. We're also working with someone who designs advertisements and logos as their full-time job to create a title for the series. I'm finding each of these individual processes to be fascinating, and working with professionals in each of their respective fields has been quite an experience. I hope to share some aspects of the creative process in the coming months but for now it's a bit too early to really get into.

On a final comical note, we had a rough revelation last week whereby we concluded that the amazing back-story we'd written for one of the main characters (which is periodically referenced throughout the script) could have never taken place within the confines of our world's history. Instead of rewriting what he have, we sadly concluded that it's all true... in that character's head and that s/he's simply delusional.

Comic Production: Editing & Art Direction

"Work Harder!"
An early concept by Adam Cartwright

We're only 8 days into November (at the time of writing this) and I know I've already spent well over 30 hours editing the comic book series. We're still storyboarding the final third of the series, and while I can't change a whole lot about what I've written, I've been asked to go through and revise all of the dialogue in the series with a fine-tooth comb, character by character. So I've had to go through the script, character by character, and modify each person's speech to be unique from the others. Most of our characters come from different places in society, don't have a very diverse vocabulary, and generally won't use words with more than three syllables, while others never use conjunctions, or intentionally use big words to confuse everyone else and take advantage of them.

More complexity is added to the situation because the world we've created is extremely phonetic, literal, foreign (different planet), and has to lack all modern idioms/references. So as I scour the pages of the script for instances of "makes sense", "make sure", "make yourself at home", etc, i'm also looking out for things in the social context of our series, like the various perceptions of how to measure time, how numbers are perceived/measured, or if a character believes in evil/good or moral ambiguity. I also have to avoid any modern terms or phrases like "fish in a barrel," "bull crap," or anything else that refers to plants or animals because they don't exist in the comic. It was a surprisingly more difficult task than initially expected and much of the speech patterns feel truly foreign to English. I had to create rules for a phonetic low-class language early on to make it understandable, while still not resembling good English, and remaining phonetically true to how I'd like the words spoken. For example, one character almost never uses "the", instead opting for " a'." While I could have opted for 'da (as in, 'da bomb) instead of a' the character doesn't use the "D" sound much, so it wasn't true to the phonetic rule. Hopefully what I've got passes the final editor's approval and is easy enough to understand. This sentence summarizes much of my work, how "I brought some mercenaries here as insurance to make sure that didn't happen" becomes "Got some friends here ta’ make sure ‘at didn’ happen."

Tattoos for Tarot

On the production side, I generally look at the last week's art and mark things that need to be changed. These are things like making sure that everything in the script that was important was included (continuity), that excess frames are cut, that characters don't look stiff, that with no knowledge of the script I as a reader can understand the visual motions happening in the scene without explanation, and that a given characters' expressions and body language fit the character. We've been working on concepts and thumbnails (basically storyboards) for the last few months so it's important that I suggest large artistic revisions before we get to the sketching phase. Our methodology is admittedly abnormal in the regard that we're working to finish the storyboards for the entire series before we move on to the sketching phase but otherwise we're following a fairly traditional model. 

Effective Pacing?
That is the question

Pacing is another one of those tough spots that separates a good artist from a good sequential artist. There is a balance between cutting a scene short versus dragging it out for too long and it's the difference between an interested readership, boredom, and being confusing. It's also fairly hard to convey subtle motion gestures like a "nod" in sequential art without spending too much time on them, so you need to improvise around certain gestures. Here's an example of the sort of things that sequential artists think about.

Illustrate a character picking up and eating an apple.

Idea 1 

Frame of the character eating an apple.

We skipped half of the job by not illustrating the character picking up the apple. Was it important to show them picking up an apple? Maybe not, but if so, the reader has no idea where the apple came from and there is not enough information in the single frame (without additional points of reference) to assess much of anything about it's origin. Perhaps the character was carrying it, perhaps it was in his/her pocket, perhaps they just found it. Most readers will assume it's clean because the character is eating it, unless the character itself looks dirty. However, this example has not conveyed a character picking up AND eating an apple, just the eating part.

Idea 2 

Frame of an apple, close up. 

Frame of character eating an identical apple.

This is still not very effective because we don't know where the apple that the character is eating came from. We are left to assume that the apple is the same one from the closeup frame (background can help sell this idea) or else the artist likely would not have focused on it for a full frame... Unless it's an apple not yet consumed (still in the background), implying that the character is eating many apples and that perhaps something bad/good will happen when they reach the one from the closeup. Poison apple?

Idea 3 

Frame of an apple, close up, or alternatively an establishing frame of the character and the apple apart.

Frame of a hand moving towards an apple. 

Frame of a character (with a matching hand) eating the apple.

This is fairly effective and can be made more effective by use of color on the hand or by perhaps giving the character a long-sleeve shirt or unique identifiable quality that's visible in the last two frames.

Idea 4 

Frame of an apple, close up. 

Frame of a hand reaching towards the apple. 

Frame of a character matching the hand from frame 2 looking at the apple. 

Frame of the character blowing on the apple. 

Frame of the character wiping the apple on their sleeve. 

Frame of the character looking at the apple to make sure it's clean. 

Frame of the character eating the apple.

While intentionally extended to 7 frames for emphasis, you can see how this sequence of events could easily detract from the main story... Unless the point of the scene was to imply that life is moving slowly, or to give an internal monologue, or perhaps to make a seemingly important statement about the character's nature that couldn't otherwise be presented in a different scene. The point here is that this example wastes 7 frames, possible 2 full pages (pages = $), to show something that doesn't progress the plot, doesn't make a statement, and is possibly boring to look at. This isn't to say that you can't add other elements like the aforementioned monologue, or perhaps to use this as a visual dynamic while a conversation is taking place, but on its own this is probably excessive framing.

So this week's post ends with the sort of joke you'd find in an action film.

Frame 2: Anarchist: "What's the password?"

Frame 3: Glasses Guy: "Huh?"

Frame 4: Gun: JAM*

Frame 6: Gun: click click

Frame 7: Anarchist: "Nice joke, eh?"

Frame 7: Text Box (bottom of frame): *There are few things more upsetting in life than a gun jam.

Music/Creative: A Recording Guide: The Making of Unavenged

"Live For Revenge!" (photo by Tiffany Mueller)

This is kind of a continuation from the 'Making of Self Titled'... Aka: My personal growth as a recording musician, or a cautionary tale of things to think about before going to a studio... Aka: The ghost of Credit Cards Past...Due. 

So where I ended the last post it was 2010, I was close to $7000 in debt from recording an album, my entire band had quit, and I was just about to quit my semi-public career as a musician. Somehow, less than a month after the band played its last show I was optimistically performing shows with a final and present incarnation of the new band of the same name. I'll skip most of the details here, so just accept that Rook, Moose, Kit and I were enthusiastically performing as the band Random Encounter (occasionally with our friend Konami) for about a month when we decided to start recording a new album that represented us, as opposed to the previous 'Random Encounters.' Our goals were well defined and fairly simple: to record all of the tracks we performed on an album called 'Unavenged!' So I called up the local recording studio again and explained that I had a new band that would actually show up to record their parts; No bs, no experimenting with arrangement for 4 months. We booked weekends at the studio for a solid month and a half.

A New Band is Born!

The recording process for Unavenged was fairly straight forward. The band (driving together from Orlando) showed up, recorded parts, and went home. We were all there for moral support, discussed what we wanted on the album, and even made lists for each bandmate of "things to record" and "things to re-record" until we were happy with how it sounded. It was insanely fun and I personally remember that we (the band) started to really feel like a family of sorts. Notably I also wan't the only person putting in money either (the unemployed in our number sold blood plasma to help contribute). It was a really pleasant experience and the only strange thing about recording the album was the fact that we didn't actually know how to play all the songs before we started recording, nor had we finished really experimenting with them. There's a grey area between waiting too long to record something (stunting the growth of a new band) vs recording too soon and while we definitely could have recorded a better album had we waited a few months I don't think we would have had as many good opportunities if we'd waited, so I'm still happy with our decision. It's also worth mentioning that you should trust a professional engineer to make what you have sound good (setting up mics, mixing, etc) but you ultimately should know your equipment (and what you want to sound like) better than anyone else. Don't let someone else dictate the FX/EQ settings on your guitar, bass, or amp if you have a specific sound you're going for or else your preferences will just become what the engineer thinks sounds good... Which can be really generic.

In The Studio, Late at Night

When it came down to my parts it was similar to the experience with the last album in that I went to the studio alone with the engineer, recorded, and edited for (a few) days on end. There were some things that we were ultimately unable to change due to time constraints (I wanted the album done in a very short period of time) such as: Re-recording the first pass of -72 hours-, which i'd originally thought would be hilarious at 72bpm only to discover that it felt too slow (for me... that and no one seemed to get the 72bpm, 72 measures joke), or that we forgot to record an introduction to Gerudo Valley (which I had to personally make happen), or the way I'd sort of envisioned Still More Fighting's intro. I also reached the same point as I'd reached in the last album, where I noticed that we were pretty much done recording but felt like something was missing... However, this time we were prepared.

Rook's Lucky Doll Head, Masha

A month or so before recording we preemptively requested assistance from a few friends to record parts with the anticipation that we'd need help to reach our deadline. The biggest contributor was Konami (the same awesome guy who later joined as a regular band member). He was insanely busy at the time helping NASA or something but graciously recorded parts for more than half the album on his guitars to help fill in some of the gaps. It wasn't that Kit couldn't learn and record the parts, it was that Konami already knew them (because he performed with us) and could record while we worked on other parts of the album, further helping our very restrictive schedule. Other guest musicians on the album included Elaine Li from Select Start, who drove 4 hours to the studio through a bad storm, was involved in a car accident on the way to the studio, and still showed up 10 minutes early to deliver some of some of the best performances on the album! It's also very much worth mentioning that Moose enlisted Sir. Dr. Robert Bakker from The Protomen as I enlisted Johnny "On The Spot" Frank to record parts on some really intense acoustic guitar tracks (Gerudo Valley and Unavenged respectively) from their respective states while the band was in the studio in Florida. The sound engineer and I also recorded a fun "Clank" sound for Boletarian Syndrome by smashing a piece of iron with a 2 handed mallet, which is technically a sort of guest instrument. The only other guest-oddities of note are that I'd started working with "The Great Juja" and "Auriplane" shortly before the band disbursed and re-formed (in 2010) on a Sonic medley called "The Sonic Suite" (The drums were recorded by Adam "One" during one of the self-titled recording sessions and accordion was recorded at my home using a slightly nicer vocal microphone than the $50 one I started with), which found it's way onto the album. In an effort to tie our album into the previous Random Encounter incarnations we also re-recorded the Introduction Theme from Final Fantasy 6, using it as a 'starting point' of sorts to (somewhat personally) acknowledge that previous incarnations of the band existed but to signify that the name had evolved into something different. We used the original piano track from Neo Symbiance (recorded years earlier by Helios!) to complete it. Lastly, we included a pleasant piano track Helios had recorded and forgotten about (but that I got permission to include) called "Miss You," which I found burred in an old computer he'd asked me to scour for specific data before formatting.

Sound Check

Back to editing: Around that time I'd started taking private lessons for rhythm (specifically snare drum) to improve my sense of timing and also saw a dramatic improvement in detecting if something was 'off rhythm' in the editing phase. The ever-developing "ear for editing" was also kind of a curse because there's no way to turn off the ability and I annoyingly found things I wanted to "edit" when listening to music recorded by other artists I'd previously found soothing. It was a feeling akin to discovering that movies are shot in multiple "takes", as opposed to all at once, and now being conscious of continuity or dubbing errors. The sound engineer also expressed that he experienced the same thing and made a game out of finding mistakes in songs on the radio. In short, I became a significantly better editor during the project (practice makes perfect) and started coming up with creative solutions and "fixes" that the engineer didn't even think was possible. I started to think I was pretty awesome until it came to the part where I had to record vocals...

Kit Enjoying my Vocals

 From day one I immediately loathed working on vocals, especially my own, and there were some big moments during the project where I'd strongly considered stepping down as the band's vocalist altogether. Atonal vocals? Fine. Happy Joy? Fine. Songs with vocal variety were another matter altogether. In working with Melodyne (a program that shows you exactly what you're singing on a grid, kind of like Rock Band), I saw that I knew nothing of how to sing on pitch. To make matters worse, early exports of the vocal tracks I'd shared with a friend got me the single brutally honest criticism of "you sing with no emotion whatsoever." He was correct though, and accepting that fact was invaluable to my growth as a musician. I started taking vocal lessons to improve my pitch and during the recording process I did everything to try and sing "with heart" in the studio. I thought good thoughts, brought pictures of pets and loved ones to the sessions, and ultimately sacrificed some pitch for emotion (Worth noting: I was also still revising the lyrics to -72 hours- and Unavenged during the recording sessions) because I wasn't able to start vocal lessons until after the recording sessions had begun. People have since seemed generally happy with the vocal tracks (or at least didn't comment negatively on them) so I feel a lot better about my vocal abilities (and limits) but I was very upset during this process. I also found it frustrating trying to sing notes you've never heard sung before, pitch-perfect, like when you're writing a new vocal melody. A final note on vocal recording is that I recorded the vocal 'harmonies' during some of the chorus sections on the spot, completely improvised, just for laughs and (surprisingly enough) kept most of them. Looking back I should have thought the vocals through more, practiced them, and recorded them at a later date but we were able to make many of the backing vocals sound passable through the magic of editing.

Fall 2010

After what felt like a month or so of recording and another month of editing (I kid you not, we were billed for exactly "72 Studio Hours" of recording) we sent the tracks off to Rob Kleiner. I can equate the experience of sending our tracks to a true industry professional to the story of the princess from Rumpelstiltskin spinning hay into gold. I only had a small understanding of how professional mixing and mastering worked but even then the differences were easy to hear. While this was being done the band sat down and had deep discussions about our branding, back story, and "age rating." I feel it's worth mentioning that once again we cut the new set of extremely explicit introduction tracks I'd recorded and again cut 'What's Up People', which has allowed us to share our music with a lot of (very young/old) people I wouldn't have thought possible over the years. We also agreed to produce a high quality album on a jewel case (as opposed to "sleeves" or a digital-only release), because we felt strongly about wanting to present ourselves as professionals. While I worked on finding a printing company, Kit worked on our Kickstarter, Moose scheduled an album release show, and Rook worked with Dennis Hansbury on the album art.

Original Album Concept by Rook

Somewhere in the all the above chaos the band had commissioned our friend Dennis Hansbury to make the album art without much of an idea as to what we wanted. Did we want video game iconography, to focus on the Russian monster-hunter mythos, or something else entirely? During a brainstorming session at Yogurt Land while Rook and I were gushing about the Russian artist Ivan Bilibin, (my memory is hazy as to how, but) we finally concluded that we wanted to recreate a sketch Rook had drawn of the band, in a style similar to Bilibin's, focusing on the band's conflict with Koschei the Deathless. Moose mentioned he wanted dilapidated buildings and someone (Kit?) said that profiles might be cool. Dennis gave us some alternate concepts of Koshei, took reference photos of the band members, and eventually the drafts we received quickly evolved into our album art, despite Dennis fighting a rather horrible cold at the time. My favorite piece is definitely the disc art/backing with the needle-egg-duck-rabbit-chest-tree. It just fit really well together.

Rock Party, Fall 2010

Where Self Titled was released quietly and kind of fizzled, Unavenged had an album release party complete with guest musicians, Protomen, and home baked goods! We also got a mention on BadassOfTheWeek.com and the opportunity to introduce people to our album on an east-coast tour of the U.S.! On a financial note, even if you technically 'break even' on the cost making an album, the sheer amount of effort involved with getting your music in front of people (shows, driving to shows, gas, interviews, promotional stuff, giveaways, the great migration from Myspace to Facebook, and your tour van breaking down every other show) comes at a large cost. At the risk of sounding like a corporate tool I'd still like to say that the tools we found most helpful on the post-production side were Kickstarter (crowd-sourcing which helped cover some of the costs associated with making the album), Bandcamp (which helps us conveniently share our music with people who can't afford our album), and CDBaby.com (which puts your music almost everywhere music is sold and has really solid reporting/remittance).

Random Encounter Photo Shoot (Fall 2010, (photo by Tiffany Mueller))

This certainly isn't a Disney success story by any means but it's the journey I've undertaken to learn more about how recorded music is made. I hope that my misadventures are amusing and perhaps insightful. I also can't wait to write one of these about the upcoming Random Encounter album I'm currently working on! ...speaking of which.

Full Band (Photo by Ben Trivett)

How to: Interview with a Game Designer

World Map for my Sunday D&D Group

Preface:

A close friend of mine is about to shape his life into the mold of one who seeks employment at a video game company. He wants to become a game designer or artist, but has very little first-hand knowledge on the topic. As I don't know much either I interviewed an anonymous friend who works at a large game design/publishing company as a programmer to find out what sort of things are needed these days to be a game designer!

Interview by Careless

What does one need to learn to get started in a game design/development position?

Hmm, well that depends on what you want to do. There are lots of roles in game development: programming (within that, AI, gameplay, systems, optimization, UI, physics, online [the trickiest and best-paying]), 2d art, 3d art, concept art, texture art, 3d modeling, 3d lighting, 2d animation, 3d animation, rigging, facial animation, sound engineering, sound production, music production, audio engineering (in the programming sense), interface design (that's what I do), gameplay design, general design, project management, press relations and marketing, quality assurance, and many others.

If you're talking about being a straight up auter game designer then in my experience what you chiefly need, unfortunately, is a lot of luck. Design is what everybody wants to do, so there are a lot of applicants. The trend at My company (intentionally not named) has been to look more to graduates of the game-design master's programs from specific colleges I can't list here... These guys (As opposed to some of the two year colleges) know their stuff!

So, if you want to be a designer you can get a degree in Game Design and you will have a better chance at getting a job than if you didn't have the degree, sure. But anyone's chances at getting a (paying, anyway) job as a Game Designer are pretty slim because there are so many applicants and it's often not really about how smart or clever or creative you are, it's more about leading a team around one vision, which is both much easier and much harder than writing code.

I got into the industry by getting a degree in Comp Sci and becoming an Actionscript developer. I spent a year making very little money, doing Flash web sites, and sending out internet applications. Luckily, it turns out, most video game UI is built in Flash, usually running on top of Scaleform. So knowing how to build stuff got me in the door.

By the way, about Arts Colleges--there are several folks working at my company who are graduates from arts colleges. They all work as artists (A VERY hard gig to get unless you're utterly amazing) or interface designers. If you know how to make a badass Flash website, then you are qualified to do UI on a 3D game, or make 2D games in Flash. I guess I'm recommending that you learn Flash! No matter what Apple thinks about it, it's here to stay in game development for at least the next console generation and with the web trending away from it, less people are going to be competing for it.

What should someone include in a portfolio (concept art, project experience, demo reels, etc)?

As much as possible, honestly. When we hire, we're looking for experience. The more stuff you have in your reel, the greater the perception is of you being experienced, and therefore ready to work and contribute from day one.

Use images or other multimedia wherever possible, instead of a bulleted list of projects. Feature screenshots or concept art! You want to dazzle. Even if the image represents a collaboration you definitely want to pique interest first and foremost.

That being said, if I'm looking at a reel of three awesome things, and another of ten mediocre things, I'll pick the first one. So be proud of whatever you're showing. "Whatever is in your portfolio is going to be someone's assumption of the level of quality you'll be able to deliver the second you sit down at your desk." The specific type of stuff in your portfolio, of course, will depend on the position you want. Whatever it is find some way to be visual and exciting.

Should one attempt to make their own games for their portfolio?

If you follow a game design track in school you'll come out the end with several school projects under your belt. Show these, but don't be deterred from applying without games in your reel.

If you decide to become a programmer, you'll be hireable in games even if you've never worked on a single game.  Just find a way to present your past work visually and dynamically. If you want to be a designer, then you absolutely will need to show games you've either built, or worked on.

Is there a way to shadow someone to see what it's like within the field of game development?

My company has historically offered unpaid internships but they're difficult to get and I'm not sure if we still do them. I'd be happy to answer any other questions you might have about what it's like, but generally it's just about what you'd imagine. Lots of hard work, lots of meetings. Lots of sitting in a cubicle. Lots of frustrations, lots of heartbreak. But if you love games, it's worth it.

Pixel Soldier by Adam Cartwright

Is animation good to learn as well?

Only if you want to be a full-time animator. Roles on big projects are very specialized. If you're more of a jack-of-all-trades, you'd be better off working at a small company where role-switching happens a lot because there aren't as many people. The drawback to this, of course, is that small teams just can't keep up with the EAs and Activisions with their hundreds of artists, so they don't generally bother with 3D art. Instead (smartly) they do 2D facebook/mobile games.

I'd definitely recommend you ignore 3D art of any kind unless you want to market yourself as an expert in that field, because there really isn't much demand for someone who only dabbles--it takes a loooong time and teams of artists to do that stuff. Being a 3D artist doesn't mean you can't eventually make the jump to design either, by the way. I find that once you're in the organization, if you work hard and meet the right people, you can transition to new roles.

My last question: Is it advisable to learn programming? If so what languages?

My personal recommendation--keeping in mind I'm biased--is to start with actionscript. You can acquire a copy of flash, or use Flex, the open-source actionscript compiler. Tons of great online tutorials are available available. You can build a game or any kind of application you want from scratch and you will be hireable as an interface designer. Google "scaleform games" for an idea of how many games' menus were built using Flash. Scaleform is specifically a sort of in-game Flash player. That's not even the whole story: Companies I've worked with use proprietary software that does the same thing as Scaleform and this seems to be a common practice.

If you want to be a software engineer--and make big bucks and have bulletproof job security--then C++ is the way to go. Get Visual Studio and a couple of books and get started. Even at an intermediate level, if you have a head for logic (NOTE: You don't need to be a math or science whiz. Programming is just LOGIC!), you will be hireable in games. Even better, you'll be hireable in about 40 other industries, all of which will pay you enough to start your own small game company if the mood ever strikes you.

But even if you are destined to become a Game Designer who never codes as part of his job the answer is still absolutely 'YES, you must learn at least a little programming.'

If you love music but can't sing or play any instruments, can you write a song? If you love movies but don't know lenses or lighting or cinematography, can you direct a film? If you're the best race car driver in the world but don't know any mechanical engineering or physics, can you design a car?

A computer game is a piece of software. Therefore a computer game designer is a SOFTWARE designer. If you don't know how software works you can't design it. You can come up with ideas, but so can everyone on the Internet.

I'm not saying you have to be an expert coder, but you do need to know the basics--variables, loops, conditionals. You will be working with engineers who will tell you your idea is impossible, every day. People resist ideas that aren't their own. This is human nature. If they can steamroll you by giving you a bunch of technical jargon and you can't understand it, they will always win the argument. This is something I see happen all the time. Whenever I want to innovate and I need engineers to build something for me, the fact that I know conceptually how it can work and can speak their language goes a long way in seeing that the thing actually gets done.

Don't be scared of programming! It's really not that hard. Like I said, it's just logic. You do not need to be a genius to program. The computer does all the work for you. Programming is just how you tell the computer what you want it to do. Best of luck to your friend and anyone else who reads this!