How did you find your specialty as a 3D Artist?

ModBlue

I like doing characters. I've tried doing environments several times before, but couldn't get into them. I'd just doom scroll through Artstation trying to find something I want to make and often ended up doing nothing. It made me realize how much it really matters to like doing something if your gonna pursue it for a job lol.

How about for you guys?

sacboi

Way back when, my veeery much younger self fresh out of high-school had worked for a few global automotive brands alongside doing a stint in the army which may explain a 'thing' for vehicle art plus other mechanical HS stuff. So aside from enjoying what I do as mainly a pastime activity these days, might also add that the sense of achievement modeling what you've envisioned inside your head, is the most fun I've had with my clothes on      

Eric Chadwick

I lucked out with my first cg job having been one which everyone had to do many different kinds of work. 

Whatever jobs we could get as a young scrappy advertising agency, that’s what we artists had to make art for. 

So I got to try out a ton of different specialties. 2D vector graphics, 2D animation, vfx, character animation, enviro art, 3D animated skyboxes, planetarium real-time shows. I don’t even remember it all.

Anyhow, landed in technical art, kind of. Visual problem solver, really. Love it.

poopipe

you don't choose to be a TA, it chooses you

dimwalker

Was making maps for q3 and q1, also custom player models. Was always more interested in characters. Paul Steed's work inspired me and his tutorials helped a lot.
At some point friend told me that company that was making a game (which was a huge deal at the time) is hiring, so I contacted them and went to an interview. They told me that characters are done already and I was environment artist ever since.

zetheros

I rolled a nat 1 during character creation