A 2D/3D Generalist?

Canadian Ink

Here is my story in a nutshell. I spent a long time doing 2D/3D work in the multimedia and broadcast world until i hunkered down and worked on my portfolio and eventually broke into the industry. I worked for a small Indie Dev doing 3D generalist work for 6 months until we all got laid off. I then started with another small company and am doing lots of 2D/3D work (generalist again). So here I am with under a year of industry experience and a very general portfolio www.shaunpatterson.com


I guess my questions for you guys is that I bet alot of you started the same way as me and I wonder how far being a generalist can take me in my career? I dont know if I should just keep trying to grow my skills all around because I am so new to the industry or if I should be aggressively zoning in on a single skillset? (character/environment/2D..etc)

Ive seen so much awesome work on here and it really motivates to keep trying to up my game and grow as an artist.

thanks in advance for all your replys!

Joseph Silverman

It really only matters how skilled you are. If you're just as good at characters as you are environments but are still at 'sr environment artist at [awesome games]' level of skill, you can obviously land that job. If 'generalist' means jack of all trades but master of none, why hire you instead of a much more proficient environment or character artist?


Keep improving, and work on what interests you. If you feel you need to get your skillset up quickly decide whether you think you'll improve faster by zoning in on one focus and go for it.