Junior Vs Senior
Just wondered what the difference in roles would be between a Junior and Senior 3D artist at a game studio in terms of work on each project and what would be expected skill wise for a junior.
Cheers,
Justin
Cheers,
Justin
Replies
A good portfolio, it is right to assume the portfolio for a junior wouldnt have to be to the same standard as a senior artist?
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I read this as;
"can I get a job with a crappy portfolio? I don't want to take the time to learn on my own and I want out of my parents basement NOW!"
Yes, but not a job you would want to work at for very long.
Quality places hire quality not on the promise of quality after much investment on the companies part. I don't know too many places that pass over junior artists with a good portfolio to go with someone who has a worse portfolio but promises to become better? It's best to show up knocking on their door with the skills they require than it is to show and ask to be trained.
Junior Artist usually means capable production artist, just with limited experience. You get a number of similar assets to plow through, usually with clearly-defined designs/expectations (provided by Sr).
What I meant was, say in web design for example. If you were going for a junior role, your work wouldnt be expected to be on the same par as someone doing it for 8 years. So therefore you wouldnt have the same responsibility as a senior, you would do all the basic production (creating banners, labels/headers, page layouts) where as the senior guy would actually design the site from scratch, come up with branding, concepts etc. In most disciplines people with more experience are expected to be better at their skill/craft that those with less experience and thats usually reflected in responsibility and task set within the role (and salary of course!) and I wondered how that compared with 3D.
Cheers,
Justin
When a company wants to hire a Senior Artist they want someone that has PROVEN several times that they can get the job done.
As far as separation of tasks between Senior and Junior artist, in my experience, it really depends of the company you work at. Some companies give the important assets to the Senior Artist, and some to simply the more talented artists.
It really depends on the companies. I have a little over a year of exp and I was Senior Envir Artist at my previous job. It just happened that I was the only person they had that knew the engine they used and I used that as a bargaining chip.
Oddly enough now, the title really doesn't matter to me. I think it's because I was a Senior Artist before having one year of exp I've realized that the title has nothing to do with job happiness.
I'm now an Envir Artist and do the same job as the Senior Artist. But the Senior Artist has 4+ years of exp on me. To be honest also it really doesn't bother me.
Or it could just go by age. Anyone over 30 automatically becomes a senior artist, anyone under 24 is a junior artist.
and of course, there are always exceptions
attending meetings
mentoring junior artists
communicating with other teams
setting an example
writing docs
Senior artists actively seek out problems and try to solve them. They help train the juniors and they help develop art tools.