Do studios care about speed for a junior ?

Amaury

Hi guys,

I had that debate with many teachers before and always get the same answers but I feel like something doesn't make sense.

Basically I take my time on portfolio pieces because I want to learn in the process (i.e. starting from a sphere and not a basemesh so I can practice anatomy over and over again) and make sure that what I do is worthy. However I get told that while quality matters, productivity does too. I can agree on that. But does it really matter in a portfolio for a junior ?

I think speed and efficient workflow comes from years of practice and coworker's advices.
I could work hella fast if I wanted to, make the character with a certain camera angle in mind but... What's the point ?
In the end I'd have to make compromises on details, forget about close up shots and experimenting with new stuff. I wouldn't learn anything and have a portfolio full of half assed pieces but hey ! I could write "done in [insert short amount of time] for a student game project".

Let's take this character I did for school as an example. It was for a strategy game similar to Xcom.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/q6oOR
I had to rush it because of time constraints. How is this serving me any good ? It looks alright from the camera angle in Unity but looks like shit in my beauty renders. I wasn't even happy after finishing it, I felt frustrated. Look at the damn feet, it shows that I can rush stuff if I have to but doesn't show any ability in hard-surface modeling. If a studio wants to hire people to make meh-quality stuff fast wouldn't they just outsource it to cheap companies ?

"But it's a great value if you can work fast, studios are looking for productive people"
An extreme example : another character artist who has like 3 top notch character that took 6 months each VS me with plenty of not-so-good-not-so-bad characters done in 2 weeks each. I wouldn't even get to have an interview to tell them how fast I am.

Honestly I don't know what to think and I'm questioning that pedagogy. What's the point of doing "productive student projects with deadlines and shit as if we were in a real studio" all year long if in the end it gets visually crushed quality-wise by people who put an emphasis on making their stuff looking good without putting themselves in a crunch-like situation ? Are studios interested in this for a junior position ? How can they even guess you worked under deadlines and in a team environment if they instant ctrl+w on your artstation ?

I think people aren't dumb, if you show 50k tris characters done in 2 months they know you can do less polished stuff in less time. Take that the other way around : if I show 10k tris characters for mobile games would you guess that I can do the same but way better for cinematic res ? I don't think so. What's your point of view ?

MiAlx

My personal opinion is that all that matters is quality for your portfolio. You want to show the companies that you apply to what your capabilities are, how far you can push your art. After you get hired you will need to keep to the production schedule of course and do your work with efficiency (a junior will often get slightly more leeway), but when it comes to your portfolio, this is your art you are talking about. This is your tool to show your potential employer what you can bring to the table.

I think people aren't dumb, if you show 50k tris characters done in 2 months they know you can do less polished stuff in less time. Take that the other way around : if I show 10k tris characters for mobile games would you guess that I can do the same but way better for cinematic res ? I don't think so. What's your point of view ?

I do agree that if you can do more complex characters they will assume you can do less complex ones, but I am not sure the tri-count matters in this case. You can have a lowpoly character be far more appealing and skillfully crafted than a 100k character for example. It's your skill that they will judge and from there think if you can do another thing as well, not how many tris or vertices a character has. 

Anyway, If i were you, I'd spend as much time as needed to practice more and make a mind-blowing portfolio.

Amaury

MiAlx said:

My personal opinion is that all that matters is quality for your portfolio. You want to show the companies that you apply to what your capabilities are, how far you can push your art. After you get hired you will need to keep to the production schedule of course and do your work with efficiency (a junior will often get slightly more leeway), but when it comes to your portfolio, this is your art you are talking about. This is your tool to show your potential employer what you can bring to the table.

I think people aren't dumb, if you show 50k tris characters done in 2 months they know you can do less polished stuff in less time. Take that the other way around : if I show 10k tris characters for mobile games would you guess that I can do the same but way better for cinematic res ? I don't think so. What's your point of view ?

I do agree that if you can do more complex characters they will assume you can do less complex ones, but I am not sure the tri-count matters in this case. You can have a lowpoly character be far more appealing and skillfully crafted than a 100k character for example. It's your skill that they will judge and from there think if you can do another thing as well, not how many tris or vertices a character has. 

Anyway, If i were you, I'd spend as much time as needed to practice more and make a mind-blowing portfolio.

Thanks for your insight on this. Triangle count was a clumsy way of speaking about complexity.

I read my thread a second time and I think the best TL;DR version would be "does the time spent to make your assets in your portfolio count for recruiters and leads" as unless it is stated somewhere (which is rarely the case in portfolios) there is no way to know. Which is why I think only the assets and overall presentation speak for themselves.
And art tests aren't even representative of a normal speed since a lot of people say they spend crazy amounts of hours on them.

Sunray

Hey I had one of those kind of talks to with my teacher. My personal opinion is that quality is the most important thing for portfolios. Maybe you also want to take a look at this it's pretty nice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_4Srm6jIno. As far as sculpting things from spheres I used to do that but now I like to start from a simple basemesh. Just to get started a bit quicker and I like to do some anatomy sculpts besides working on the project I'm currently working on.

As far as school goes I like to have school and personal work just rush your school stuff don't get attached to it. Get it out of the way as quickly as possible. Ofc this depends on how serious your school is mine is terrible and anything gets a decent grade. So you can put everything in characters you actually want to make and don't have any time restrictions. 

MiAlx

I read my thread a second time and I think the best TL;DR version would be "does the time spent to make your assets in your portfolio count for recruiters and leads" as unless it is stated somewhere (which is rarely the case in portfolios) there is no way to know. Which is why I think only the assets and overall presentation speak for themselves.

And art tests aren't even representative of a normal speed since a lot of people say they spend crazy amounts of hours on them.

Again, my personal opinion and experience has been: No, it doesn't at all. Leads mainly care about your skills when looking at your application, they are very aware that the less time is put into something the worse it looks. Recruiters are more into CV's and still, very often, if you have a good portfolio they will still forward it to the lead.

Just work on understanding and pushing your craft, practice, understand that you will have to work hard when you first join as a junior, because you will inevitably be compared to the rest of the team (they will give you some room, but not that much). But from what I can tell from your artstation and your above posts, you seem like you know what to do. Go kick ass.