Having trouble choosing my next 3D career move

luck6

Hi everyone,

A little introducion... I am a 3D artist working in the industry since 2011. I started out in a smaller company with lots of responsibilities to learn all the aspects of the job. I had a lot of creative freedom and things were going great.... Untill it didn't. The company wasn't doing well and suddenly I didn't got payed anymore.
Luckily not long after i got in contact with a recruiter. Out of all luck without even looking for a job, I got this change to start over and work at a bigger VR game company. Again, I had a lot of fun and learned a lot. Things were going great untill... my contract ended. So, sadly because of lack of work, I had to look for another company.
This time things got a little harder because my girlfriend became sick. I didn't really spend any effort looking for a job, but luckily through the connections I made over the years I ended up with another job at a smaller company. I thought I was more than happy to work for this company because they seem to look for a 3D modeler and I was pretty desparate for a job. But this time I wasn't that happy. Evendo the job was really good for me helping me through a difficult period with my girlfriend, I never really feld in place there. The work they did was everything except modeling. I feld depressed and frustrated because modeling is really what I love to do. Also the company began to question my work because evendo they hired me to do modeling work for them, they were more looking for a artist who was a generalist. So after the first performance review I heard that they weren't that happy because I pretty much am too specialised in modeling. They want someone who can finish projects from start to finish. I got frustrated because again the work is lacking and I really want to be creative and do a lot of designing, modeling etc.

So here comes the problem

Working at my last company made me realize that I want to be more creative in my 3D work. I looked around and I got really inspired with 3D paintover conceptart/illustrations. At the time working there, I was thingking about my next career move. I would really love to end up working on projects like that. I already have some experience with making 3D paintover but I can't say that I know enough of it to find a job in it. Untill now all the illustrations I made were mostly for my self and I'm worried that I'm just not there jet to be accepted as a 3D illustrator or concept artist. So I thought that this would be better for a 3 year plan or so. I will leave this for now.

So this leaves me with the problem what to do next. I started working for commercial work and series, then for VR and finally ended with VR/Commercial work. All this different work made my portfolio all over the place. I got a bit of everything in there. Composting, VR, Game and illustrations. I got a lot of experience from it but I fear that companies would skip my portfolio because there is no focus on there.

Should I pickup maybe making game props or environments? I already have experience in it and can make some models before doing another job hunt. This wil give me a lot of modeling work and I can be a bit creative in it. Or should I stick with what I got and just hope I can find something that is related to my portfolio? I don't really know what to do before reaching to companies. Should I remove most of my pieces on my portfolio and start over with game models?

Zi0

My advice would be ask yourself what do I enjoy most? Would you mind moving to a different country? Is there a studio you fancy? I guess you are intro 3D modeling since you mentioned props/envart. If so then you have to look at your possibilities. I noticed that you are based in The Netherlands (Heb ook op Friesepoort Drachten gezeten ). Not a lot of choice there sadly and I know the pain I lived in NL for 16 years and studied at NHTV. You have Guerrilla Games which is the only AAA company in the country and its not easy to get in, the easiest way is by doing an HBO and trying to get an internship. From what I understood from one of their GDC lectures and friends that work there, most of the envart is being outsourced. Then you have smaller studios like Tailspin (Former Sticky Studios), Team6, Triumph Games. Most of the smaller ones almost never hire artists because every year they get a batch of interns that are cheaper and they can hire the good ones afterwards. After that you have all the VR studios you have probably heard of/ worked at already.

If you really want to get into environment art, I would suggest creating a nice scene (in UE4 for instance) with high quality assets in it. Like you mentioned it will give you the creative freedom to create something awesome and judging from your portfolio you do have the skill to do it. The downside to this is that there is a chance you would have to move to a different country. There is a chance that Guerrilla will not be hiring when you will start your job hunt, same goes for the smaller studios.

The other options is more commercial work but then you need to ask yourself if that is something you want keep doing. From reading your story it seems like you really want to do environments for games. It is a good option tho if you will find yourself in a desperate need for income.

I would remove these things from your portfolio:


The APC only because its in there twice. The church building is pretty well done and it needs a better presentation to make it shine. I would also add the cowboy model to your Artstation. Studios will like the fact that you have organic and hardsurface stuff in your portfolio especially studios like Guerrilla. I noticed that you also have your own portfolio site but then again: https://www.polygon-academy.com/why-your-portfolio-needs-to-be-on-artstation/

Good luck!

luck6

Zi0 said:

My advice would be ask yourself what do I enjoy most? Would you mind moving to a different country? Is there a studio you fancy? I guess you are intro 3D modeling since you mentioned props/envart. If so then you have to look at your possibilities. I noticed that you are based in The Netherlands (Heb ook op Friesepoort Drachten gezeten ). Not a lot of choice there sadly and I know the pain I lived in NL for 16 years and studied at NHTV. You have Guerrilla Games which is the only AAA company in the country and its not easy to get in, the easiest way is by doing an HBO and trying to get an internship. From what I understood from one of their GDC lectures and friends that work there, most of the envart is being outsourced. Then you have smaller studios like Tailspin (Former Sticky Studios), Team6, Triumph Games. Most of the smaller ones almost never hire artists because every year they get a batch of interns that are cheaper and they can hire the good ones afterwards. After that you have all the VR studios you have probably heard of/ worked at already.

If you really want to get into environment art, I would suggest creating a nice scene (in UE4 for instance) with high quality assets in it. Like you mentioned it will give you the creative freedom to create something awesome and judging from your portfolio you do have the skill to do it. The downside to this is that there is a chance you would have to move to a different country. There is a chance that Guerrilla will not be hiring when you will start your job hunt, same goes for the smaller studios.

The other options is more commercial work but then you need to ask yourself if that is something you want keep doing. From reading your story it seems like you really want to do environments for games. It is a good option tho if you will find yourself in a desperate need for income.

I would remove these things from your portfolio:


The APC only because its in there twice. The church building is pretty well done and it needs a better presentation to make it shine. I would also add the cowboy model to your Artstation. Studios will like the fact that you have organic and hardsurface stuff in your portfolio especially studios like Guerrilla. I noticed that you also have your own portfolio site but then again: https://www.polygon-academy.com/why-your-portfolio-needs-to-be-on-artstation/

Good luck!

Thank you so much for giving me this great advice and yes I also come from the friesepoort and went to the NHL after .

As it happen to be, I was just updating my artstation account after reading the same article! I only had a couple of artpieces on there because I was too focussed on my website. So now I'm trying to do a overhaul of my art to see what direction I'm going. So thanks for helping me out to get some of my lesser pieces out. It will help me a lot. As for the cowboy, I am doing my final tweeks as we speak and I will publishing it really soon.

As for my options, I really am in a moment in my life that moving to another country is an option for me. I currenly live anti kraak and I most likely have to leave the building soon. Also my contract at my current work ends at the end of januari. So I will have to look for work pretty soon. I always wanted to try a life outside the netherlands. I heard some podcasts about expats and that really interested me but I never took it seriously. But now things become more and more serious. I just wonder if I can find something on a short notice. I have the feeling that I will find another commercial job before finding a proper job that can bring me further in my career. Maybe I can do some freelancing before going abroad.

As for my next project, I have been thinking to make a ww2 diorama. I got a board on pinterest filled with those things. They really get me inspired. There is so much grungy textures and atmosphere in those models. I would love to make something like that in unreal.
To give it more of a story I wanted to put a character in it. Personally I always loved the movie enemy at the gates. I love the story of Vasilii Zaitsev. But I don't want to make fanart. Today I did some research about lady death. That would also be awesome to work on. So I'm thinking to incorporate her into the scene. But maybe I'm making this way too big. So I will think about where to start. Maybe I can sketch out some ideas first and see what is manageable within the time. Start with a environment and see if I got the time for a character

Thanks again for the feedback, I will weigh my options and update my artstation pretty soon.

Zi0

Finding work in another country is pretty hard on a short notice, recruiting procedures take a while especially in the games industry. First you will have to wait for an response which can be in a couple of days but sometimes weeks. If you get an response there is a big chance you will be given an Art Test that you have to work on and you probably will have a couple of Skype calls with the studio. The whole process can take up to 2/3 months.

As for your next project, your idea sounds really awesome and it sounds like it could and up as a epic portfolio piece

Good Luck!

luck6

Zi0 said:

Finding work in another country is pretty hard on a short notice, recruiting procedures take a while especially in the games industry. First you will have to wait for an response which can be in a couple of days but sometimes weeks. If you get an response there is a big chance you will be given an Art Test that you have to work on and you probably will have a couple of Skype calls with the studio. The whole process can take up to 2/3 months.

As for your next project, your idea sounds really awesome and it sounds like it could and up as a epic portfolio piece

Good Luck!

Thanks man! I got some work to do. Let's see where this road will go to.