Task 4

Swot Analysis
Freelance
Jim manning

Strengths

Working in Hampshire Jim Manning is a 2D, 3D freelance character designer. He is skilled in 3D modelling including rigging, texture creation, editing, postproduction, animation and web design. He is also skilled with many other film editing software such as after effects and premiere pro. Manning has had 11 years of experience working in this type of field where he has worked for a computer games company for 6 years. At the moment as well as solo freelancing he is the head artist at a 3d animatics company in London.

A lot of his work that he has produced is featured like a portfolio on his website at http://www.giembi.com/Home.php
The website serves its purpose and advertises his range of work. The font used on his website is highly visible to the naked eye, with the white font over the black background, all information is very clear. Manning is featured on other freelance websites, to attract more business, he advertises his own website link.

Weaknesses

His website is very basic and apart from his work it has no real attraction. There are no interactive features or onscreen animations and it looks very similar to many sites. As he works for a 3D animatic company his time spent on his freelance job is limited and may take longer to finish the job.

Company
EA Games

Strengths

Electronic arts, is a global online and in game corporation with multiple development locatons ranging from America, Canada, Germany, Britan, China and Austraila. Each office has the latest design software with a massive team of highly skilled staff for each spercific Job. The characters they design for are used by playstation 3, X box 360, PSP, Nintendo Wii, DS and many other computer consoles. There are numorous types of character design which are focused around four different types of games that EA Develop. These are Action games, Sports such as Madden, The Simms and Casual entertainment. With other multiple competitors, EA is constantly researching and updating characters from each of the four topics, keeping on top and createing newer interestes that will encourage a wider type of audience.

With the high popularity of some of tbe games EA are permanatly being advertised. The main Characters from a game are featured, on posters, Television adverts and in magezines such as PSM3. As well as being advertised on other various websites, EA also have there own fully fuctional website at http://www.ea.com/. It is a brightly coloured, visible informational website with various pictures of game charaters. It markets all of the games with the use trailers, screenshots, previews etc. It can be easily used and it features a search engine to help.

Weaknesses
When working for a large team problems can still accure where studios have to be shut down and large amounts of jobs can be cut are all at once. Although character design is not a problem, many of the EA games are platform games and are dependent on other game companies to design them. leading to limitations in design capabilities, graphics and game performance

When the Character design process has ended there are still other parts of the game that are need to be finished, dilaying the distribution time for the entire team. When fully completed the game has to be released around certain times of the year like christamas. During the sales the costs lower making the games less profitable.

Opportunities

Newer and more realistic army games can be made to recreate a simulation for a solider in training, featuring voice commands and instructional coaching. These simulation games can also be used in other important government fields such as medical and educational training

Threats

When creating a game and selling it it is mandatory to make a profit for the gaming console process to continue.