Troy McCron

3D arts lecturer at Abertay Uni • Prev Senior character artist @Jagex character artist @Frontierdev • competitive bodybuilder • @robotninjabread.bsky.social

[Troy McCron @RobotNinjaToast]

That's! my submission The Mad king Arthur for the @ArtStationHQ challenge done! I can finally sleep

Big thanks to Michel Donze for the epic concept!

More pics here:
(link: https://t.co/KJBPrFgOEo)

#gameart #3dart #artstation #characterart #polycount #ArtistOnTwitter #substance

[Troy McCron @RobotNinjaToast]

@Rmlambert_00 @thekittenmancer Thanks man 😊 that's the hope 🙏 hopeful I can make little meaningful changes and leave more of a positive impact than a negative one. Small wins are still wins

[Troy McCron @RobotNinjaToast]

Discussing grind culture and the games industry on X. And unsurprisingly, 280 characters wasn’t enough, so I accidentally wrote an essay instead
It’s about why I think we’ve started confusing self-sacrifice with professionalism. I hope people still read😅
https://t.co/FYvzbQDG3z

[Henning Sanden @henningsanden]

For 3D students: Most I’ve met simply aren’t doing the hours needed to get into the industry. Studying only 10:00-16:00 every day won’t cut it - particularly since only a portion of the day is spent on actual work.

[Troy McCron @RobotNinjaToast]

@thekittenmancer @Rmlambert_00 Sometimes it takes a bit of back forward to realise you have common ground 😊

[Troy McCron @RobotNinjaToast]

@Rmlambert_00 @thekittenmancer Be the change you want to see - that's how I tackle it. Complaining is fine; got to vent, constructive criticism is better. Actions are the gold gold standard

[Troy McCron @RobotNinjaToast]

@gee_oji Yeah, I mean I did that; that's not really what I was talking about in my essay. Passion projects are great - just I wouldn't do them for the sake of ‘employability’ or frame it as ‘productivity’ a term that increasingly gives me the ick

[Del @TheCartelDel]

When I say a AAA trailer can cost "about four months of development iteration time", I don't mean it LITERALLY takes four months to edit a video. I mean that's roughly how much disruption gets spread across the team.

The first month is goddamn death by a thousand cuts. Producers and Directors need to figure out what the trailer is trying to say. Teams are pulled into meetings. Features get reprioritized. Artists, designers, engineers and QA all have to estimate what they can realistically contribute. Nobody stops working entirely, but everybody for sure loses some momentum.

Then you can have a period of intense focus where parts of the team temporarily pivot away from buildin the core game. Artists gotta create bespoke assets. Engineers are hacking together functionality that only needs to work in a controlled environment. Designers have script moments that sell the fantasy that takes so much iteration to get right. QA has to maybe validate a slice of the game that may not represent the wider experience. Because you can't showcase something that looks well but doesn't play well, (and then you're stuck with bullshit that looked good in a trailer). For a month or two, a significant amount of creative energy gets redirected toward the trailer.

BUT GUYS IT GETS EVEN MORE ANNOYING WHEN THE TRAILER SHIPS.

The month after is often spent stitching all that shit back together again. Teams gotta resync, all the damn plans get rewritten. All those features built for the trailer get integrated, or re-scoped (or ABANDONED???). Feedback from execs, publisher, press, or the public might even create new priorities. Not ot mention people have to remember where they left off before the interruption.

A whole bunch of people gotta take a couple days vacation after the trailer if they had to crunch for it. The trailer migtt only be three mintes long, but every AAA game development i worked on ran on momentum.

It's not that everyone suddenly stops working for four months. It's that hundreds of people each lose little chunks of time, and eventually those chunks add up to months of development momentum disappearing into the fucking void.

I'm trying to teach everyone how Game Dev works but it's too many words sometimes.

[Pitiwazou 3D Freelancer @pitiwazou]

My PieMaster add-on for Blender has been updated to version 0.1.1!

https://t.co/79yppvGu7X https://t.co/UcNEJAtHQZ https://t.co/oYMidVW08K

#piemaster #3d #b3d #blender #blender3d #3dart

[Troy McCron @RobotNinjaToast]

@Alejandro947174 @TheCartelDel @aswordofsoap This happens all the time, and when it does, it can lead to really painful project derailing and a lot of extra work. Nothing worse than working with the sword of Damocles of a trailer hanging over your head

[Troy McCron @RobotNinjaToast]

@Rmlambert_00 @TheCartelDel This is really cool, man. I'm so glad graphics cards have become more powerful. My uni laptop was a 1050, and it crashed pretty consistently with MT3, and I couldn't even open Unreal 😂 I hope this picks up and we see more portfolios

[Pablo Munoz Gomez @pablander]

Here's something I've been quietly working on for months... it started as a personal tool but after seeing how much it actually helped me in practice, I refined it to fit any workflow so I could share it. Meet RadialZ https://t.co/rFhu385W1r (coming this week!) #RadialZ #ZBrush

[Troy McCron @RobotNinjaToast]

@dekaf @TheCartelDel We’ve had regular industry panels and reviews over the years. The consistent message is that expectations for junior portfolios have risen dramatically.
I’m not saying graduates should know every pipeline. I’m saying we’re hiring for potential less and finished products more.

[Troy McCron @RobotNinjaToast]

Growing up in St Monans and then watching the trailers for this is a weird. Every few seconds I spot something that makes me think, “Hang on… I grew up there.”
Very excited to play it. Slightly concerned that my childhood appears to have been repurposed as a Silent Hill level 😂

[KONAMI UK @KONAMIUK]

Watch the latest trailer for SILENT HILL: Townfall.

Meet Zoe—a mysterious woman who appears before Simon.
Discover a fragment of the story in the latest trailer.

➡️ Pre-order here
https://t.co/J3XzWi8JfG

[Troy McCron @RobotNinjaToast]

@MjTheHunter Being a nice person 😂 genuinely though soft skills, 90% of the job is team work and communication

[Troy McCron @RobotNinjaToast]

@dekaf @TheCartelDel Fundamentals absolutely should be learned before employment. I’m talking more about production, pipelines, teamwork, feedback and studio workflows.
I’ve seen juniors hired with portfolios that already look mid-level while capable junior portfolios get overlooked.

[Troy McCron @RobotNinjaToast]

@TheCartelDel That’s incredibly kind of you, thank you. A few graduates immediately came to mind and I’ll reach out to them next week. I think we’ve got different perspectives on some of this, but I genuinely respect that you’re willing to invest your time in the next generation of artists.

[Troy McCron @RobotNinjaToast]

I’d actually love to see more senior artists share their entry-level portfolios. It would help contextualise how much people grow on the job and temper some of the expectations juniors place on themselves.

[Del @TheCartelDel]

@RobotNinjaToast I believe my 2010 portfolio would be close, but yes the barrier to entry has risen. But so has the resources. I never had YouTube tutorials or online classes as options.
https://t.co/bQsnk7H6N7

[Troy McCron @RobotNinjaToast]

@TheCartelDel Fair play for posting it. I don’t think YouTube replaces on the job mentorship, production experience, feedback from seniors, or being paid while learning. Information is more accessible than ever. Opportunity isn’t.

[Troy McCron @RobotNinjaToast]

@TheCartelDel Fair enough, and I appreciate the clarification. My concern isn’t whether hard work matters, it’s why the training burden keeps shifting onto newcomers while opportunities and junior development continue to shrink. Surely we should all be advocating for a healthier baseline.