Student looking for advice
Hey,
So I am currently studying games animation at teesside university. As I am moving into my final year I hope to reach out to animators within the industry for some advice.
I was wondering what you believe are the most important skills that might help me gain employment in games animation, and if there is anything you would suggest I focus on learning/ developing during my final year project.
Thanks
So I am currently studying games animation at teesside university. As I am moving into my final year I hope to reach out to animators within the industry for some advice.
I was wondering what you believe are the most important skills that might help me gain employment in games animation, and if there is anything you would suggest I focus on learning/ developing during my final year project.
Thanks
Replies
General tips:
Portfolio is the single most important thing.
Having connections will help too.
Work on an indie project or do freelance for relevant experience
Good luck!
Don't burn bridges with anyone, especially your fellow classmates. If you are the jerk of the class, or just don't get along with some, no matter how much you hate the people, don't burn their bridge. Treat everyone in your class with respect, even if they don't. When it comes down to it, many people get jobs through classmates who got hired first. If you burned any bridges, they definitely will not recommend you. So work hard in group assignments, do your homework, prove that you are a hard worker, and easy to work with. If you think I`m kidding, my first job out of school, we had 6 people hired my my class. 1 got the job, they recommended me, then I recommended the next, and so on and so on. The people who were difficult to work with asked a bunch of us for recommendations. We all said nope!
Network, have a clean portfolio site, become an active part of a community, learn related skills (rigging, scripting, how to set up blend trees)theres always enough information to go around that you should never stop learning. Don't get hung up if it doesn't happen right away, if it's your goal it will happen. it just might take a minute, or a year.
Most importantly, Work constantly to the best of your ability to match and exceed the quality of work of your peers and competition when it comes to animation. If you are always working on something, good times are sure to follow.
It's a tough thing to do, but its not impossible. Keep working, keep learning, keep posting.
so a proffessional portfolio and a lot of networking.
one thing i've been unsure about, alot of my peers have been focusing on mocap usage where as my interests lie in keyframe animation. which would you guys percieve as the most important, as more and more games use mocap would it be a mistake not to focus on it?
Source: Not an expert, but did an internship at a small mocap studio.
When I see a reel that only has mocap, it makes me wonder if they can actually animate or not. Do they have the skills to start from nothing, or can they just edit over existing animations.
As said above, keyframe animation isn't going anywhere. There are plenty of things that just can not be mocapped. Creatures and animals mostly. And even with human mocap, aniamtors will ALWAYS be needed. There are some things humans just can't do. Pushing poses beyond the norm. Insanely technical jumps and flips and such. Mocap only takes you so far. Animators do the rest. And even with mocap, you still need a good mocap actor, otherwise you`re redoing a LOT of it anyways.
If you can animate keyframe anim, you can get a job with mocap. Studios will see you can animate and will teach you how to use mocap. When I got my job at Bioware, I hadn't touched mocap before. Or 3ds max, for that matter. But within a week or two, I was using it just fine. I`m still learning new techniques on how to do certain things months later. But the vast majority of the basic skills can be taught very very quickly if you can key frame.
It's a lot easier to get a mocap job with a keyframe reel than it is to get a keyframe job with a mocap reel. I'd say have 90% of your reel keyframe, and 10% mocap coming out of school.
EDIT: I should mention the reel advice is meant for students. As you get more and more shipped titles, and get to a place where your entire reel is professional work, mocap isn't as big of deal because you've already proved you know what you`re doing. Plus, game footage is far more appealing to have on your reel.
- Create keyframe animations / hand made. Produce pencil on paper keyframe / animations if you can - animators get boners over the raw skills.
- Pick 3 styles - cartoony, realistic - other.
- The graphical quality shouldn't matter but the expression will. Sell the animation.