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Subscribe to Shacknews Mercury starting at $1/month!
Chrome Shack Community Guidelines Chatty Search
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It's really difficult to post this to complete strangers, but I do love this website. I know I'm not as active as other Shackers but this site's been a good resource for me for many years. I am sort of freaking out about trying to get into the real world after six years in college. My original hope was to somehow make it into the video game industry. To that end, I pursued a second degree in multimedia at a school here in Tempe, AZ.
Long story short, I'm graduating in May and am worried sick about finding work as a static 3D modeler/texture artist/God-willing, a writer. I want to stay in Phoenix more than anything but will have to go with whomever throws me a bone. You can see my portfolio at www.bmnathanson.com. It's the best I've been able to do. Just wanted to know if it's good enough to take a chance on or am I totally boned because I can't do enough? I applied to Rainbow but they canceled the job posting. I'm also trying Cheyenne Mountain but after that the pool gets shallower. 2xl games is out here but they've not updated their site in two years...
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As a creative person (artist, writer and such), your portfolio is everything. Model, texture and/or write as much as possible. Make good and varied stuff. If you have a certain studio in mind, make stuff that relates to their games. For example, making aliens when applying to Rockstar's GTA team isn't your best choice.
You want to show off versatility, being able to do all sorts of stuff from highly detailed characters to background props. Read up on what makes a good in-game model and high-res model (for cinematics) so you can show that you have basic knowledge of what they'll want. You will most likely have to adjust anyway because different studios uses different tools and techniques. But you also want to show specialty in what the studio in question needs for their games.
Work experience is good, but work experience without an impressive portfolio gets you nowhere.
As for more general advice. Apply to all studios you want to work for, not all places advertise on their webpage when they got openings, and most places are always on the lookout for talented people, even if you only get a temporary position it's a good start.
If you can't find a job in your desired areas but really want into the game development. Apply for the "no requirements jobs", such as tester, forum slave community representative or the like. It will give you a chance to see the work from the inside, make friends with people at the studio, learn from their artists / writers if there's downtime and maybe most importantly, you get to show them who you are for more then a 1h interview and you may be able to show your portfolio directly to their art director or similar (who is most likely the person that has the final say on who is talented enough or not). And if their AD doesn't want to hire you, you should be able to get some seriously good advice out of it to help you improve your portfolio, and even if it stinks from the beginning, acting on the feedback and showing you can improve based on what they want can be the absolutely best merit you could possibly have.
There... Hope that helps. Keep at it and all that. :)
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