Finding it confusing to land a job.
polycounter lvl 5
It has been months since I'm applying for a good studio as a 3D Artist only to face rejection.
So I've been practicing 3D since I was just 8 and now that I have completed my graduation, I am hardly able to land a job and I'm really confused.
Here's my story - I set my goal since a very young age and I knew I wanted to be a part of animation industry. I started researching on the subject and dabbing around 3D softwares. By the age of 11-12 I got my hands on maya and by the time I finished my schooling, I knew zbrush, maya, vue and realflow. What I didn't have was an understanding of doing a good art. I got into a local animation institution which was affiliated to a well-known university. I was pretty good at 3D but what I found out was the lack of enthusiasm in students and teachers not knowing their subjects and due to my reputation in the institution, I sometimes taught the subject to my seniors. So I focused entirely on self study, talking to people online and understanding procedure of getting accepted in a good animation studio. It took me longer than usual to get really good at 3D since my institution only focused in Maya and the students from my batch completely gave up on 3D. I also started working as a freelancer and landed a job during my days of institution.
Now that I'm a recent graduate with a strong portfolio and thorough understanding of industry required software skills and also with 2 years of experience as a 3D artist and freelance including cinematography, photography, videography and design. I'm looking forward to find a job in a good animation studio buy I get rejected or not receive any mail at all. I took advice from company professionals from online groups, I did what they said and still no luck. I would like to know what is going wrong? I'm currently freelancing as a video game artist but that's an indefinite contract and I can be called off anytime and on the top it's unpaid. I'm looking forward to have a stable job as I also need to relocate outside my country as I also found out that the work environment is not suitable for me. I'm only surviving on this freelance because it is giving me experience what the studio requires. I really need to get a stable ground as I know I'm not going to give up on 3D.
I would like to know what is there I'm doing wrong and what else can i correct?
Here's my link to my website, feel free to go through.
https://blackfangwolf.artstation.com
Thanks,
Rhythm Gandhi
So I've been practicing 3D since I was just 8 and now that I have completed my graduation, I am hardly able to land a job and I'm really confused.
Here's my story - I set my goal since a very young age and I knew I wanted to be a part of animation industry. I started researching on the subject and dabbing around 3D softwares. By the age of 11-12 I got my hands on maya and by the time I finished my schooling, I knew zbrush, maya, vue and realflow. What I didn't have was an understanding of doing a good art. I got into a local animation institution which was affiliated to a well-known university. I was pretty good at 3D but what I found out was the lack of enthusiasm in students and teachers not knowing their subjects and due to my reputation in the institution, I sometimes taught the subject to my seniors. So I focused entirely on self study, talking to people online and understanding procedure of getting accepted in a good animation studio. It took me longer than usual to get really good at 3D since my institution only focused in Maya and the students from my batch completely gave up on 3D. I also started working as a freelancer and landed a job during my days of institution.
Now that I'm a recent graduate with a strong portfolio and thorough understanding of industry required software skills and also with 2 years of experience as a 3D artist and freelance including cinematography, photography, videography and design. I'm looking forward to find a job in a good animation studio buy I get rejected or not receive any mail at all. I took advice from company professionals from online groups, I did what they said and still no luck. I would like to know what is going wrong? I'm currently freelancing as a video game artist but that's an indefinite contract and I can be called off anytime and on the top it's unpaid. I'm looking forward to have a stable job as I also need to relocate outside my country as I also found out that the work environment is not suitable for me. I'm only surviving on this freelance because it is giving me experience what the studio requires. I really need to get a stable ground as I know I'm not going to give up on 3D.
I would like to know what is there I'm doing wrong and what else can i correct?
Here's my link to my website, feel free to go through.
https://blackfangwolf.artstation.com
Thanks,
Rhythm Gandhi
Replies
And even when looking at that, what stands out to me is your pieces lack PBR texturing.
For example, even though your portrait has realistic lighting and subtle bump mapping, the character lacks any real spec/roughness information. If it weren't for the eyes and the hair, everything looks the same even though human skin contains a lot of variation.
Same goes for the Audi Car. The rims and car body are perfectly shiny. The car tires don't appear to sport any tire tracks so they just look like cylinders.
It may also not be a good idea to include any WIP's in your portfolio as it may indicate incompleteness.
With relocation to another country, keep in mind you're also competing against artists who live there locally.
There is also a lack of fully finished game-res models that show you know how to bake normals, texture in current industry standard software like substance painter and it makes it hard for employers to look at your portfoiio and feel confident you would be up to the task of creating characters for games.
most of your portfolio looks like unfinished work, I wouldn't put studys or character busts as a portfolio piece, unless you have some of the aforementioned 100% AAA quality game ready character models. You need to go and audit your portfolio and cut most of the stuff from when you were learning and create some badass new industry quality work with what you have learned. It probably hurts to hear this, but the second you click into that mindset, things will progress much faster/easier for you.
when someone looks at your portfolio they should immediately know exactly what you are suited for and it should demonstrate you know how to complete characters consistently at a AAA level. look at some current games and hold your work up next to them (wolfenstein 2 just had a dope character art dump on artstation). In reality, you are not competing against other students/juniors for a job, you are competing against all the experienced artists already in the industry, so your portfolio needs to match or exceed their work if you want to crush it and get a job quickly.
I would look for some tutorials from artists in the industry,and dont be afraid to invest a bit of money to learn from pros. You will learn a lot quicker and really, you are getting years of experience handed to you for an extremely cheap hourly rate. something like this complete PBR character tutorial could really help you I bet. there are a ton of resources out there, and they can help cut your learning curve dramatically.
finally, don't get discouraged, if you are hearing silence and not getting replies, it is the market telling you that you havent reached the level required yet, once you get there people will start contacting you for jobs and companies will start replying back. I am a self taught artist who also started dabbling in 3d around the age of 12, and eventually got into the industry. patience and the self discipline to keep going no matter what is what is going to help you win in this struggle. Hope this helps. its a bit blunt but definitely designed to help not hurt
As for the local competitions, there are none and I know I am well qualified for AAA gaming studios here and my portfolio did get shortlisted but I haven't got any response yet. And as per AAA gaming studios, there are only 2 local studios rest are MNC's where I have been rejected.
There are two factors here:
1. I'm a recent graduate
2. I have 2 years of experience.
I wonder if that is what confusing everyone?
The first few links have some useful information about breaking in the industry. Keep your head up and keep on grinding away. It's pretty rare these days for a recent grad to land a job right out of the gate. Not saying it never happens, but that's certainly not the case for most of us.
The best advice I can give is choose something specific that you want to do. Whether that is characters, environments, etc. and then get really good in that one area. You'll improve much faster that way too.
You're in good company! Keep on striving to improve!
Always giving out great advice and helpful advice. I assume the same applies to animators looking to break in as well, right?
specifically in the case of animation my example would be akin to either trying to learn from a bunch of scattered free youtube animation videos most likely recorded in a basement in russia or something, vs just spending a few hundred bucks to save yourself hours of headaches and learn from someone at pixar or something (animation isnt my area of expertise, but you get the idea) .blackfangwolf said: Dope, good attitude man. just keep making cool stuff and use places like polycount and artstation to give you inspiration and track the quality bar of where you are aiming for. as long as you keep making art and applying feedback, there is no reason you shouldn't succeed.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1343822689/raji-an-ancient-epic
and help develop the industry there.
Thanks for the link, the video game looks great. The project seems interesting. I would like to know if there's a way to get in touch with the team.
The character art industry is a little bit more overcrowded than other areas, but for your case specifically it will help that you can also draw and concept those characters, so turn that to your advantace. I would recomend showing to your porftolio the 2d concept art you make and then the 3d representation of it in the same post. And as the polycount wiki suggests, your skills as a character artist should include (but not limited to)
Some extra things i want to mention, your 3 strongest pieces for me are in this order
https://blackfangwolf.artstation.com/projects/9yevR this needs to be polished, and textured and light up properly,and add a background and it can be a KILLER portfolio piece (ofc, it has tits and drama in it) so i would spend as many days,weeks months to make this perfect and place it frontline in the face of the viewer.
https://blackfangwolf.artstation.com/projects/Lamlv the closeup of the face is nice, and the turntable showing it from different angles. You can live without the rest of the pictures. Show enough, up to a positive feeling about your work. All the rest photos short of degrade it.
https://blackfangwolf.artstation.com/projects/lr3OV This also needs better materials but it's a good looking car and shows that you can model some hardsurface as well.
I believe you should get rid of the rest and work on those 3 pieces and presentation.Also add your email in every picture.
You have a fine understanding of things, but you can definatelly start learning and improving your material/texture creation. I think this will be the barrier that will get you hired in a studio
The portfolio as it stands could work for CG visualization in architecture/advertising/automobile industry.
Your car is the strongest and most finished piece for CG visualization atm.
https://blackfangwolf.artstation.com/projects/9yevR this piece is pretty strong too, though the anatomy of the character appears to be better than your more recent pieces like this one https://www.artstation.com/artwork/wG44Z, which is a bit strange considering the first piece was made 2 years ago.
For character art in general, it is better to work from a reference, unless you understand proportioning and weight well enough to create your own interpretations.
Otherwise there are going to be proportioning errors which you won't be able to notice early on)
Also the character artist position isn't overcrowded.
The reason its challenging to get into is because the few character artists that larger studios employ stay with them for a long time.
However these artists are usually the more senior far more experienced character artists.
It is possible to land a role on the character team as a junior to mid level making character props (boots/belts) in some studios (larger and smaller) and then work your way towards more responsibility starting with NPC/background characters.
So you're not exactly a character artist per se, but you do contribute to the character team so for all purposes you can consider yourself a character artist.
I am not very aware of game character artist positions in India, though I do know a few artists freelancing for game studios abroad.
You're more likely to find character artist positions in the film industry (outsourcing)
Also character artists don't only work in video games.
Other industries like scale figure (Hottoys) and the board game industry also employ them, so there are lots of opportunities if making characters is what you're passionate about.
Here's one of the stronger character artists, also from Delhi,
https://www.artstation.com/vimalkerketta
I believe even he has found it difficult to find on site work abroad (USA) though I think from a freelance perspective, he has it way better.
You could get in touch with the kickstarter project through the kickstarter link. From what I can tell its unlikely to make its funding goal, though I think they will continue production.
@Larry I'm delighted that you spent time to go through my portfolio and write everything that was necessary and as already said above, I work on both 2D and 3D aspect of concept art. I do have a better creature concepts with me which I cannot share at the moment due to privacy issued by the company. Once out I would love to showcase both the 2D and 3D concept I worked for.
My main focus in the industry is to work as either 2D and 3D artist or simply a 3D artist either in movies or video games.
As explained by @PixelMasher before, I have started working on my new concepts and this time I'm going in with gaming pipeline as well so I have at least one proper model in my portfolio. I'm really happy to progress from scratch and I'm positive that this time it is going to be better.
@NikhilR "Shockwave" was made 2 years ago and I was working my way up to anatomy, the latest "cybergoth" did have a lot of issues which occurred due to rigging (which I later fixed in zbrush). I did learn to rig and use blend shapes in this model but due to a bit of frustration I admit I did not make major changes to the anatomy and I was also running out of deadline. I belong to the same city and being completely on my own, I am not able to land in any studio and I have seen people getting into major studios with very basic portfolio but I always aimed for a bigger picture so I believe I forgot to see the smaller aspect of the industry solely because the work so far I have gotten here is not worthy of any portfolio and getting into a AAA gaming studio is bit of a challenge.
I may not be that good right now but I'm always striving to improve in my artwork in any way possible and I'm bound to prove myself that I can make it to my goal.
I recommend focusing on just 1 field to get your foot in that industry, then in the future you can transition to other fields should you wish so.
All the best.
I usually enjoy the 3D aspect of art and I understand what you are trying to say here. Since I do not know how to get myself into movies, I'm currently trying myself to get into video games. Later on, if I find an opportunity I will gladly switch to movies. But having been making my own concept and turning it to 3D is what i usually find a lot of fun. For the purpose of job I'm gonna stick to 3D art.
Thanks!
Mike
My take on looking at your portfolio is that I don't really know what you want to focus on. 2d or 3d?
Your 3d anatomy seems to be stronger than your 2d anatomy.
As I'm currently in the position where I'm looking at potential candidates for jobs (all levels) I am lacking information in your portfolio for a job offer. You mentioned above that you have put maps in videos. But as a recruiter, I will not look at videos. I will have little time to look at individual applicants, and so I would want to have all the information readily at my disposal. That means posting wireframes and maps as well as a good presentation of each of your models.
I also wouldn't put studies in the portfolio.
Seeing as you seem to want to focus on 3d for games, I would make sure that you do put all the information in your portfolio in a nice and clear format. (Try to make life easy for the person hiring you, not too many clicks, no waiting for a video to load etc etc)
It is nice that you can do the high poly workflows. But I want to see your low poly, optimisation, an understanding of animation topology, good textures and UV layouts, nice presentation etc etc)
Another thing is that it is nice to work from your own concept, but as a hiring manager I need to see how well you'd be able to work from someone else's concept. How well would you be able to follow something that isn't yours from the start....