become a senior today
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I really want to know whats difference betwen a senior and a junior,they both know same software with same tools,learning tools takes 2-3 days max and learning fundamental takes upto 15 or may be some more days but why the proctivity is different,experience matters i mean its on of the major thing but when we take a look at our old project we think like what we were doing,that was horrible but if we make same after 1-2 years then we make much better but why were not able to do that 2 years ago,if hard work is the key then afcourse we can work day and night but wait where is life now,we are doing it for life but we lost it,i request senior member to share their thought that why they were bad and why they are good,its not just experience its something else,senior saw same thing and me also but result is different even if we create a poly sphere and render it,i don't know why the sphere of senior looks better,share ur thoughts to become a better artist so that we don't think like if we want to do better then we have to work day and night and spoil our eyes and we can do learn alot in free time rather than becoming a machine.i hope u got what i was trying to say.
Replies
It is more about experience and not the type of experience that you normally get sitting by yourself in a room working on portfolio pieces.
A junior may be able to do the same quality of work that a senior can but they may take longer to do or it may not be as polished as a senior.
Sometimes it is not even about actual work and a senior may have tasks such as mentoring, pipeline setup and integration, setting standards and best practices.
Long story short, Junior- Hasnt shipped a title no real dev experience, Senior- shipped 1 or 2 titles has dev experience.
While a junior might have a good understanding of the rules, a senior generally has the experience to know how and when rules can be bent or broken. A good, simple example would be using quads in subdivision modeling. A junior will generally understand that quads subdivide very cleanly, but will they know when it's a good time to use tris or n-gons?
In addition, senior artists tend to have better soft skills that will help them fit in to various work environments. Someone who's experienced working with many different types of people in many different environments will be a much greater asset to a team than someone with little or no experience in that area. Having a cohesive team of reasonably good artists often leads to better end results than a team of excellent artists who are constantly butting heads, and that's something seniors are often much better at facilitating than juniors.
The junior/mid-level/senior hierarchy exists mainly to give an idea of how much production experience someone can bring to a project. That experience isn't really something you can get through individual practice because it generally consists of things you wouldn't be able to learn outside of a team environment.
it requires a certain well developed flair for what makes an image work in general and how to work around production constraints and focus on the important aspects of a project resulting in less supervision required and less throwaway work. or at least that's the idea.
For character artist. You would know how to make a character creator (or something similar) and all the tech and caveats that go with it. Along with optimization, best content creation practices, seam management, UV/vert order sharing, and all kinds of other things You've done before and know how to streamline the process of it.
You would have experience managing drawcalls, best solutions for alpha/transparency managemrnt/kit systems, and help come up with solutions to in-engine issues, version control, and quirky things ADs ask for.
To me a Senior is someone who has already proven they're someone who can be relied upon to ship the game. Not just someone who makes art and shies away from all of the firefighting.