Junior Character Artist
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Hi everyone!
I'm looking for my first job in the industry, remote if is possible because for personal reasons I can't move out from my city. What do you recommend to do?
Thanks
I'm looking for my first job in the industry, remote if is possible because for personal reasons I can't move out from my city. What do you recommend to do?
Thanks
Replies
Your portfolio is strong!
To add to the digital signature that Neox mentioned, be sure to include your linkedin information.
Also do not put junior title anywhere, its my view that this is best left to the company to decide since every company sees it differently.
And you should be confident about the level you feel you are at.
Aside from looking at game credits and work experience your work looks comparable in quality and presentation to a senior artist, again this is assessing at face value the way a recruiter would.
I would add texture/uv map breakdowns.
Usually once it gets past a recruiter, theres an art test and then an interview after the art team/lead assess your art test.
So you portfolio is only assessed the way it is presented, no company I've known has ever asked for models made as personal work.
With regards to your choice of art, its clear that the focus is on star wars and there is a lot to compare to.
Though I feel that you are managing to hit the level that is expected of a character artist working on that license, so I think its okay to maintain that focus.
I mentioned this because when I was in game dev school our instructor told us to avoid that license since it is over done and doesn't show creativity. He had a point, then again if you are hitting the quality mark you wouldn't be dismissed just because of the license.
When in comes to seniority, there are a number of different metrics that ones level is determined.
From my experience its more about being able to work on a task with minimal supervision and also mentor. Many of the senior tasks I saw were finishing and approvals.
And do be aware that many company's may withhold those titles simply to control your worth from a monetary stand point, so I would look at how company's see seniority with a very specific lense, that is if you have the information which is usually internal.
In my perspective saying you're a junior in anything is a disadvantage especially if you're portfolio is up to the mark and shows potential.
I would also recommend furthur specializing your profile within character art.
For example character artist with a focus on facial geometry, clothing and accessories.etc
For the moment I can see that you definitely are competant in character heads, clothing and accessories. You would benefit from adding a female character to your portfolio.
Some studios do see senior level tasks to include working with blendshapes, and I'd advise reading more into the roles you are applying for.
And between video games and flim, character heads for film is seen more as digi doubles so demands experience in Mari for adding pore detail in high resolution meshes.
Also a portfolio for film requires a demoreel over an artstation portfolio.
Also companies do have their proprietary pipelines, use scan data and a lot is repurposed across projects, so standing out from the crowd depends on both your porfolio being at a resonable standard, your competancy towards tasks and timing.
Who you know makes a big difference so I would really prioritise visibility and networking (linkedin and local networking events)
For the moment the industry is facing challenges with many layoffs so lot of applicants to a role.
You could do well to apply to these internship oppotunities at EA. I'm not sure if they are remote but I would apply anyway.
https://ea.gr8people.com/jobs/180129/character-art-intern
https://ea.gr8people.com/jobs/180143/artiste-de-personnages-stagiaire-character-artist-intern-iron-man?locale=en
i would also apply to character artist roles at other levels (atleast to mid level/intermediate)
I see no issue applying to a senior role, if anything it keeps your profile in their database. This is considering you do show comptancy atleast as far as the quality of your work is concerned.
Also different roles have different hiring priorities, so your aim is that your cv is opened and evaluated, hence apply regardless of the level.
Company wise, given your portfolio I'd be aiming for Respawn (Jedi Survivor)
Do keep in mind that they do outsource a lot of their character work to companies like Technicolor, Virtuous and Keos Masons, so their hiring for character artists is limited. I have seen this approach accross the industry.
I used to teach at a school in Burlington Vermont (where there are no Game Studios), and MANY of my students over the past 10 years, decided to stay in Burlington Vermont for no reason other than they just didn't want to go anywhere else. Many of them turned down amazing opportunities at various AAA studios in California, or North Carolina, just to work as a Barista or wait tables instead. Heck a few turned down opportunities in Montreal which is just a 2hour bus ride away.
Maybe I'm from a completely different generation (moved out in 1996 when I was 17), but nearly everyone my age moved around a lot for their careers, whereas I'm seeing younger kids absolutely refusing to leave home no matter what.
I mention this because most game studios seem to be returning to office (with a very few exceptions), but I'm thinking its closer to 90% of the opportunities are RTO, and of the remaining 10% (of what is a VERY brutal time in our industry) very few if any are hiring Juniors.
You have a decent portfolio, and I don't want this to come off as too brutal. But I've seen similarly talented artists decide not to relocate for work, and their careers never took off.
Not sure I agree with the approach, ie hire lead, hire senior, hire interns and then outsource the bulk of character art work due to budget cuts, but its a good way to get some experience if OP is eligible.
I do feel that seniority should be gauged not only by the quality of work but life experience and experience in other industries that builds a well rounded profile. Some studios are moving in this direction.
Quality of work is a non-starter. Your work has to be pretty close to senior quality to get a job.
The problem is a lot of what we do in games are now built on 'systems' that rely on other systems, that rely on other systems.
And these all tend to fall apart everywhere, and seniors are running around patching shit up with duct-tape.
And people I'm around call that out as well.
Though in the end the company looks at its well being so they do what they have to do, be it hiring interns, temporary full time contracts or layoff entire teams.
What I meant is that when it comes to building a team they really ought to look at more than just portfolio quality and published game titles as a measure of experience especially when hiring for leadership roles.
And the internship idea while being a good way to get a start in the industry is also seen as a popular cost cutting measure, when the work responsibility for the intern may not always be equal to the expense of hiring them.
Like the usual approach is that the intern has to prove themselves so they can be hired permanently because of how competitive it is, but if working at the studio is going to require learning regardless of what position you're at why hold out on permanently hiring them from the beginning?
I have personally witnessed an entire team having to learn a new engine from the ground up, and the company has budgeted for this.
In this situation what makes a junior different from a senior when both are learning a new pipeline and working together to learn it better?
Of course a senior is expected to perform better and take more responsibility, but the metrics by which seniority is measured largely came down to the company.
Like I didn't really see any real difference regardless of where in the metric they were. Its more that the seniors had worked their way up over the years and the company respected this as it should.
But that doesn't mean that they were better than juniors who could do their work better and faster but wouldn't be promoted because of how the metric worked.
Regardless of how good they were, I felt they were not utilized to their full potential and many were let go in favor of hiring new people and training them.
I felt that this had more to do with cost saving than actually valuing someone for their ability and long term potential.
Would they be hired as a senior if they had more work experience and published game titles, because that is what I've found working against me when I apply, even though when it comes to experience in the work force in general I do have seniority.
I worked in dentistry before game dev and the healthcare field requires far more competance, resilience and endurance under high pressure. Its almost like military when you think about it.
I find it surprising that this isn't always valued in the hiring process, though HR seems to value it but when it comes to the art team its very difficult to convey the value my background would bring unless they have also experienced a career jump.
My previous employment fortunately did value this and assigned me a task that relied on cataloging large volumes of data, i.e evaluating the body proportions of hundreds of soccer players. It was tedious repetitive work and really did need a high level of stress management which I feel I had because of the my experience in dentistry.
They also found me to be very reliable, approachable and sincere all qualities that my patients would also value in my bedside manner.
Not that I couldn't do the rest of the work, but the way the work was allotted came down to what was prioritised for milestones.
So as a character artist, I felt the best ones were ones most adaptable and capable of flexibility.
Not a lot of this came down to the quality of their portfolio, since regardless of what they had in their portfolio and what they used to make those models, the company had proprietary pipelines and limits to what was expected in quality.
Where I can see quality of portfolio work being important is in freelance where I have to take full responsibility for everything in a full character pipeline. Working in a team in a large studio wasn't like this, so I found several cases of artists with portfolios that were far beyond what they are tasked with at work, and artists that had very generic uninspiring portfolios that also did the same task at work.
Meaning they were working because they were expected to work.
Its not like the company had the liberty to adapt its product to the artists full potential at will, but perhaps this is a limitation within a large company and few artists did move to other projects that they felt were a better fit.
The key skill that was valued was being able to work with others which everyone seem to gradually get accustomed to.
So to conclude, if it was me hiring, regardless of what the portfolio looks like I would see how competant a candidate is at completing an art test and then gauge them on soft skills and life experience and their seniority and long term value ought to be decided on this.
Do note that I did find most teams to be pretty small, so you have like maximum 10 artists to a department which you could split to a average of 1 lead, 4 seniors, 2 intermediates and 3 juniors.
This budgeted out to around $900,000 on average for the lot as a salary expense.
I did feel that given the game makes several billions they can budget for more people to stay on but there were many factors that influenced this and its difficult to tell what sticks.
I just felt that there needs to be more transparency about what they really think about hiring for the long term and I find that their marketing tends to blur the reality.
Like I've seen how much they advocate that they hire the best and greatest top tier artists, but to be honest I didn't see this being applied on the job.
Sure there were artists that were very capable but they were limited by project expectations and if they wanted a promotion, the metrics they were measured against were really limited and more influenced by head counts and budgets.
So its important to convey what the reality is on the inside, I see far too many posts talking about how hard you have to work or how great your art has to be because of all the competition, that being god tier is what's needed but it simply wasn't the case where I worked.
What mattered more was what the company needed at the time and that was always changing.
Its stuff like this,
which I feel should apply more to enterprenuership than getting a job in AAA.
The metric for candidates that have successfully completed an art test must be a combination of professional and academic background and a complete understanding of an industry standard pipeline required to do the job.
I'm still confused about culture fit aspect which a colleague felt was playing street fighter after work, getting drinks and doing weed, though maybe the perspective of what that is different depending on the company.
How many Character Art jobs are there in AAA games:
We just took a survey, and with over 100 studios there were under 500 of us.
https://polycount.com/discussion/128692/how-many-aaa-character-artist-positions-are-there-in-our-industry/p1
Even if we were wrong? I'd be shocked if back then the number was over 1000 if we included Asia.
Fast forward today? And I'd be VERY surprised if that number was significantly different.
Realistically speaking there might be just over 1000 in-house Character Art positions in the entire world.
Colton Orr:
https://www.artstation.com/coltonorr
He did this in my class:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/VdZRmX
He did this in the other 3D Modelling class (Which got him top row trending on AS)
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/llyXO
To let you know where the bar is, you are competing with students like this for the few Character Art jobs there are.
Did he get hired as a senior right out of school since the quality of his work is comparable to a senior?
And does this bar apply to every AAA company as a game industry standard?
Because when you say that this is the bar to get hired, atleast from my experience I'm finding it to not be the case.
My experience:
But I can't say that their work improved as a result of jumping about to increase their salary or atleast it wasn't an improvement the company actually needed.
My point being that while it is good to hit this bar, I'm not really sure if it really matters in the hiring process, so while I do encourage others to hit it, I do need to tell them of all the other reasons why they might not be hired.
The trending on artstation/linkedin, I understand how that can help get work, but that has more to do with visibility so I'm wondering if juniors should be motivated to attempt that instead which requires them to do more than just hit a quality bar.
Like choosing the right subject matter, being innovative in presentation and showcasing it at the right time matters more when it comes to trending I feel.
Because if we consider those as character artists which they are, there are thousands more in India and China that work at much lower wages but are required to hit the same quality bar and directly affect how many character artist are actually hired in the main studios.
Its also important to consider how artists in the character art department were sorted depending on their task.
Like the outsourcing partner we worked with had an average of 100 artists all in character art, but working on different tasks related to characters.
Specialists if you will in hair, hard surface, weapons, clothing etc.
Many of these artists moved between tasks, but they were pretty much nameless and part of a character art farm.
These companies also worked with freelance character artists on contract.
Going into the industry I assumed that the all fulltime Character Artists employed at every 'major' studio were at the top of their game, but atleast where I worked regardless of what level they were at everyone relied heavily on each other and outsourcing partners in a pipeline that was more iterative and collaborative and required more communication and managerial skills than artistic quality.
Depending on the outsourcing partner involved the work ordered wasn't always to standard, so different outsourcing partners were used at a different price and quality points and this required more soft skills in mediation and diplomacy than simply learning to use the tools.
Like I've always seen it as character art department with model artists since very few if any were really competant with portraits, sculpture or anatomy which I felt were the more defining aspects of what the job of a character artist actually ought to be.
And so much was automated including finishing of work by outsourcing partners, and dividing a single character across a number of artists between departments, the task felt more like quality assurance than character art.
That said I really do feel that more character artists ought to be hired internally.
While its great to have smaller focused teams, I did feel that having more work spread over a larger team was way less stressful.
https://polycount.com/discussion/187512/recently-hired-in-aaa-show-us-your-portfolio#latest
recent hires to AAA companies have a variety of different work not all of which I would say is close to senior level.
I think it really does come down to the company and timing, but given the lack of transparency, I feel that ought to be equal weight given to a candidates in this order,
profile, portfolio overview, art test, professional background and life experience with more emphasis on a candidates performance on an art test over their personal work since submitted portfolios can be so varied and every candidate faces different challenges in preparing them.
Though speaking from experience I don't feel that every AAA company puts the time and effort needed to truly pick a candidate that is best for a role.
I feel its important to elaborate on the process in detail rather than just state that
"you must have top tier senior level portfolio to get junior level role in AAA game company."
which I feel is devaluing artists applying to studios by placing their worth on arbitrary and superficial metrics with a high level of personal preference.
I'll bite
What qualifies you to determine who is best for a role you aren't hiring for?
What qualifies you to determine whether metrics are arbitrary and superficial?
Why is a high level of personal preference a bad thing in the context of hiring an individual to work for an individual amongst a group of individuals?
Having a high level of personal preference doesn't always lead to a good outcome especially because the bias doesn't give a complete and holistic view of a candidates full potential.
A biased hiring manager is seeing what they want in a candidate, not what a candidate actually is.
For example, a colleague of mine is constantly battling with his self esteem because he doesn't feel confident that he was hired for his skills.
He has difficulty doing his work and feels that he was hired because he was black and that he is filling a quota.
Several candidates that he felt were better than him were passed over given that according to the metric, they seemed more qualified for the job, and when he asked around as to what helped him secure this position, his ability or potential is always seen as secondary to being black.
"It's great to see more black people"
"I'm sure you'll be a great inspiration to more black people joining the company"
"Your parents must be so happy that you're the first black game developer in the family"
"This will be such an inspiration to migrants from africa"
And
"It's nice to have black people because now we can get first hand experience on racism which will help in developing thr games story line since the game is based in Egypt."
He's a black Canadian who knows nothing about black diaspora in Egypt, and wasn't allowed to give any actual input to the development direction because as a model artist that wasn't his job.
The problem with personal bias in this case is that it comes from racism and ignorance and is now affecting his confidence.
This same dynamic applied to the hiring of LGBT and women.
The fact that the company actually received funding to encourage hiring from these groups did make it confusing if it was entirely a personal preference or a company policy.
Like I feel that the company encourages an already existing preference but it does it from a business perspective.
Where I felt the personal preference made the biggest impact was when it came to choosing between candidates within these groups both equally matched when it came to the companies metric on skill required to do the job.
Like another colleague is disabled and the company gets the same financial incentive to hiring him as it does for hiring from LGBT, black, native or women.
It should come down to portfolio which as is often said here "has to be senior level" but none of them had reached this level but they were still being considered because of the incentive.
It's dehumanizing to hear a disabled candidate wish he was black or wonder if he should lie about being non binary to get a leg up over other candidates.
I feel that saying that it is all down to the portfolio to get the job doesn't give a complete understanding of the many factors that influence the hiring process.
It also helps if the culture fit isn't based on largely superficial aspects like the games you play, clothes you wear, the weed you smoke or the beer you like.
Or atleast phrase questions differently so they don't startle candidates and focus on what the candidate can bring to the team.
"How do you unwind after a difficult day"
Vs
"Do you play street fighter, bunch of us get together after work to play street fighter over beers and smoke a joint."
The fact that these come up in an interview which goes against the companies guidelines on interviews isn't professional.
Like this is more along the lines of a culture fit interview
https://ca.indeed.com/hire/c/info/culture-fit-interview-questions?gclid=CjwKCAiAx_GqBhBQEiwAlDNAZmw-UIg4p2g7ViNBNLbejlgrwrTOTZcFWOeh66YI_NNoWMlttJNSLRoCFBcQAvD_BwE&hl=en&aceid=&gclsrc=aw.ds
So much comes down to timing, budgets and the job market.
I've been wondering where this "just be rockstar" mentality comes from and I feel that it is a combination of hiring from the same demographics (gamers) and marketing.
A lot of that mentality is self inflicted, its similar to how fine artists are trying to find recognition from a wider audience but in games it is without the philosophy, spirituatlity and self reflection that develops the esoteric nuance that makes an artist unique.
Game development really seems to be more about teamwork in production so saying that you have to be a rockstar artist with a great portfolio to get a corporate job comes across as a sugar coated way of saying that there is so much competition because of corporate mismanagement, nepotism and hipocracy that the only way to get noticed is to stand out with your art,
and then do an art test
and an interview
and hopefully the company doesn't drop the project
and hopefully your contract is extended
and hope to god you're not laid off because of the recession.
Very far from an fine artist or sculptor that is regarded for their work and defined by it, its not like they have to follow an interview process and art test by a gallery before exhibiting their work.
Its why I felt that the whole mentality of seeing it like
"Each company has average of 4-5 character artists and they are all top tier rockstars"
reeks to me of overwork and mismanagement, it isn't something to be proud of and motivate juniors to strive towards.
like the company absolutely needs to hire more character artists to balance the workload and there needs to be more awareness of a companies reliance on outsourcing partners.
Motivating artists to seeing their potential as being more than just becoming production drones in a corporate machine is what I feel truly matters in the long term.
Is there a better alternative than someone using their best judgement based on the information they have available?
this is so depressing but true. Blizzard, play me "Invincible"
The way this will stop is encouraging longevity, discouraging poaching talent, relying less on outsourcing and not overburdening permanent staff.
Its an interesting dynamic. I have seen company hireups saying that the way they have ensured long term growth and better retention among staff is by relying on outsouring and temporary contracts, though there was no transparency on adjustments made to the compensation of executive staff and marketing budgets. Even though they are not obligated to providing this, it would help to have that information.
I do feel that AAA companies spend far too much on marketing and it isn't really clear to me if this is translating to awareness and sales. Sure there can be an upsurge of sales because you paid a streamer a million, but it is also possible to have this growth gradually and more sustainably.
One reason that the game industry doesn't parallel the wider tech industry (such as IT and cyber security) is because its products are entertainment based so similar to the film and television industry. Competition and hype seems to be driving the development process.
I've seen game devs speak favorably about jumping ship to increase compenstation but this will hurt the industry in the long term. If anything companies shouldn't be encouraging this.
I also feel that the demographic of game devs allows for this, my graduating cohort for example was largely male, single and socially awkward gamers that I felt were very easy to manipulate.
Majority were moving into game dev from retail/food service (fresh out of school) and saw the only other option to a game dev job as retail/food service and security.
Several wanted to become twitch streamers.
Regardless of what impact the course had on their portfolios, the program was limited in that it didn't allow for a more well rounded academic development such as one you are expected to receive from a university with majors, minors, electives and exchange programs.
That said many of my cohort simply wasn't interested in other subjects unless the media they were interested in (film, tv, videogames and anime) had something to do with it and I feel that the course ought to have been structured to encourage students to learn more about the world around them than just the game dev pipeline.
And there needs to be more demand from the game industry to hire candidates with diverse academic backgrounds and give them more autonomy that goes beyond following established pipelines.
It certainly does come down to the individual artists who shouldn't limit their creativity to this medium, that is if they want to be more enterpreneurial.
I just mainly have a problem with how it can be marketed to juniors, putting everything on their portfolio without taking into consideration the wider realities of the hiring process.
The industry could benefit from more Jerry Mcguires.
Having more transparency accross the board would be the best way to sort the issue and also what information is requested and how that povides sustainable growth for the company and the employee in the long term with regards to productivity and retention.
For example, with my colleague who feels he was hired because he was black and feels underqualified for the role, he wasn't asked about what he could bring to the studio, what plans he had for his own development and the direction he might take the company in the long term.
Most of the interview was focused on how the company helps minorities, how awesome his work is and how cool it is to be working on games, how they all hang out with weed, beer and arcade cabinets in the game room and that he should feel lucky that he was chosen over hundreds of others.
But on the job he isn't seeing his skillset being applied to the work he is assigned. If he brings it up there is little the company can do since they work with established pipelines.
Its the difference between going in thinking that you will be creating props vs cleaning props made by outsourcing partners, so the role feels more quality assurance in modeling than actual game art.
He felt he could do a better job building the model himself and clean up takes more time and is a tedious process, but the project budget is tied to the contract with the outsourcer so he cannot have autonomy on the development process.
The alternative is to move to another project given availablity or to leave and join another studio. And he feels that the metric to reach seniority is completely on the company's whim.
Like as model artist, he has to climb multiple levels all of which have very similar language and bringing this up with management usually comes with "that's a different department" and "atleast you have a job"
It feels very impersonal to him and does not encourage him to be creative in the work he's paid for.
Sure he can be creative in his personal work which may help with leveling up, but the main hiderance to leveling up seems to be budget and headcounts which he feels can be increased given how much the company makes.
While there certainly are employees that are using their job as a jumping board, he genuinely wants to remain with the company and his team and not having any negotiating room to allow for this is demoralising.
I'm curious as to what you see as good hiring metrics for eg. a junior artist.
And this does vary depending on the studio.
When it comes to hiring metrics, I don't believe that they are flawed, but the way they are applied doesn't come across as valuing a candidates full potential, meaning they aren't hiring a person but a tool that they can add to an assembly line.
I feel that there should be a balance between evaluating a portfolio for its merits as well as its flaws with the objective being to understand the journey of the artist and their proces.
Unfinished work in a portfolio shouldn't be seen as a disadvantage or a sign that a candidate isn't capable.
The very fact that so much of the actual work that is done on the job is so full of errors and revisions means that hiring the perfect top tier rock star candidate with the stellar portfolio might actually end up being counterproductive to learning on the job and being able to anticipate and undertake risk.
Its probably why many juniors with senior level work who are hired as juniors lack so much of the nuance, skill and experience that comes with making mistakes, a true testament of seniority, since in preparing their portfolios they only highlight their best work and can only be evaluated for their limitations once they are hired.
While I can't speak for everyone when it comes to hiring, for my part I would certainly look for candidates that have shown a healthy balance between achievement and failure, risk and resolve, autonomy and teamwork and demonstrate strong potential for leadership since I have always seen working at a job as a step towards finding independence from it.
This promotes growth in the industry and discourages studios limiting promotions to employees to save on expenses, stagnating their potential. It encourages promoting cooperation over competition.
If studios promote themselves as a family I feel that they should do everything they can to hire for the long term, and if this seems too idealistic the least we can do is make newcomers aware of the reality that regardless of their rockstar status they can be seen as entirely dispensible and disposable.
For me personally - if I can reasonably expect a hire to take under 3 months and there's 20 equivalent roles already there's not much point in worrying too much about finding the perfect person - It's still bad if you get it wrong but you're not crippled.
If it's going to take 12 months to fill a highly specific role I'm much more interested in who the candidate is as a person, what their values and principles are and so on. Having a pivotal role empty for 12 months can easily kill a project so you don't want to be getting that one wrong.
Its great that portfolios are valued, I just feel that is a very superficial measure to declare an artist being a top tier rockstar given how much of a mess the whole game development process can be.
There's a lot more skills that are needed that go beyond just making great looking art and it was painful to see so many candidates fall apart because they lacked these skills.
Usually you learn these skills on the job but a lot of new comers simply don't last long enough to learn, but I also found that many candidates did often settle for a lot less than what they were actually worth owing to ignorance and competitiveness.
First of all, I would like to say that after a lot of time and effort, I have landed my first position in the industry as a Junior Character Artist, and I am super excited about it! I would like to ask for some advice, as right now I feel very nervous and a bit scared. My biggest fear is that I will be given tasks and won't know how to fulfill them, but maybe it's all in my mind, since I'm a Junior, and I understand that they won't ask too much of me at the beginning until I adapt to the job. But the fear is still there, fear of not meeting their expectations and not being good enough. What advice would you give me to be more at ease?
Thanks to everyone!
this, so much this!