Mastering vs Specializing

Vertrucio

I often see the Specializing as a catch all recommendation for finding work in the industry, but I no longer think it's quite true. Looking over all the jobs these past months and quite a number of them, even games industry jobs, often ask for a number of different skills beyond the thing they ask for. Then, there's all the (higher paying) jobs outside the games industry that very frequently ask for a variety of skills.

I think the saying should be to master a skill before moving on to mastering other skills. Then show that mastery in your portfolio work.

Over specializing can also be a trap, as you are stuck looking for work in a specific role should the volatile games, and art, industry hits a downturn or technology changes.

What do you think?

Right now I specialize in Hard Surface art and I'm still seeking mastery in it. But I also know that once I attain a good level of mastery in it, I am for sure expanding what I can do into things like technical artist related duties.

Alex_J

i cant tell you anything about the industry and jobs but wife was a marine biologist and she is saying that anytime there is sudden change in nature the specialist are always first to die.

Benjammin

Its always only been true up to a point. 
Its still very true for finding work at the junior level, because you need to be better than the competition, and the only way for normal people to do that is to specialize.
Once you're in, being over-specialized locks you in to a certain role. You might enjoy that role when you're plugging away at your portfolio, but maybe not so much when you're doing it 40hrs a week for years, with limited (if any) creative control. 

carvuliero

You have to specialize something to attain mastery over it so not sure why you put  "vs" there ,and from description below it make more sense to change it to generalist vs specialist

If you are not super lazy eventually will end up as generalist starting as specialist just require time and someone or something to push you in to area that you haven't explore yet

Knowing  a bit about a lot of thing can make you better at your specialization for example character artist with little knowledge of rigging can do better topology  as he understand how and what is necessary for good deformation same apply for little animation now he can do better rigs and can create better characters as have have broader view of the whole pipeline If you know a little coding you could speed up boring repetitive task by writing simple scripts .Same apply for even topics which are not directly connected to your initial specialization If someone ask you to model him something that will be injection molded or 3d printed now you have to know bunch of other stuff  to be able to do that even tho its just modeling At the end the more you know its easier to find job and you are more useful to your clients or coworks  and can tackle harder and much more complex projects which pay much more then just single specialization