Tech Art Reel?
polycounter lvl 17
Do these exist?
I've been living in Austin for about 8 weeks now working with kids at a camp, teaching mostly Modeling With Maya and Level Design with UnrealEd.
My first week here I had lunch with an Art Director, and he told me I should perhaps think of marketing myself as a tech artist. And lately, I've been looking at Tech Artist listing, and I'm amazed that there's finally a job out there that I might finally meet all the criteria for. How exactly would I go about displaying my knowledge?
There are a lot of models and game assets that my students made that I have imported into the engine for them, due to the learning curve such as:
2 of my Students modeled Weapons that I scripted and imported for them so you can fire them in game, complete with custom animations
Various Models
Various Textures for those models
For my students' group project, I made 8 custom materials based on High Res photos we took of the UT Austin Campus to help them out.
And I also have some custom characters I myself have modeled and imported
===========================================
Now being that majority of the 3D Content was created by 13-17 year olds and is incredibly basic, I'm concerned whether or not I should just simply start from scratch. The schedule of the camp is pretty taxing, and takes a LOT of my free time. Should I make my own content; or should I simply make a quick "Tech Reel" with what I have and just show off what all I can do in the engine.
I've been living in Austin for about 8 weeks now working with kids at a camp, teaching mostly Modeling With Maya and Level Design with UnrealEd.
My first week here I had lunch with an Art Director, and he told me I should perhaps think of marketing myself as a tech artist. And lately, I've been looking at Tech Artist listing, and I'm amazed that there's finally a job out there that I might finally meet all the criteria for. How exactly would I go about displaying my knowledge?
There are a lot of models and game assets that my students made that I have imported into the engine for them, due to the learning curve such as:
2 of my Students modeled Weapons that I scripted and imported for them so you can fire them in game, complete with custom animations
Various Models
Various Textures for those models
For my students' group project, I made 8 custom materials based on High Res photos we took of the UT Austin Campus to help them out.
And I also have some custom characters I myself have modeled and imported
===========================================
Now being that majority of the 3D Content was created by 13-17 year olds and is incredibly basic, I'm concerned whether or not I should just simply start from scratch. The schedule of the camp is pretty taxing, and takes a LOT of my free time. Should I make my own content; or should I simply make a quick "Tech Reel" with what I have and just show off what all I can do in the engine.
Replies
That's the other bizarre thing about tech artist postings.
Until said Art Director explained to me that Tech artists work as a liaison, between the tech/program side and the art department; I associated the position with what you just asked me:
Scripting
Rigging
and Making sure things work mostly for animation.
I started a technical artist community a month or so ago, this thread may be of interest:
http://tech-artists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=41 describing what tech artists do at their companies, and
http://tech-artists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=87 for someone who asked a similar question.
Take a look around and look at what job postings for tech artists require. The position is very 'organic' so the number one most important thing are your intangibles, which is why experience and recommendations are taken very heavily. You need to be able to think on your feet, learn quickly, be able to do a variety of things. You specialize in better allowing other people to specialize.
Odds are, unless you are already very good, you have a better shot at being hired as an environment/prop artist, and growing your role from there, unless you can get a good recommendation from someone who can help you land a job somewhere based on merit.
Yes, this is essentially what said director told me over lunch, is you have to be a great problem solver and think on your feet. While I'm not the best modeler/texture artist/animator. He told me knowing the process is important, but not everyone in the art department has the technical knowledge of implementing what they create into games.
Which, kind of baffled me, because half of the artists on Polycount CAN, and I learned most of what I know here, or through links posted via here.
Edit: http://tech-artists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=87 ... yeah this link is pure gold!