Game jams - itch.io (callender of gamejams worldwide)
Indie Game Jams
Global Game Jam®
This is a yearly global game jam at various locations i participated twice. In general you don't bring any premade materials other than a texture libary and stock photo's to work from. Since internet tends to be iffy such a database is allowed but in general all work has to be done on site.
At the start of each gamejam there's useally a theme. And you get a "badge" with your skillset. Usually Marketing(management, concept, story)/2DArtist/3D Artist/Animator/Programmer/Game Design/Audio
Usually teams are about 3-8 people depending on venue and product. You start of with getting yourself a team not everyone will be on the same level. So try to get an idea of what your team excels at and try to incorporate that strength into your design. The next 48/72 hours these will be your family to the end everyone gets tired so grumpy as well. Make sure to get some 4 hours a sleep every night. And bring a heater and blankets. If you have "gaming" gloves bring them. Make sure to plan moments to eat outside of the room you're building getting rest tends to be forgotten but it brings brotherhood and clears air between tired crew members as well as fresh insight.
Give your crew no more than 5% of the total game jam time to decide upon an idea and game that you're going to develop. You usually work in scrum or kanban management methodology. So get yourself acquainted with them it can really help you easing working together with new people.
As an Artist make sure you know how to put your assets into the game (Unity/Unreal/Hammer) yourself. Since a lot of rookie mistake tend to be that the programmer has to do all of this (and programmers tend to be a rare commodity). And teach your marketing guy to do this as well, they are usually the ones treated like an intern but keep oversight.
Don't be afraid to work with other teams and talk with them it's part of the fun experience and a good way to get some contacts for later in life and or other gamejams.
Sound artist tend to a rare commodity as well so if you can't nab one yourself try to borrow one from other teams by having clear ideas of what you want from them(basically how do i outsource audio) The main difference here is that in normal development you use the audio in the same scrum-unit. For instance Arthas is a unit. Then he needs concept art, A model, A texture, A script, An audio map. But since the external audio guy might not be on your team make it easy for them so see what you need. Even if it's Foley/environment/voice acting.
You only have a few days to build so make sure to work with iterations. So keep the art styles and animations simple there a lots of tools to automate certain processes with decent results use them don't spend all your time making 1 perfect animated sequence.
Decide on the type of game, the perspective, the goal of the game, and the leading game mechanic(anything that doesn't require killing tends to get you good results). Then build 1 "vertical slice." A normal game has a full tutorial where you get for instance like warcraft III a new unit every mission orzo. Give the player all the units he gets from the get go. Sure you can ease them in a bit with quality of enemies.
Keep it simple but, fun and a little bit of a challenge
hit me up if you have additional questions
