Hey Polycount:
After being to GDC a couple times, I feel compelled to give back to you (and everyone), the game development community.
I want to give a short, for students, talk about specific soft skill points and ideas to pursue to maximize one's effectiveness during Uni-years as a game artist. Particular things about professionalism, forgiveness, how to understand how one fits into the picture of a student-led production team, etc.
This is after going through several years of uni as one of the few game artists in a school full of designers and programmers, as well as sober thoughts recieved after GDC Art Lead Roundtables and several internships and short-term gigs after and during school.
How likely is it that I can get a successful submission this year? Is there anything I need to do maximize my odds? I understand that I am by no means a seasoned veteran, and I have to imagine that affects things.
Replies
It looks like the call for submissions is closed for 2015, but you might want to look into 2016.
I haven't given a talk myself, but a few polycounters have. Maybe someone can chime in with additional advice.
ehh, I guess I could add-in a post-mortem about the year of work after college.
For presenting your talk, looking at other academic conference papers (e.g. from IEEE or ACM) could be useful. It seems GDC isn't as strict (according to Earthquake's link), but it shouldn't hurt to aim high.
Make sure you have enough references. E.g. quote other papers, or even ask other Polycounters, who are already in the industry, for help and quotes so they can back you up. Basically, a good paper shouldn't be "just your opinion". It should be your opinion backed up by members of the industry. I guess if you've written at least a BSc thesis or similar you should know all this
That is really a pain - I was hoping to try and submit a talk to GDC about Alien: Isolation's art production methods :<