Career path after becoming Senior?
polycounter lvl 4
Hey... just wondering what about the games career path for a character artist. From what I understand if you're a senior character artist the next step would either be Lead or Principle artist.
I know both roles are different skill sets, one leaning on art, the other on management. Just wanted to know how the pay scale is balanced between the two roles; are both roles roughly the same pay or is one is higher than the other?
Any thoughts? :)
Replies
it's principal - drives me nuts when people spell it wrong
it all depends where you work. where I'm at senior/principal are a grade, not a role - lead is a role, wherein you lead a team. its not uncommon to have a senior leading a principal
pay wise it also depends. the pay range for senior at one studio could be 3/4 times the range you might see at another. its down to how the company decides it wants to spread that sort of thing out.
its worth noting that any notion of a standard salary degrades quickly when you move into more senior positions, pay is generally tailored to the individual and what they can personally bring to the studio rather than fitting between a set of numbers that someone in HR dreamed up.
generally speaking the ceiling is higher if you take the management track as it can lead to department head or director titles - these tend to be jobs where you fill dead men's shoes though so mileage may vary