I was too busy to even think about it haha, back then the mobile app industry was only just taking off and we were releasing at least 1 game a month! It was a team of 4 and I was the only artist so I just had to do everything art wise - ui, 3d models, logo, marketing - everything, it was crazy times, a fair amount of pressure but really fun too. I was so excited just to make games for a living, and the top games on the app store were simple easy to play hard to master type games back then so thats what we were doing.
It's been a long time since my first days but it was SCARY. I moved from Ireland to the UK, was totally out of my depth and had to learn how to make efficient game art fast. I also had to learn Maya from the first day too after only using Max for 3 years. Needless to say I learned more in the first 3 months working than I did in the 3 years studying previously.
i started as a trainee who later got hired properly. in the character/creature/props department my esteemed colleague and fellow polycounter peter 'peppi' boehme and me - both students at the time - were the only ones using wacom tablets proper from what i recall. it was pretty easy all round - polycount and other forums plus some modding experience had prepared me pretty well and surprisingly so - but the first asset on a new team or project is always something i'm stressing out about to this day.
one thing that i avoid like the plague since that first job is a long commute. that was depressing stuff, now it's 20 mins tops one way - no exceptions.
Started out pretty good. It was a small studio, working an in interesting low budget project. Team members and staff were pretty cool. Lots of laugh, open talk, we could come at the hours we wanted as long as the job was done.
However, they made me get in while they were end of production, right into their crunch. The project had been into devlopment hell for 3 years and they were kind of rushing the last parts. Started with a steady 40 hours/week in the first weeks to over 60+ by the 8th weeks. I had to deal with double(impossible) amount of work to do by the end of it. Before my leave (planned not laid off), I was working 6 days a week and had about 400 frames of animation to complete per day with nearly 3 to 4 characters per shots...
You cannot have decent quality of work with such requirements, it's morally depressing and you're struggling off to have a barely presentable, shippable product by the end.
Pipeline was utter mess, it was the first time they were working on a project of this scale, the rigs were horrible and the end result...uurgh. I'm planning on putting the thing on my Resume but none of the stuff I made there was reel worthy...
It was good first experience I guess, didn't disgust me from the industry (not yet ;-) )...
We were a medium size studio so it was a relaxing environment to work in. I spent the first few weeks learning the tools and make a few props before I got to pitch in on the environment side of a level.
My first day I was told, "Here's your computer. You'll have to look around the office to find monitors, keyboard, and mouse." It was awkward...
The first couple of months were everything you would think it would be: exciting, depressing, stressful, fun, etc. It took a bit to get into the routine and find my feet, but it was fine once I settled in.
Awfull and stressfull. The first week/month in the industry almost got me changing career path. They had started slowly building a team for a new project that hadn't started yet. I was put in a team of english-only speaking senior people that fully ignored me. I was suppose to have a lead or project manager come over to my desk to explain the project to me, give me documentation to read and give me access to the server and softwares. Unfortunatly there was no project manager hired at that point so I was left with no one to talk to and nothing to do for a good 3 days before a super friendly animator came and talk to me and, when it learned what happened ,finally got things moving for me, software installed and yada yada. Things didnt get better when the lead finally came in as he only spoke french and expected me to be the translator for the entire team of people. Guy also decided that he didnt like me and would threathened to make me lose my job, told me I was an extremely shitty artist that I didnt deserve a job. Bullying got so bad I ended up having to take it up to management, who basically let the guy know I complained about him which made things ever more awkward than before. Yah, it was great.... You need to hold on tight and stand up for yourself a bit, otherwise it's easy to get crushed. Things gets better
Wow seems like some of you have pretty rough starts! O_o
Mine was pretty scary, mainly because I moved to another country within like 2 weeks of getting the "You're hired" answer. I remember my first week in the office quite well actually, even though it was such a long time ago. I was sat down next to another new starter in our own little room. Work-wize it started out with just learning the tools, learning how Maya was used for production, learning perforce, learning hansoft and how to track your progress. I think I started to make some art within the first week as well, started out making tarmac pieces that would be strewn about.
It wasn't that bad, I was well taken care of and they made sure I learned properly. Some point later I got moved into the art-team properly and I had a great time learning under the intermediates/seniors there. It was stressful of course, and taxing but I think any job where you'd be put into the deep end is always scary and stressful. It's mostly about how you deal with it, how well you listen, how well you learn and take feedback. In the end, once you're on the inside, work hard and learn to relax when you need it.
pretty awesome, but also stressful and a bit scary. The scary part was moving to London on my own and finding an apartment (turned out more to be a small room) in just three days before turning up for work. And then struggling to get a bank account in the UK, worrying how to cash my first paycheck so I could pay rent. Job wise it wasn't too much of a problem. I had great coworkers and a great boss. Also, I was happy to find out that my college did a good job explaining the whole pipeline and studio set up. In a way I knew the whole setup, but it was still awesome to actually be part of a real production and experience it for real - at Pinewood studios! Best moment was seeing my work on TV and on the shelves. I switched to games later - working in VFX didn't look like a good long term goal, given how many of my coworkers moved from gig to gig. Good and exciting times though.
it was a bit scary, bit stressful, then I got made redundant lol yeah started in the september, got layed off after the christmas break
At my first job we all got terminated before x-mas and automatically re-hired afterwards. Even though the pay was quite okay, this was just a really weird way to save some money on the studio's side. I was quite shocked coming to work one day getting the termination letter, before realizing that everyone got one
Still not sure if I would count it as a first experience in the industry, but well its all I got... I was hired by the art lead of our 3D team. The company itself was porting mobile casino games, but had a 3D games team from back when it still hadn't sold out to the casino-owners. The team was within the company an oddity and even more within the whole corporate group, therefore nobody really cared about it too much or wanted to put money into it.
It was mostly frustrating. People didn't care much and there were big knowledge gaps within the team. Add to that a lot of history and baggage to the files after a decade of annual releases and not state of the art processes. Spent two years trying to get to the basic industry standards implemented into the pipeline (things like using prefabs in Unity, baking normal maps,...).
Felt more like a paid student project than working in the industry. Without polycount's wiki and other online resources I would have been completely lost since I had no one able to answer some basic stuff.
It's hard to put a definite START, since my way into the industry was very gradual. I'm not even sure if I'm "in" to be honest, impostor syndrome and all that, haha. I hope freelance experience counts!
I got asked to do a bunch of sculpts on a per-asset basis during a very stressful time at school. I had only used student licenses for my portfolio so I purchased all the software I used, I had a lawyer look at the contract and tried to do everything properly and carefully. So I spent 1 month stressing out, working during all my spare time, cutting into sleep. In the end I barely got paid enough to pay for the licenses, but I'm still very grateful for the opportunity and it was my first professional experience!
Going through it now, on my 2nd month at wargaming. Has been awesome , I love coming to work BUT its has been really hard and stressful learning the pipeline making sure I can contribute and not seem like an empty shell.
Mine was interesting. First, i showed up to the interview confused as F. Google maps brought me to this large house in the middle of no where. No one told me that the studio was in someone's basement. Then I was interviewed by someone more nervous than I was. So that alone was a bit wtf! But, I got the job as an animator. I knew a BIT about rigging. not much.
First day, I sit down and they say ok, here's a dragon. Rig and animate it! Uhhhhh, shit, ok. I was their first animator, so it was a lot of learning on my own as well.
It was quite the learning experience, but I never felt really stressed out. Because it was in someones basement, it was a very relaxed situation.
But, I get super nervous at the start of every new job. My first job wasnt quite as stressful as my second job. My second one was AAA, and every day, I was expecting them to be like ya, we made a mistake in hiring you. I busted my ass every day to prove otherwise, and I got great feedback from my managers, but, I still felt like I didnt deserve to be there. Ya, Imposter Syndrome.
Now that im at my second AAA studio, Im feeling much more confident in my abilities. I feel like I do deserve to be here. I worked hard to get here and Im proud of that. But that first month or 2, I felt super nervous and a bit overwhelmed. But, I put my head down, tried to learn as much as I could, and asked a lot of questions. I got a lot of feedback from managers as well.
Honestly, even if you dont feel worthy, just fake it till you make it. Dont stress too much. When you go home, try and relax. Dont constantly be thinking about work. Have that balance. It will help, a lot!
and every day, I was expecting them to be like ya, we made a mistake in hiring you.
Hahaha. Absolutely this. Especially in positions where the feedback I receive is sparse. My first instinct is to freak out because my work must be way worse than anyone is even willing to tell me.
Awfull and stressfull. The first week/month in the industry almost got me changing career path.
Ahah same for me... I nearly called my familly to tell'em I'm going to quit. Terrible project at the same time stressfull, boring and so hard... short story hopefully after few weeks I went on another project and it became really great ! So yeah, don't quit
I felt a little overwhelmed at first, but luckily the software department had some really great people in it, so that made it easier. I learned a lot in those first few months, and a lot of times I was taking work home because I wanted to get better. We weren't taught UV mapping at all in school, so I had to learn that, on top of other things. Luckily one of the other artists was like the friendliest nicest guy in the world and he would help me with stuff.
My first job was a bit strange, because I went for the interview and it was just a 4 people company but at first they were asking me difficult interview questions, but after an hour we were just talking about movies over a cigarette, haha. I was their only animator and I had to not only very quickly learn to solve animation problems, but I had to rig and script a LOT. I constantly thought that they kept me as an inside joke, how can I be here if I still have to learn so many things? Turns out, I was doing alright, still had lots to learn but I was very hard working.
Second job was still very stressful, this time it was a proper animation studio and I was challenged a lot, but it still went well, they were happy with me (although again, both I and they knew that I had to keep improving). But there were times where I felt overwhelmed by the rigging tasks given to me, since I always was an animator first and foremost. I had some insane crunch there (all-nighters and so on) that made me worry about my future. If I live to be 80 and look back, will I be ok with a life of this, doing all nighters? Plus I really wanted to work on games, not necessarily ads and animated shows.
Fast forward and I moved to Poland for the CD Projekt Red job! I was very worried about living in Warsaw, about my first AAA job, how will I do compared to the rest of the team? Will I be happy in a big company? I felt and still often have a little voice in the back of my head saying that I don't 100% deserve to be here, even though the feedback has been amazingly positive. The only way to keep that thought away is to work hard and do my best, otherwise I start doubting myself.
Interesting answers guys, thanks! As for me, it's only been about 2 weeks but so far i'm enjoying it even though things might be a bit akward in terms of trying to socialize with the unknown people around you (especially since i'v never been the social type)!
It was quite nice in the first few months. I more or less hit the ground running, creating lots of mini-cinematics for Master of Orion 2, which was being wrapped up. It was challenging but very rewarding work (although not exactly stellar quality, for a number of reasons). Good times!
Mine was pretty scary, mainly because I moved to another country within like 2 weeks of getting the "You're hired" answer.
Same for me, I was chilling at the beach right after graduating and decided to check the polycount job boards, applied to one and got hired right away. 2 weeks later I was already living in a different country, learning a new language and whatnot. It was a lil bit confusing at first, the studio wasn't doing so well and dissolved not too long after, so I had to move back home. But I had a LOT of fun and made a lot of friends, I miss those days a bit!
and every day, I was expecting them to be like ya, we made a mistake in hiring you.
Hahaha. Absolutely this. Especially in positions where the feedback I receive is sparse. My first instinct is to freak out because my work must be way worse than anyone is even willing to tell me.
Legid having the time of my life, after 10 years of shitty dead end jobs and stages of unemployment it still feels unreal that I'm sitting at a desk doing 3D things and its considered a job. I don't want this too end ahah. Also suffering quite hard from Imposer Syndrome and low self esteem, its a constant battle in hoping I'm not some kind of huge disappointment, the project I'm on doesn't involve much variety. Never imagined to work on the same asset for this long but things keep changing, so I hope this doesn't bring future employment in danger. Other then my personal worries whether I'm worthy, its been a blast.
and every day, I was expecting them to be like ya, we made a mistake in hiring you.
Hahaha. Absolutely this. Especially in positions where the feedback I receive is sparse. My first instinct is to freak out because my work must be way worse than anyone is even willing to tell me.
first job - 6 month performance review coincided with project completion, got made redundant with vague pseudotalk regarding "performance" with little objectification regarding issues. all my assignments were completed on time with minimal feedback but seemingly had no merit, likewise when comparing my quality to my peers. 2 months after being belittled and made to think I was doing something wrong the company went into liquidation. 3 of us were made redundant in total and the senior staff split up our salaries amongst them.
Pretty good, I got thrown well into the deep end as I had no experience working with spaceships or the in-house engine, and the lead artist (who was the only other 3d artist in the studio) had a 1½ week holiday booked just a couple of days after I started so I spent most of the very beginning pretty much having no idea what I was doing. Didn't help the pipeline used Maya and I use Max..
Everything worked out fine though, still working at the same studio 3½ years later
The first few months were very exciting. I learned a lot about low poly modeling and texturing as I had not been concerned with keeping within budgets with previous work. The team was very small, only 15-20 devs, the office was just a large apartment in central Stockholm. We struggled to find a publisher for the game at E3 as most of them turned us down cause we lacked experience and they didn't believe we could pull it off.
Fast forward 17 years and now the Battlefield series has done very well.
and every day, I was expecting them to be like ya, we made a mistake in hiring you.
Hahaha. Absolutely this. Especially in positions where the feedback I receive is sparse. My first instinct is to freak out because my work must be way worse than anyone is even willing to tell me.
My first months where really good, a bit on the small side of scary as I started as an intern, and I wanted to do my best. I am still working at the same place and I am still an intern, but I am feeling way more relaxed and I am trying to learn as much as I can without stressing my self. But the very first 2 weeks where quite overwhelming, so much new stuff and people, and I found that to be both fun and intimidating.
My first month was me basically being nervous haha. I met some of the people on the project and was my first gig as a technical artist while being the first tech artist the company hired. Felt I had a lot of pressure on me. I still remember the first day not really knowing when to leave and kinda just shimmied out back to my hotel lol. Eventually got away from being nervous and started making the role what I thought a TA should be. Got a lot of help from talking to other ta's on tech artists.org along with making some life long friends
Replies
yeah started in the september, got layed off after the christmas break
one thing that i avoid like the plague since that first job is a long commute. that was depressing stuff, now it's 20 mins tops one way - no exceptions.
Lots of laugh, open talk, we could come at the hours we wanted as long as the job was done.
However, they made me get in while they were end of production, right into their crunch. The project had been into devlopment hell for 3 years and they were kind of rushing the last parts. Started with a steady 40 hours/week in the first weeks to over 60+ by the 8th weeks. I had to deal with double(impossible) amount of work to do by the end of it. Before my leave (planned not laid off), I was working 6 days a week and had about 400 frames of animation to complete per day with nearly 3 to 4 characters per shots...
You cannot have decent quality of work with such requirements, it's morally depressing and you're struggling off to have a barely presentable, shippable product by the end.
Pipeline was utter mess, it was the first time they were working on a project of this scale, the rigs were horrible and the end result...uurgh. I'm planning on putting the thing on my Resume but none of the stuff I made there was reel worthy...
It was good first experience I guess, didn't disgust me from the industry (not yet ;-) )...
The first couple of months were everything you would think it would be: exciting, depressing, stressful, fun, etc. It took a bit to get into the routine and find my feet, but it was fine once I settled in.
The first week/month in the industry almost got me changing career path.
They had started slowly building a team for a new project that hadn't started yet.
I was put in a team of english-only speaking senior people that fully ignored me. I was suppose to have a lead or project manager come over to my desk to explain the project to me, give me documentation to read and give me access to the server and softwares.
Unfortunatly there was no project manager hired at that point so I was left with no one to talk to and nothing to do for a good 3 days before a super friendly animator came and talk to me and, when it learned what happened ,finally got things moving for me, software installed and yada yada.
Things didnt get better when the lead finally came in as he only spoke french and expected me to be the translator for the entire team of people.
Guy also decided that he didnt like me and would threathened to make me lose my job, told me I was an extremely shitty artist that I didnt deserve a job.
Bullying got so bad I ended up having to take it up to management, who basically let the guy know I complained about him which made things ever more awkward than before.
Yah, it was great....
You need to hold on tight and stand up for yourself a bit, otherwise it's easy to get crushed.
Things gets better
Mine was pretty scary, mainly because I moved to another country within like 2 weeks of getting the "You're hired" answer.
I remember my first week in the office quite well actually, even though it was such a long time ago. I was sat down next to another new starter in our own little room. Work-wize it started out with just learning the tools, learning how Maya was used for production, learning perforce, learning hansoft and how to track your progress. I think I started to make some art within the first week as well, started out making tarmac pieces that would be strewn about.
It wasn't that bad, I was well taken care of and they made sure I learned properly. Some point later I got moved into the art-team properly and I had a great time learning under the intermediates/seniors there. It was stressful of course, and taxing but I think any job where you'd be put into the deep end is always scary and stressful. It's mostly about how you deal with it, how well you listen, how well you learn and take feedback. In the end, once you're on the inside, work hard and learn to relax when you need it.
It was mostly frustrating. People didn't care much and there were big knowledge gaps within the team. Add to that a lot of history and baggage to the files after a decade of annual releases and not state of the art processes. Spent two years trying to get to the basic industry standards implemented into the pipeline (things like using prefabs in Unity, baking normal maps,...).
Felt more like a paid student project than working in the industry. Without polycount's wiki and other online resources I would have been completely lost since I had no one able to answer some basic stuff.
I got asked to do a bunch of sculpts on a per-asset basis during a very stressful time at school. I had only used student licenses for my portfolio so I purchased all the software I used, I had a lawyer look at the contract and tried to do everything properly and carefully.
So I spent 1 month stressing out, working during all my spare time, cutting into sleep. In the end I barely got paid enough to pay for the licenses, but I'm still very grateful for the opportunity and it was my first professional experience!
First day, I sit down and they say ok, here's a dragon. Rig and animate it! Uhhhhh, shit, ok. I was their first animator, so it was a lot of learning on my own as well.
It was quite the learning experience, but I never felt really stressed out. Because it was in someones basement, it was a very relaxed situation.
But, I get super nervous at the start of every new job. My first job wasnt quite as stressful as my second job. My second one was AAA, and every day, I was expecting them to be like ya, we made a mistake in hiring you. I busted my ass every day to prove otherwise, and I got great feedback from my managers, but, I still felt like I didnt deserve to be there. Ya, Imposter Syndrome.
Now that im at my second AAA studio, Im feeling much more confident in my abilities. I feel like I do deserve to be here. I worked hard to get here and Im proud of that. But that first month or 2, I felt super nervous and a bit overwhelmed. But, I put my head down, tried to learn as much as I could, and asked a lot of questions. I got a lot of feedback from managers as well.
Honestly, even if you dont feel worthy, just fake it till you make it. Dont stress too much. When you go home, try and relax. Dont constantly be thinking about work. Have that balance. It will help, a lot!
Terrible project at the same time stressfull, boring and so hard... short story hopefully after few weeks I went on another project and it became really great !
So yeah, don't quit
Second job was still very stressful, this time it was a proper animation studio and I was challenged a lot, but it still went well, they were happy with me (although again, both I and they knew that I had to keep improving). But there were times where I felt overwhelmed by the rigging tasks given to me, since I always was an animator first and foremost. I had some insane crunch there (all-nighters and so on) that made me worry about my future. If I live to be 80 and look back, will I be ok with a life of this, doing all nighters? Plus I really wanted to work on games, not necessarily ads and animated shows.
Fast forward and I moved to Poland for the CD Projekt Red job! I was very worried about living in Warsaw, about my first AAA job, how will I do compared to the rest of the team? Will I be happy in a big company? I felt and still often have a little voice in the back of my head saying that I don't 100% deserve to be here, even though the feedback has been amazingly positive. The only way to keep that thought away is to work hard and do my best, otherwise I start doubting myself.
Same for me, I was chilling at the beach right after graduating and decided to check the polycount job boards, applied to one and got hired right away. 2 weeks later I was already living in a different country, learning a new language and whatnot. It was a lil bit confusing at first, the studio wasn't doing so well and dissolved not too long after, so I had to move back home. But I had a LOT of fun and made a lot of friends, I miss those days a bit!
I just had a lot of fun, worked hard, and learned a lot.
Legid having the time of my life, after 10 years of shitty dead end jobs and stages of unemployment it still feels unreal that I'm sitting at a desk doing 3D things and its considered a job. I don't want this too end ahah.
Also suffering quite hard from Imposer Syndrome and low self esteem, its a constant battle in hoping I'm not some kind of huge disappointment, the project I'm on doesn't involve much variety. Never imagined to work on the same asset for this long but things keep changing, so I hope this doesn't bring future employment in danger. Other then my personal worries whether I'm worthy, its been a blast.
Pfff yes, accurate xD
second job - lead hated my guts
Everything worked out fine though, still working at the same studio 3½ years later
We struggled to find a publisher for the game at E3 as most of them turned us down cause we lacked experience and they didn't believe we could pull it off.
Fast forward 17 years and now the Battlefield series has done very well.
This video is a bit interesting and shows that what you described could be cultural. Slightly off-topic though, so I apologize!