Job help - which should I pick?

Quickel

At my last job I was an environment lead but unfortunately most of our company got the axe. Currently, due to the location of where my family settled down, there weren't a lot of options. I am currently an Outsourcing Artist who handles a lot of different areas. It's mainly taking work that comes in from outsourcing, sometimes polishing it and getting it into the game (requiring both technical skills and minor art skills). I work with a wide diversity of assets - characters, props, and more. Sometimes I may have to redo collision or make LODs or things along that line. Mainly use 3DMax and the engine. None of this stuff is really portfolio work but it does showcase my flexibility to fulfill a lot of different work in different departments.

I was approached about possibly moving into a position which would be more of a world artist - not creating any new art but rather sculpting terrain, painting down textures, foliage, and so on. Almost an environment designer. I wouldn't really be using 3DMax here or doing more of the traditional polygonal work. It'd be all in engine work. Here I might have some portfolio shots I could use. I don't really want to move into fulltime designer work in the future though.

I'm trying to think which one would be better suited for me. I'm not really sure if either one have a direct correlation to other companies and neither one really are about creating original art but I generally dig environment work and as my availability changes in the future I'd like to get back into more of the hardcore AAA environment work.

Justin Meisse

yup they both have correlations at other companies - I've seen the terrain sculpting/painting position get called "World Builder". I've done both and I'd choose the world builder position, there's a lot more artistry to sculpting a terrain than fixing outsourced art.

PixelMasher

World artists are a pretty common position at most larger studios, at Ubi I am one on splinter cell. I still find myself creating some art for structures and all that but also get to focus more on compostion, mood, lighting and dressing a scene which is what I enjoy a lot more than moving verts around.

If you enjoy the creation process then you might feel restrained or limited, but once you get used to using other peoples content to create your own composed scenes and levels it gets pretty fun. you just kinda have to drop the desire to be able to point to a prop and say "i made that" and just more so point to the overall scene assembly as what you kick ass at.

In my experience, world artist and designer are still fairly different roles, where design blocks out the gameplay of the space and world artists support them and make it look pretty

Quickel

Thanks for the responses so far. Yeah, the way I see it neither one is really allowing for the full creation process. At least the world builder job would allow me to point at the screen and say - "I put that together," which is more than fixing outsourced art would. It's nice to hear that the job is being done elsewhere on something even like Splinter Cell, which isn't really expansive terrain based. You're right that it's more about composition, mood and lighting which might be good arsenal to add to my already existing portfolio work.

Kwramm

outsourcing cleanup artist sounds kinda boring to me. They're probably in demand, but good world builders even more so. I'd probably pick world building if I were you. it is technical too to a degree but offers more artistic aspects. Id definitely makes for better folio pieces to do world building. Plus it's cool putting all the pieces together to create the big picture. just my 2 cents.