% Environment vs. Character Artists
polycounter lvl 18
For the games that you have worked on, what percentage or artists were environment/prop specialists in relation to the number of character artists on the team? Effects/Vehicle/Weapon/etc. artists should be included as environment/prop artists for the sake of this poll. Character artists would include modelers/character z-brushers/character skinners/riggers/animators, etc.
If an artist splits time doing some of each, try to estimate the percentage of their time spent on respective areas.
If an artist splits time doing some of each, try to estimate the percentage of their time spent on respective areas.
Replies
it was a very character-centric project tho but here it seems frequently more or less evenly split on projects.
what's the purpose of the poll?
It also seems that 90%+ of all students want to do characters, when they might be better off exploring other avenues for employment. It seems that even if a student is interested in doing environments, weapons, or whatever, a lot of schools and peers still push them to do character work.
I was just hoping that we could get some rough numbers to see where the jobs were.
But throwing Animators into the mix shifts things a bit more toward 50/50 here.
Our level designers contribute a lot to environment art too, so I think that will balance out me not counting animators as character artists.
Well so far it's looking like 75% of the companies out there have more environment than character work. This kind of supports my general confusion why there is an emphasis of character work in most online competitions and from most game art educational programs, as it doesn't appear to be an accurate representation of the industry's needs. Not that there's anything wrong with character work of course. It's just odd that there's such heavy promotion of character-centric showpieces.
If you're a professional, please let us know the ratio for your company if you haven't yet done the poll. Thanks.
Doesn't matter, since they're environment artists... all they do is make environments, so obviously they should be very good at it.
I don't care if an environment artist's character work is not very good, or they have a poor grasp of anatomy or whatever. It's a non-issue, since they may well have a much better understanding of architecture, structure, and layout that any character artist would have trouble trying to grasp.
And by they, I mean we.
This poll was posted to determine where the bulk of the work is in the course of game production. My comments about challenges were just a minor footnote, but I am concerned about the number or game degree courses and wannabe professionals that have such a character-heavy slant. If this does not represent the realities of the game industry as a whole, this should be corrected.
Of course hobbiests will do whatever they like, but art and tech schools should not focus 90% of their curriculum and students portfolios on characters if character work actually only makes up 15% of the game art jobs.
I am hoping that this poll might help to demonstrate where game companies need talented artists. If this might help some hobbiests or students to direct their portfolio accordingly, then I am happy that this has helped them.
Other than that, I was just personally curious. Even here on Polycount, if you look at P&P, it seems like 80% of what you see is characters. And this is actually an improvement from four or five years ago, where it seems like only one out of twenty or fifty threads was an environment piece. This always struck me as odd as a professional, where for the projects that I have worked on, character work was a very small portion of the overall workload.
I like doing both, but I had the intention of gearing my portfolio towards characters because that's what I prefer. However, as the results show, and as I've noticed browsing job openings, there's way more demand for environment artists. So, naturally character art is way more competitive.
Should I just crank out environment art to get my foot in the door, and then see about switching to character art? I feel I am capable of doing both, but it seems most employers want artists to specialize. I realize exceptions are made in some cases, but I'm no prodigy.
Funnily enough I love doing animation and I'd actually say I have a guilty pleasure in Enviro/Level design. (but im totally crap for the industry so :poly136: )
Slainean, this is a good question. I'd say you have to question what you really like to do. If you really like doing characters, but don't really like doing environments, it will probably show in your work. I mean, even if you manage to grind out a couple of pieces for your portfolio and get a job, what happens then? After a year or two will you just be fed up with the work, and will your employer fed up with you? This is something that you have to determine for yourself.
If however you like doing environment work, but currently like doing characters a bit more, then I don't see any reason why not to give environments/props a shot. I originally thought characters were the shiznit, just as many others. But once I got in production and really thought about how I like to play games, I just found environments much more satisfying. This is totally personal.
I thought about all of the shooters that I play and how I loved a beautifully put together level. A good one just feels so immersive. Then I thought about the characters, and realized that I am generally just concerned with shooting them from 50 yards and moving on, without giving them a second glance. When I put all of this together, it's not shocking that I really enjoy doing environmental art.
But when I was in school and first breaking into the industry, there was all of this pressure to do character work. I'm a decent artist and can do it, and do enjoy characters, but feel my time may have been better spent learning more about the sub-field that I ended up in.
It's looking fairly obvious from the poll results that there are lots of options in non-character work if you should choose to pursue it. I hope that this will open some newer folks' eyes to those avenues.
Lack of Environment Artists
Before people tit slap me im not trying to bring people down or saying that a job isnt importanta all that existencialist bullshit blablabla...
Also i think that having a game where the environment "complements" the character work, the story etc are rare , one where i find that is final fantasy games, especially the 10th chapter.Half life 2 was really good at that too.
This thread is getting very interesting
I don't disagree with your statement. Entry level environment art has a lower entry threshold than entry level character art in most cases. Emphasis on entry level..
However, slapping a wood texture on a box does not even qualify you as a mediocre environment artist. That is the misconception I was referring to. It's an incredibly deep field that requires wide knowledge of many disciplines to master.
Though I'm constantly going back and forth with the environment guys (I'm like half technical artist/tool guy, half character guy - its weird), helping them improve their pipeline and developing tools/plugins with the coders.
Then we have our animators (3 of them, maybe 4), who do all the rigging and animating.
I do find that the environment team here is generally bigger than the character team and we generally could always use an extra environment guy. Especially seeing as the last few titles we've shipped have been car racing titles (no characters required).
When I first started here, I started out an environment guy, learned a whole lot (and I'm assuming that is why I'm always back and forth with the environment guys). When my current project started, I was on the environment team and I made a push to get on the character team. I honestly still don't know what my defined role is, haha! But my Art Lead and my Producer constantly re-assure me that I'm a character guy :poly142:
My $0.02
-caseyjones
I'm looking for IT jobs again, since I can't find a friggin env job..
I'm not sure about other areas, but there are 4 local schools that focus on game art and a few schools that offer game art courses. It's enough to keep the market semi flooded with candidates and they all seem to mass mail every local company when they get out.
I have noticed a lot less job postings for "entry or Jr. level" positions and more Lead or Sr job postings
Although I know I have a lot of work to do in order to reach a level of quality where I can get into the industry, it is nice to know that there are good amount of environment artist positions.
I, myself, know that I really want to go more as an environment artist. I've always been more impressed with movie and game environment than characters, I like doing it more than characters, so I'll concentrate on getting a job as an environment artist.