Career Advice: Art or Management?

pangarang

Hey guys,

My last 2.5 years were spent at EA. I came in as a low level game tester wanting to do art and have been aiming towards that goal the whole time now. My current position has me among senior level development support (within the art department) for the studio's major titles. Within the job family matrix, I am roughly halfway to development manager. This is fantastic and I am fortunate and working hard still, dedicating my entire role to supporting our artists so they can do their jobs, redesigning our QA work flow so that artists don't have to worry about QA ripping their work apart or loading them with bugs. Here's the wrench.

I still want to be an artist.

What I'm wondering is - in your opinion - what is it like as far as the job market for no experience artists go? From what I can tell, in Vancouver it is NOT GOOD. Given my wanting to do art vs. the job market opportunities, is it worth leaving my current position for? I am willing to relocate if there are opportunities elsewhere.

Two Listen

From my (very limited) experience - the best managers, especially art-related managers, are all talented artists themselves. Especially if it's a direct management position, it sucks to be managed by some guy who doesn't know jack about the very department he's managing.

So my personal advice? Both. Feel free to keep pursuing management, but also work hard on your artwork and pursue it as you can. If you at some point want to switch to getting paid more for your art, it's a lot of times an easy thing to do within a company especially - so if you're already working somewhere with management but show nice art skills, they may well find they can use you elsewhere as well.

RyanB

Go management all the way if you want a steady job. It's more enjoyable to have a steady job and do art in your spare time.

In 2.5 years you went from game tester to halfway to development manager (DD?) Think about that and compare it to the opportunities for artists.

bounchfx

RyanB wrote: »

Go management all the way if you want a steady job. It's more enjoyable to have a steady job and do art in your spare time.

In 2.5 years you went from game tester to halfway to development manager (DD?) Think about that and compare it to the opportunities for artists.

I'm going to 'counter' this in a way by saying: do what makes you happy. if doing art full time will make you love your job, give it a shot. if you're enjoying what you're doing now, that's awesome, and maybe you should proceed in that direction. Just make sure you're being conscious of how work is treating you. if you're not having fun, maybe it's time to step back and re-evaluate it.

Striff

If I were in your position I would stick with where I was at. That's pretty impressive the progress you have made.

tharle

my advice: you're obviously not happy doing what you're doing otherwise you wouldnt have posted here.

if you want the stability of a management job because you have commitments (wife kids mortgage etc.) then you have to be happy that you've got commitments and may have to make sacrifices (such as never achieving your dream job of artist.)

if you decide to become an artist then go for it, but it will probably be a difficult journey. you do have experience working in the games industry (albeit not as an artist) and art is a very democratic - if your work is good then you will get work. is there anything stopping you working on your art while you're still working or do you just want to leave your job to commit to artwork full time? have you considered getting professional retraining? it's expensive but could be worth it.

as someone who just gave up a perfectly good career in engineering to retrain as an artist i guess i'm biased but i know i'm much happier now (although i dont have another job yet :P)

hope this helps

tharle

Pseudo

Please for the love of god, do not fall up the QA ladder. I never understood why the next step on the ladder above QA is management or production coordinator because nothing about the QA job prepares you for management.

My advice is if you want to be a manager, go out now and get the experience as a developer(artist, programmer, designer, etc.) so that you can become a great manager later in your career.

Mark Dygert

I'd rather push pixels and polys than schedules and spreadsheets...

As a former manger of 25 people and a current lead, I have all the management I can stomach. It would have to be a hefty raise to get me back to manage a small army of prima donnas and I probably wouldn't stick around long.

Don't get me wrong I love my job, its perfect! I manage 3 people right now any more than 5-7 and magically I turn into a wet nurse/cat wrangler who spends his days approving PTO and writing up reports and reviews, Then there is sitting in meetings listening to the head of IT bitch about how no one respects the formatting on the internal wiki... fuck off I just want to go back to my desk and make cool shit and occasionally look at some other cool shit other people have made and give them feedback.

One of my reports is myself and the other two are super talented, super cool guys, the pencil pushing part of it is a snap and I get more than enough time to be creative and do all the fun stuff I can get my hands on.

Honestly I would give it a shot, who knows you might love it just don't get too used to the pay no one likes paying entry level artists manger wages, unless your previous boss was screwing you over heavily heh.

rooster

I'm really not sure its always best for managers to come from up the ranks.. hear me out- I totally agree its important to have managers who understand the tasks somewhat, but really in this respect what you need is managers who trust the leads advice and opinions, not knowledge of any nuts and bolts of the tasks. Often experienced team members move to management, but managing people well is a whole different ball game to making good art or programming.

Promoting up the ranks this way without management training as often happens, is just asking for poor management. Of course some do fit the role well, but imo far too often someone's put in a management role who has absolutely no management training

edit: that's not really advice is it, it's just a rant. I guess for the good of the industry, get some management training/experience and run things proper like

Kwramm

Nothing wrong with promoting artists to managers. There's just two things 1) make sure the guy has shown some ability (e.g. he managed junior artists before, he knows how to delegate, he can communicate, etc) 2) don't promote him from being a nobody to being responsible for everything.

Problem is often people get promoted like "he's a good artist, so he's a good manager"...duh. Although it does help if a producer knows a bit of the art process...or at least is willing to listen to people who do.

For the OP, if you actually have some managing xp under your belt and you can get things done, then there shouldn't be a problem. For choosing what to do....don't do what you "think" will make you happy. Do what you can do best. Happiness will follow

Mark Dygert

I agree with Ro and Kwramm, a company needs to promote and hire good managers if they happen to already be working for the company, great! However they also have to account for the missing talent when they push someone up the ladder. Taking out a key player can be devastating to the pipeline. Also drowning them with extra tasks then expecting the same level of work out of them is the sign of a company not understanding either task, and its probably best to run away and join the circus.

Also some bad higher ups think;
"this person is a slightly below average worker and its been 3 years and they haven't advanced their skill as far as we hoped. MAYBE their talent is in management? Oh hey! Then we can hire someone more talented to replace them! Win Win!"

The person gets promoted and receives zero manger training and they succeed in riding the team into the ground. 2pts for putting people in places they don't belong, due to incompetence!

I'm not saying this is the case here just examples I've seen of upper management making poor decisions and people should be on the look out for these types of things as they are hallmarks the company is going down in flames.

SHEPEIRO

rooster wrote: »

I'm really not sure its always best for managers to come from up the ranks.. hear me out- I totally agree its important to have managers who understand the tasks somewhat, but really in this respect what you need is managers who trust the leads advice and opinions, not knowledge of any nuts and bolts of the tasks. Often experienced team members move to management, but managing people well is a whole different ball game to making good art or programming.

Promoting up the ranks this way without management training as often happens, is just asking for poor management. Of course some do fit the role well, but imo far too often someone's put in a management role who has absolutely no management training

edit: that's not really advice is it, it's just a rant. I guess for the good of the industry, get some management training/experience and run things proper like

really out of the different experiences I have garnered I have totally opposite opinion...possibly totally dependant on the studios outlook/project ethos etc etc

cman2k

It's good and healthy to question where you are at and where you want to be going. I have struggled with a similar question, which is one of "Doing what I'm good at" or "Doing what I love". It's pretty hard to make that choice, especially when you have a family depending on you for support.

Forget all the bullshit here about companies and what's good for them. Concentrate on what is good for you, and what is most important to you. Even if you are supporting a family, not taking a risk for your dream might make you miserable later in life. On the other hand, you may realize that art was only a pipe-dream for you and not really what you wanted (This kind of happened to me with animation).

You don't want to live a life of what-ifs. You need to do what's good for you and follow your heart, even if it ends up being a dead-end. That's what is going to make you and the people around you the happiest.

rooster

shep: I'm not saying it's outright a bad idea to hire up the ranks into manager positions- I just think that there should be management training involved. There's a lot of good sound knowledge on management techniques and principles that a person probably won't pick up or stumble across by just giving it their best shot.

lets face it, mismanagement is rife in our industry, delays, perma-crunch, poor work environments. Imo at least a part of this is caused by management people with inadequite (or no) training and/or they don't fit the role they find themselves promoted to

like you say though, it's going to be a different story depending on where you've been

pangarang

Wow thank you guys for all the responses! And of such varying opinions too.

@Two Listen, RyanB, Striff
Yes, my current route seems more secure to me as most of the good managers (PMs, DMs, DDs) are still around. But I have seen more than my fair share of talented artists getting let go all over the industry in favor of outsourcing. I do work on art in my spare time, trying to match the caliber of the game pros for when the industry here picks up and aritsts are in demand again.

@Tharle
I'm not necessarily unhappy with my job. Quite the opposite, I'm happy. But I know I will be happier in an art role. The thing is I'm not sure if it's worth jumping the management/QA ship if I can't see the artist life boat down below. Since you guys are in that life boat, I'm just asking how full it is and if you are taking anymore. Because all I can see from my end is artists falling out. That's the best analogy I can give, haha.

@Kwramm, Pseudo, Rooster
In my case specifically, I wouldn't necessarily be managing artists. More likely QA. And the experience is there - for both in-house and outsourced testers, in QA and dev-support roles. Even if it came down to managing artists, no problem. My first role would be an assistant where I learn the ropes. Also I've been artist dev-support for 1.5 years. I know who's who in the art department, their hierarchy, their pipeline from concept to integration, so I'm confident I know where to draw the management line and where to trust the leads. Not that I disagree with what you're saying though - I've experienced poor managers as well.

@Mark Dygert
You probably get this a lot, but I am deeply envious of your professional position. You lead a small team whose job is to make cool shit and look at cool shit and that is *exactly* the position for me that I wouldn't know how to make better. Hire me? :P But yes, this is a direction I am aiming for. The one major road block is the aftereffects of the recession and artists are getting laid off everywhere, their jobs going overseas.

Eric Chadwick

I recently went from a mgmt/art lead position back to a full-time artist position, and I can tell you it feels awesome. The money isn't as great, but the lower stress level and the greater daily satisfaction are really much better compensation.

Mark Dygert

Yea I wouldn't fault you for picking something more stable and doing what you love in your spare time, I know if I was faced with the decision again I would go that route, especially now that I've got a mortgage, a wife and a kid and I've got to make sure I'm not selfishly hurting anyone else I'm connected to. I also know I would work my ass off to get pack into a position like I'm in now the entire time.

pangarang wrote:

Not that I disagree with what you're saying though - I've experienced poor managers as well.

Yea some of the best managers I've worked with, have suffered through poor management at some point or other.