Rookie question regarding the game industry & quality of my work.

Alkarath

Hello my name is Luc Zeegers,
I am a self taught 3d designer and currently in a bit of a pinch. You see, I want to start applying for internships at game company's but finding myself constantly needing to improve because I think im not quite there yet. However due to only having myself as main feedback & point of reference this causes me to just go back & forth.

The following is the impression I have about the industry so far, and what i believe to be the best course of action to become part of the industry.
Since I'm totally grasping at straws here, I would love to hear what you guy's take on this is as people who are part of the industry.

I'm guessing that for an internship at a game company it would be wise to have atleast one or two finished game models (Lowpoly, textured) in my portfolio, now i focus mainly on sculpting humans (character artist is not really an entree position) but since it is now what i do best, it would still be wise to have a character as one of those finished pieces right?

This one is more vague and i guess dependent on the company, but i figured (or more so hoped) that if i make a full character retopo'd & textured in the approximate quality as the sculpts below, it would be good enough to give me atleast a slight possibility at getting accepted for an intership. (In otherwords its not completely hopeless from the get-go).
ps. Not aiming at getting an intership at a AAA studio or something like that, dream scenario is like a small to medium sized indie studio.








Any feedback is incredibly appreciated, and please be brutally honest, as I honestly have no idea where I stand and what to do / focus on to make this dream come closer to being true. Thank you all so much in advance.

Zi0

Sculpts look pretty decent but non of them is a full human, you only have bust and a torso. Like you mentioned yourself you really need a full character in order to be considered for a junior position. I don't know if you will be able to get an internship as a self thought artist, in the Netherlands companies get money from the government if they take interns that go to a university and most of the time being a student is a requirement to get an internship. Sadly the dutch games industry is small and pretty hard to get in since every MBO (and some HBO's) courses have an game design course these days that creates interns for companies. Many companies don't even hire people because they have a steady stream of Interns.

As for becoming an character artist, you really need to start creating full characters that are fully clothed and hold a prop in their hand like a sword or something, this way you show that you know the whole process and that is what a company is looking for. In the Netherlands, as far as I know there are only two studios that sculpt characters, Guerilla and Triumph. Triumph mostly gets their hires from interns they get form schools, for Guerilla you need to have mad skills to be considered. Getting an internship abroad is almost impossible without being a student. You could look into small startups that are part of the Dutch Game Garden and join a small team but I don't know of they would be able to pay you but its worth a try I guess. You can also look for companies that need sculptors but are not game development companies, there is one company in the Netherlands that creates mannequins for stores and they search for people that can only sculpt.

I did a couple of years at NHTV in Breda that why I know a thing or two about the dutch games industry.

Aydhe

@Zi0
as person who is about to move to netherlands and still looking for the first job... you said everything that i didnt want to hear T_T

Alkarath

@Zi0
Thank you so much for the reply, i was actually looking at Triumph studios before. Im guessing the best I can do then is to start putting together a portfolio as good as possible within the timeframe, and give it a shot just to see what happens.
But I will definitly start looking for oppertunities within the Dutch Game Garden, since I had not yet heard of them.
Once again thank you so much for the help.

Zi0

@Aydhe Many of my friends that I graduated with currently work abroad in Belgium, Sweden, UK and Spain. Only a handful found jobs in the Netherlands. I had way more luck with finding a job in Poland because the industry here is waaaaaay bigger.

@Alkarath Good to hear, search the internet for smaller studios like sticky studios, team6 games, code glue etc. Join the Dutch Game Industry facebook group and keep an eye out for people that are recruiting. There are also events you can attend where you can show your work and network, some of them are posted on the FB group I mentioned.