moving and working
polycounter lvl 8
I'm thinking about moving to the left coast if I can't find work down in South Florida when I graduate, I have 3 questions:
1) Is it worth moving to where the industry is and looking for a job door to door rather than rather than sending your reel/resume to companies/studios from another location and saying you are willing to relocate?
2) This is probably something that gets asked a lot here, but exactly how hard is it to find work in this industry? I know we're in a recession and that's impacting the jobs available, but what I have been told has been basically this: "If your work is good and you know a few people, you'll be fine." This seems comforting to know, but I see people on this site who have some amazing work, have some experience, and seem to know a lot of people, yet are unemployed...
3) There seem to be a lot of misconceptions at my school about working these jobs. A lot of people seem to think that you find a job as a junior artist and that's it, you'll be at this company for awhile so long as you keep up your work. But it seems that most of the time artists are working temporary contract positions and then let go to find another contract position. My question is: What percentage of work or hirings are for positions with companies that will potentially allow you to move up or stay with the company and what percentage are temporary positions? I may also be misinformed too so please correct me if I sound like a fool
1) Is it worth moving to where the industry is and looking for a job door to door rather than rather than sending your reel/resume to companies/studios from another location and saying you are willing to relocate?
2) This is probably something that gets asked a lot here, but exactly how hard is it to find work in this industry? I know we're in a recession and that's impacting the jobs available, but what I have been told has been basically this: "If your work is good and you know a few people, you'll be fine." This seems comforting to know, but I see people on this site who have some amazing work, have some experience, and seem to know a lot of people, yet are unemployed...
3) There seem to be a lot of misconceptions at my school about working these jobs. A lot of people seem to think that you find a job as a junior artist and that's it, you'll be at this company for awhile so long as you keep up your work. But it seems that most of the time artists are working temporary contract positions and then let go to find another contract position. My question is: What percentage of work or hirings are for positions with companies that will potentially allow you to move up or stay with the company and what percentage are temporary positions? I may also be misinformed too so please correct me if I sound like a fool
Replies
Regarding your second statement- I'd imagine it depends on what you're looking for. Some people wouldn't consider working for an iphone game their ideal job so to say.
You misunderstood what I asked. I live in South Florida already so if I can find a job here, cool, if not then I would want to move. I agree, this is not the place to be.
Ah, whoops! Thanks for clearing that up. Yeah, there certainly isn't much around here
Sure, I haven't applied for a single job yet as I'm working on my folio, but I could have done all of this back in Australia and would have saved myself a tonne of time and money.
If you're looking for a change of scenery, then go for it, man! But don't move to look for work, because chances are you'll get hired in some completely different state and have to move again.
You've got some nice stuff in your folio, and to me I think your weakness lies with your texturing.
Comparing your first character and your recent, the improvement is massive. Yet both are just sculpts... You haven't taken them down to game-res level and textured them. Which to me emphasises the weakness in texturing.
Also you seem to have a mixture of environment, prop and character work. It's all well and good having varied strengths in different areas of 3D and it's awesome if you want a job at a place like Liquid Development (or other art outsource studios). But for a strong folio (in my opinion), you need to define the role you want and focus on that. No point having 3 good pieces of art (1 character, 1 environment, 1 prop) when you could have 2 refined environment or character pieces.
Quality over Quantity.
The advantage that local has is that they don't have to pay relocation, interviews, especially onsite can happen faster and cheaper, and you can start sooner. But all that stuff only factors in once you pass the first few stages of interviews/art tests, so I think its only really a factor at the end of the process when they are weighing candidates of equal skill.