I turned down work... Did I do the right thing?
polycounter lvl 7
Hey Polycounters..
I've been going over this issue in my head for days now and I think posting about it on here will do me a lot of good.
I graduated from a 3D Masters course over a year ago now, since then I have spent a lot of time trying different things, some might say too much time. I recently started to realise that I needed a focus. I decided games was the industry I wanted to work in, I considered specialising in 3D character art, but recently have decided that 3D environments is the route I want to go down and I'm sticking to that. I then looked at the style of games and companies I wanted to work for and have begun work on a fresh environments portfolio that caters to that.
During this time, I was offered a job from a company I had previously freelanced for. It was a 3 month contract, on a full time basis. The job involved modelling 3D assets, and some flash and illustrator media for Navy training simulations.
I turned the job down because it was offered to me at a time when I was considering specialising in 3D character art and was figuring out the direction to take my new portfolio in. Further more, I wasn't allowed to use any of the work from the job on my portfolio, and even so, the style of the work is quite unrelated to the type of games I want to work on anyway. It felt to me like it would be 3 months (or more) doing unrelated work and neglecting my portfolio, which, for environments, was basically a blank canvas at that point and now is in very early stages (no finished work yet).
The thing is, since I changed over to environments, I felt I could have at least learnt some techniques on the job that would have aided me in his area, but at the time I was considering doing character art, and it felt too unrelated. I also wonder if it could have opened up more opportunities to me in the long term.
Did I make a mistake in prioritising my portfolio over this particular bit of work experience? Since then, I have joined up with a couple of indie game teams working as an environment and prop artist for games that are in the same wheelhouse aesthetically and design wise as type of games I would like to work on and I'm building my portfolio. I'm wondering if that is a better thing to be doing now or if the job is offered to me again I should take it.
Sorry to ramble on everyone, thanks for reading over the post if you did. It's just hard making these types of decisions when your a newbie
Any advice is greatly welcomed.
Thanks!
I've been going over this issue in my head for days now and I think posting about it on here will do me a lot of good.
I graduated from a 3D Masters course over a year ago now, since then I have spent a lot of time trying different things, some might say too much time. I recently started to realise that I needed a focus. I decided games was the industry I wanted to work in, I considered specialising in 3D character art, but recently have decided that 3D environments is the route I want to go down and I'm sticking to that. I then looked at the style of games and companies I wanted to work for and have begun work on a fresh environments portfolio that caters to that.
During this time, I was offered a job from a company I had previously freelanced for. It was a 3 month contract, on a full time basis. The job involved modelling 3D assets, and some flash and illustrator media for Navy training simulations.
I turned the job down because it was offered to me at a time when I was considering specialising in 3D character art and was figuring out the direction to take my new portfolio in. Further more, I wasn't allowed to use any of the work from the job on my portfolio, and even so, the style of the work is quite unrelated to the type of games I want to work on anyway. It felt to me like it would be 3 months (or more) doing unrelated work and neglecting my portfolio, which, for environments, was basically a blank canvas at that point and now is in very early stages (no finished work yet).
The thing is, since I changed over to environments, I felt I could have at least learnt some techniques on the job that would have aided me in his area, but at the time I was considering doing character art, and it felt too unrelated. I also wonder if it could have opened up more opportunities to me in the long term.
Did I make a mistake in prioritising my portfolio over this particular bit of work experience? Since then, I have joined up with a couple of indie game teams working as an environment and prop artist for games that are in the same wheelhouse aesthetically and design wise as type of games I would like to work on and I'm building my portfolio. I'm wondering if that is a better thing to be doing now or if the job is offered to me again I should take it.
Sorry to ramble on everyone, thanks for reading over the post if you did. It's just hard making these types of decisions when your a newbie
Any advice is greatly welcomed.
Thanks!
Replies
If you can afford not to be paid for 3 months (plus), then you made the right decision. Focusing on your portfolio is a good choice.
In general though, work experience is better than mod experience. Even if the art style is not related. This gives you experience with a team production pipeline, and is something you can put on your resume, even if not in your portfolio (there are many jobs I don't put in mine, even though I could). If you're dedicated to your goal, after work you should put aside your personal time and work on your portfolio, so you are hitting two birds with one stone.
Sorry to not make it easy on your conscience. But that's life! It's a good thing to analyze past decisions, to make better future ones.
As work experience, anything where someone pays you is better than when someone is not paying you. Of course there's the obvious financial benefit. But it's also better because you are managing payments, managing clients, etc., which are important skills to learn.
However, freelance experience is not all that applicable to onsite fulltime work. At least, hiring managers don't usually see it as being relevant. A lot of people say they are freelancing, but few are actually doing it as a fulltime career.
More importantly, working onsite in a team environment is a very different experience than working by yourself. This kind of experience is important to hiring managers, because it has its own challenges and rhythm, which you really only learn by doing.
My 2 cents of course.
Also guessing your skills would level up a lot faster in a team rather than freelancing remotely... (I've only worked remotely and never worked in-house so I wouldn't know,) but I can imagine having like-minded people around you to offer quick critique/advice would help a lot.
The bigger thing is you get exposure to more of the whole pipeline, in-house. You have to move your assets through the whole process from start to finish, providing input on the concept stage, creating roughs for early test builds, creating your full-on assets (the only part freelancers are usually aware of), refining the assets to work within shifting performance goals (now we need 50 of these characters onscreen! we need to make this guy modular! we have a new skin shader! etc.), fixing bugs, etc.
I didn't actually call myself environment artist, I said I am deciding to focus on environment art and am building a new fresh portfolio of environment art so I can become an environment artist in the future.
The portfolio I have shown doesn't include any of that because it was a recent decision I made and I have no finished pieces yet. I did actually say it was a "blank canvas" in terms of environment art, and that the main reason I turned down the 3 month gig was because I'm building a new portfolio. In a way I have "ditched" this folio because I haven't been applying for work with it and am certainly not using it to apply for any environment artist jobs.
In the end, you are really the only one that can decide if it was a good choice or not. If it was me, I would have taken it and not looked back. I was in a similar situation 14 years ago and I took it. Never looked back.
Lets say you took this job. After your 3 month contract is over, would you have gained enough exp to help you land a game job? Probably not. Even if you could show your work, would it be impressive enough to put on your portfolio? Probably not.
I knew a bunch of former classmates of mine who took the 1st job that got offered to them. And their first job was not what they had in mind (Non game related work). But they were told to take anything you can get because of the exp and opportunity doesn't come very often. And 2 years later... they are still there, with low pay, no game exp, and never even updated their portfolio. (even though they said they would.) But maybe they're completely happy with how it turned out. But I also know senior people who started out in military sim and are working on AAA now who are super talented.
None of this even matters because you already choose your path and all that stuff is in the past. The real question is, If a similar opportunity comes up, should you take it?
I held out until I got a job and pay that I was happy with. And it worked out well for me. But! I also knew people who also held out and went jobless for 2+ years until they landed their dream job or a unwanted job they could have gotten on day 1.
So I suggest you keep moving forward, work on your portfolio and not worry about the past. Because you have no idea if it would have been a benefit to you or not.
Basically, no point in worry about it! All the decisions you make in life are correct at the moment you make them- they're only wrong in hindsight!
Warhammer gave me a better portfolio and experience than the archvis place nobody has heard of.