Character Artist switching to Environment Artist?
polycounter lvl 6
I'm debating weather I should take a break from character modeling and switch to environments. I always wanted to become a character modeler but it seems like switching to environments may be the better option. I was told it is easier to get a job doing environments than it is doing characters.
Character modeling is competitive and takes a great deal of understanding anatomy and making textures. Environments takes a great deal of skills as well but environments are not as competitive and 90% of the models you see in video games are from the environments. To be honest I think applying as an environment artist is an easier path to get into the gaming industry than it is character modeling.
I really want in on this gaming industry. I'm 22 and plan to get in before I hit 25. Rockstar Games is what I preferably aim for to get in as an environment artist. I was talking to an character artist on the polycount hangouts and asked him a whole bunch of questions about how he got in, what he studied, how long.. etc. I asked him about what advice he could give me as a graduate trying to find a job. He looked at my portfolio and said " work on your and anatomy and drapery." he also said "And not becoming a character artist" His reason because he feels he could have gotten in on the gaming industry years ago if he did environments. This guy took a Game Design program for 4 years and did 4 years of Fine Arts after.
I've also heard people who wanted to do characters switch to environments. I'm guessing because it's simply easier? What do you guys think? Does it ultimately depend? Did you guys end up switching? Please let me know..
Character modeling is competitive and takes a great deal of understanding anatomy and making textures. Environments takes a great deal of skills as well but environments are not as competitive and 90% of the models you see in video games are from the environments. To be honest I think applying as an environment artist is an easier path to get into the gaming industry than it is character modeling.
I really want in on this gaming industry. I'm 22 and plan to get in before I hit 25. Rockstar Games is what I preferably aim for to get in as an environment artist. I was talking to an character artist on the polycount hangouts and asked him a whole bunch of questions about how he got in, what he studied, how long.. etc. I asked him about what advice he could give me as a graduate trying to find a job. He looked at my portfolio and said " work on your and anatomy and drapery." he also said "And not becoming a character artist" His reason because he feels he could have gotten in on the gaming industry years ago if he did environments. This guy took a Game Design program for 4 years and did 4 years of Fine Arts after.
I've also heard people who wanted to do characters switch to environments. I'm guessing because it's simply easier? What do you guys think? Does it ultimately depend? Did you guys end up switching? Please let me know..
Replies
The HELL you say.
Personally I wouldn't switch, but only because you're doing this as a way of getting your foot in the door, rather than pursuing your passion which is to create characters. In my experience this can result in the work feeling more like a chore than actually doing something you want to do and you are less likely to ensure the resulting work is of a high quality, because in the back of your mind you're thinking "Well, at least when I've been slugging through this for a few years, I get to do characters!" which I personally feel is the wrong attitude to have.
By the way, could you link the portfolio of the artist you spoke to regarding the matter, I'd be interested in seeing their work regardless. Thanks and good luck
Remember you can only get a job based on your portfolio. Competitiveness doesn't matter if you can't prove why you should be hired in the first place.
Be careful how you read this as you need to know specifically why this is rather than assume what you think it could be. Because in an art team there are more environment artists than character artists there will be more job opportunities for environment artists as there are simply more positions to fill. They are equally competitive and you should imagine will have a vast amount of people applying.
Regarding your question, imagine if it was for a different profession, say you always wanted to be a pianist playing with an orchestra but you were thinking of being one of the many violinist instead just to get in the orchestra; that wouldn't make sense.
Do what you have a passion for, it will show in your portfolio and it's what fuels your motivation.
On the other hand, note that both will be challenging and if you have a deep passion towards character art, than don't take this advice.
Not to go too much off topic but I'm interested to hear more about this - now with the advent of PBR I seem to see a lot more of these specialised 'sub-roles' within art creation.
Are art roles in games becoming so specific now, that for example a character artist will primarily work on sculpting and low poly creation, then hand the model to a dedicated texture artist?
Personally from looking at your work I think you just need to realize that making great art takes time and you have to go through making a lot of bad art before you make great art. Also you need to have great art if you want to have any chance at getting any art job in this industry. It doesn't matter if it's character or environment you need to have a kick ass portfolio or you won't get a job.
Cant speak for character artist, from experience I noticed ownership of the character seems to be a standard. On the environment side, it depends on the studio(Sometimes even the project). I seen and heard of cases in which the artist is solely working on foliage while others are focused more on the hero pieces.
If you love doing characters, just keep on working on that and improving. Your goal should be doing what you love and trying to improve constantly. If you have the attitude of getting your foot in anyway possible, then you won't be happy.
It's tough to get in as both a character artist and an environment artist. Really the only choice you have is to do what you love doing. You won't be able to compete with the competition without a passion to drive you to get better.
Embrace the difficulty of character art, anatomy, etc. and fight through it! It can work for you as well.
You'll have to excuse me if I sound a bit like a Debbie Downer and adversarial here but some of you are drumming the "Stick to your passion" and that's fine but passion doesn't pay the bills and I can tell you a thing or two about that. It also doesn't land you an interview. Companies have a habit of not calling and that has a tendency to kick passion and drive down like no other. On top of that in North America word of mouth and networking seems to be WAY MORE important than skills by far and large.
Environment is less crowded because I would guess you need more people to build many more pieces and art assets.Also, it works for movies, games and even archviz. Not everybody needs characters it seems.
My advice to OP: Yes, go for environments right now, don't make the mistake I made. You're 22 and you can switch later on and the skills to make environments can somewhat be transferred on the technical front. Get to like environments and do the best job you can, dont fall for the idyllic bs about how recruiters rather go for a passionate candidate because you won't be on their radar unless you got contacts (make lots of pointless friends on LinkedIn who will never reply to anything unless there's money involved for them and eventually maybe ONE or TWO will reply and give you a boost to apply where they work). If you're still living with your parents or don't pay a rent NOW is the time to spend that time wisely because eventually you'll leave the nest and it will get HAIRY.
To summarize: Get passionate about environments or props and do the best job you can. Find people who do environments on linkedin at companies you would like to work at, befriend them and hope for the best. What matters is that you're getting your foot in the door, you can always branch out knowing you're getting 2 checks a month.
If you're curious about my portfolio you can see it at be.net/grimarts I forgot to upload some updated versions of my stuff but you get a rough idea. Of course, my situation and yours are different but if I could turn back time? I would switch immediately and not look back.
I'd focus on the environment and ditch the character. Just make sure it's a badass environment. You've noticed my portfolio contains a bit of everything and that was a mistake. It took me a long time to adapt workflows and to switch to new software and mindsets, in hindsight it wasn't worth. I love characters but in an effort to please I did what you imply and it's getting me nowhere. You can see my WIP section of my portfolio has two characters, I am almost done with the kid but the mutant will have to wait as I am not sure it will get me anything. I am more thinking of doing an environment or a prop *GUNS, cars, spaceship, etc...sigh*. In the end studios want "the best guy at X" and not the "pretty good guy at X,Y and Z" even though I believe there is room for a guy like me but it's just very hard to find and bills have the ultimate say. Unless -that is- you can get a job as a 3D generalist but here in Montr
It seems like a lot more studios are making environment artists positions contract jobs; personally I think working contract sucks, I did it once and I'm not keen on doing it again.
Your characters look really good to me. If that's what you want to do then I would remove everything else. It just doesn't really say "games" to me simply because you aren't showing anything in an engine (as far as I can tell), yet the Eve girl and Flash look suited to games. Just get them in an engine!
The styalised Bizarro and Raven are awesome. But they look suited to animated TV/Film and not games.
So yeah, your portfolio might not be saying clearly enough what you want to do, or what industry you want to be part of. But I think it's looking good.
here is the guys portfolio like you asked
http://www.dereklebrun.com/
While it's actually sort of valid and worth considering, I didn't intend for you to take it seriously enough to make a thread about it. Strive for what you want to do, but keep in mind there are less character jobs and it will be far more challenging to land one of them.
I have professional experience doing both character work and prop work, and I find both of them the same amount of fun. So I can look back and think I could have saved some time just going the enviro/prop route. I still only really work on characters in my personal art though.
Granted, this is in the old school "hand painted" workflow but I had some serious skill degradation happen while I was an environment artist. There was so much focus on reusing textures & kitbashing that my painting and modeling skills atrophied. Working on characters had me in texture painting nirvana.
This is a bit off topic, but you bring up an interesting point. I'm an environment artist, been one my whole career and really have no interest in switching. I find creating generic male A or Female B a tedious and boring part of character art and oddly enough find the tedious parts of environment art still fun. But my personal portfolio is made up of mostly characters. I found that my texturing improved quicker by doing characters than environment art. I could focus purely on painting without worrying about tiling, re-using uv space, creating general textures, modular assets, etc. And overall it has helped my environment art at my day job by leaps and bounds. Of course, I might have a hard time explaining to future employers that I'm an environment artist with my current environment/character portfolio ratio.
I can get behind that idea if you work for a AAA studio in a quest to crank as many iterations as possible. I can only shudder at how it's gotta be like to make YET another soldier with a rifle or musket for say Assassin's Creed or whatever other big title. But on the flip side you have stability in terms of income. I guess the industry is not everybody's promised land and you have to find the inner strength to swallow the routine but you can always find another job once you have that experience on your resume. The tricky part is to land the first one and I know this cos I am both living through it like I have the plague and because that 3 weeks workshop for immigrants I went through was clear as day: Once you get the first job in your industry of choice you'll show on pretty much every company's radar. It means you are trustworthy and that you have some professional and local experience.
To tie back to OP's first post I'd still say getting in is should be your priority. When I started doing some 3D years ago we didn't have a lot of the tools available and 3D education was hard to come by and extremely expensive. Now? Take your pick. Sure, there isn't a 3D school every 10 yards everywhere in North America but it's not the occult science it used to be and there is a ton of information out there. It also means there is more competition.
Once you get in you can manage your career, no one's forcing you to stay ad vitam doing the same thing over and over again. Now it's certain that if you absolutely need to feel the fire burning inside every day you go to work you'll eventually be disappointed. You need to manage that somehow and pay your dues until you are experienced enough that you can afford to be pickier with the jobs you apply for. I remember seeing an interview of one of the Pixar animation crew member a few years ago and trust me, even that dude who seemed fairly young (almost 30 I guess) said that sometimes he had to put some extra enthusiasm and remind himself he was working on Toy Story 3. I also remember another case of a recently graduate student from the Sails institute I think who accepted a rotoscoping job in some studio in the US. I think there's nothing more tedious than tracking shit on a green screen but I am willing to bet that 2 years later she is not doing that anymore and that she moved up. Most recruiting happens in-house so getting in doing whatever is paramount IMO. I am at a point at which I'd sell my soul AGAIN for a job doing whatever menial task to get in a stable studio here in Montreal so I can prove I am worth.
So yeah, passion is important but it doesn't make you get an email for an interview because that's not easy to transmit until you get face to face with the guys in charge of letting you in. My experience here in Canada so far is that you have to smile and pretend everything is A-OK even if you're desperate and dying inside. No one wants to hire a weirdo who will break team dynamics or a guy who will shatter morale. If you can land an interview work mentally through the idea that it's the best job EVER. The way it was explained to me by coaching pros is that it is a bit like a play: Pretend you're acting and that you're selling the best of you, smile, be open and avoid negative sentences or expressions to convey a cool vibe. Some companies I have heard about even go for the "beer rule" as in if you ain't social and cool enough to have a beer with they probably don't want to work with you so put on your best face and go in. Of course, you can always screw the interview or not get the job because someone fits the position better...
Sorry for the long post.
Doing both is like the dream to me.
the more indie you get the more you will end up doing in small teams or even on your own, half way on the main character for a tech demo of a game I am assembling, have learned so much about zbrush chr workflows this week its crazy, and next week when its finished its going to be doing animation for me which I haven't done much of in 3 years.
Going indie seems like the most freeform, and I'd love to have a go at it sometime with a couple of people.
Have you thought about starting up something remotely, or starting off with a mod team? I know a few people who have started their own teams with friends and some of them are all over the globe. Gather a few dedicated people and you could see how it goes
its not that hard , but probably the most difficult part for the transition is to think big picture and getting use to building block modules.
I used to think that every 3d model is hero asset.
while in environment art I have to think bit differently. building blocks means nothing if it stands by its own ( like wall chunk, cover object or 2d tileable textures). but they are essential to for 3d environment.
Absolutely, and I've helped a tiny bit on mod projects in the past year but Uni studies have gotten in the way, and it's my bigger focus right now. But after I graduate this year, I'd love to move onto doing something like a mod or small game.