Last year of uni and some questions for the after.

bumbolicious

Hello all! New to this forums but I've seen so many things here that I decided to sign up and ask!
I study 3D Animation & Multimedia in Greece. I'm gonna finish uni this June and I don't know what to do after finishing uni and I'm desperate.
I think it was a waste of time and money studying in that major. Sure I've learned animation and techniques about modeling and animating but I don't know if I would be capable to get a job under this major.
How's the market for a student just finishing? Anyone got any ideas what should I do after uni? What about Greek market? What portfolio level would an employer require?
Thank you.

pigart

A good start would be to link your portfolio in your signature and start posting your art everywhere. Start networking now. Nobody really cares if you're a student as long as your portfolio is good.

Eric Chadwick

Yep, that's good advice.

A lot of good advice here about a game art portfolio
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Portfolio

Also see this page for career info
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Game_Industry

RN

Shouldn't the university help you answer those questions?
In a game course in another country I remember seeing that senior students had to take internships as part of the curriculum.

beefaroni

RN said:

Shouldn't the university help you answer those questions?
In a game course in another country I remember seeing that senior students had to take internships as part of the curriculum.

In my experience, the advice on here has helped a lot more than what my university could offer. Most of the advice was dated. For example, needing a demo reel (this was a year ago). 

Anyways, as the guys above said, post your portfolio first and foremost.

Add3r

What others have said, absolutely.  Also, when you graduate is when the real work begins.  Do not ever stop modeling, or just creating art in general, and really start building a portfolio.  There is usually a clear line that constitutes a student portfolio and someone who has been really pushing to create a unique, solid body of work for their site (weather professional or personal work).  Someone who has a portfolio that says they are unique and really spent time honing their skills will make a much bigger impact than one filled with half complete personal projects and clearly school assignments.  Trust me, I used to have one of those half complete, student portfolios.  

I am not pointing any fingers, merely stating past experience.  Create some badass work and there will be no hesitation to move forward with the hiring process, from employers, whether you are a fresh out of college artist or an industry vet.  

MiAlx

If you want to stay in Greece and do animation, you will basically have a few ad companies in Athens that require animators, but they have very low salaries, maybe a small mobile / browser game team here and there with even lower salaries. If you don't necessarily want to stay in Greece, my advice is to look at demo reels from animators that work at good companies. You can find them on LinkedIn for example, just look at their reels and really try and analyze what they are doing right, how they set it up, what order they used for their animations. And after you have multiple examples, cross reference them to find out what they all have in common. Then you will probably have a clearer goal to work towards. 

Really plan out a good and not too long animation, use reference, block it out, work the timing. Planing is like half the game. Just keep animating and once you feel that your animations are of the same quality as the company you want to apply for, go for it. With good work quality, good timing and a bit of luck you will have your shot sooner rather than later.

I assumed in my post that you wanted to go for animation, but if you want to pursue other disciplines, the same thing applies, more or less, just replace 'reel' with 'portfolio'.