Internship. How to get in?

diartik

Hello.
I have some questions and it would be great to hear from you some information. What do a person need to know to get into internship as a prop artist? What is the difference between internship and junior position (skill difference)? 

Brian "Panda" Choi

I heard a great succinct explanation from Satoshi Arakawa (if this was him):

Intern artists are able to make what the senior artist makes at a slower pace/speed. 

That explains your portfolio quality requirements.  I’ve seen too many young bloods think it’s about how fast you can get stuff done; in reality, that just makes you look bad especially if each piece is crap and not the best looking. 

Regarding finding them: ignoring the obviously online ones, a lot of them happen notoriously by hearsay. InXile’s this year I think really happened mostly because A: you happened to be in the uni class one of our artists was teaching at, or B: you personally knew one of our developers already as a family friend, etc. and asked. I don’t think we ever posted online for them nor internally said to everyone that we were looking for interns. 

What you can do in lieu of personal connection is send targeted emails to studios you’d want to do an internship at with a speculative application or question about “do y’all do internships, and even if you don’t, would you consider taking me on for pay or for free?”  Mileage will vary not in your favor, or anyone’s really. 

Goat Justice

Some Studios/Publishers actually have student sections on their careers sites. You're More likely to find this at the larger places, but if theres somewhere in particular you're interested in you might as well check.   Here's a few:

https://careers.blizzard.com/en-us/students

https://www.ea.com/careers/students

https://www.activision.com/careers/students

https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/careers/grads-and-interns.aspx

JordonBritz

I've always wondered how self taught artists go about internships, it seems that most bigger studios always require being in college.

Brian "Panda" Choi

That's an understandable perception.  The "requirement" may come from the fact that it's understandably easier for studios to be in comunicatio with a school that can admittedly help weed out and recommend specific applicants instead of one's own HR/Hiring team to do that work.

I'll speak for USC: we do demo days and special events that we invite local professionals to, showcasing the work from students in a concentrated area with food and alcohol.  Our professors are colleagues of existing developers, so students get an easier time to network with industry professionals.  Elements like this definitely lube the internship application for a lot of younger artists/professionals.

Frankly, I do wonder for those who aren't that connected in what you can do to find these "secret" internships, and outside of just aggressively networking, I can't think of much else.  I think maybe the work around is to volunteer time on indie teams, mod teams, make your own small games, etc.

Once again, these internships aren't THAT specially put aside: you're still making games as much as the other devs are.  You're just generally pumping out assets at a slower pace or frnakly doing tasks that thei more senior people don't want to do.

Zi0

In Europe most studios require you to be a college/university student. I did an internship at a game studio what you need to do is just send them emails asking for a internship. Biggest difference between an intern and a junior is the pay, an intern works for free or a small amount of money. When it comes to skill difference that really depends, some studios have high requirements for interns because they hire them after the internship and some studios use them as temporary cheap labor.

garcellano

Are you a recent graduate? You might be able to still aim for some roles.

If not, you can still aim for internships, but I'd recommend just aiming for Junior roles or an entry-level type, probably an Associate.

Oh crap, yeah I just realized I did 3, one during college, one right after college, and one months after college (that I didn't like adding on my resume at first. They ended up just getting crediting me as an assistant, voluntary, with no mention of an internship. I was okay with that.) It was a 3D Animation Internship at first, but since it was voluntary and unpaid, I guess it just switched to Assistance in Animation, or something like that. I just added that under my freelance section, during that time, just because it was around the time I was working in freelance on mobile games. I guess it's fine? Even though it was unpaid. Ah well.

~Where I'm getting at is, if you're just in college or near your graduation, you might have an easier chance getting in. After graduation, months later or years later, it might not be worth it, but it depends on the role and company (as weird as it sounds).

An internship in a AAA studio is different than one at an indie studio.

There are remote internships, they do exist around. Look into it, if the "internship" is just work for free. Onsite internships are the best, you're in the studio, learning directly with artists. Communication is one thing, off and on, the experience of working in there with the team is something else.