Crap artist can't get job, whines about it

    Quote from JohnC

    and his stuff's about as detailed as any game on Wii or 360. I say lighten up.

    HAHAHH what?? what kind of games do you play dude??!

    Its sad, but if you look carefully at his models you can see that the most of his models are done in less than two hours.

    So if you take his twenty models and multiply that with two hours you get 40 hours of work.

    I mean, cmon... This guy reeks of what I usually call a "dreamer" and is not a "doer". Hourences is a doer

    Quote

    ":2funaqh9]JohnC, you are being ironic right? right?!

    Yes, it was tongue in cheek (although I wasn't particularly impressed by Halo 3's props.)

    So I'm just talking to one of my friends on AIM and it turns out that she knows this guy personally and like goes to the same school with him apparently. Hahahaha wow!!

    I'm not sure what the point of his article was. Firstly, he's not got a games job, so how can he make assumptions about the state of already-hired artists and assert that companies should take a chance on untested artists who have "base skills"? (read: uncompetitive portfolios.) He complains that there should be companies that offer folk with "base skills" the chance to get more experience on low risk projects. That's what university and modding projects are all about, surely? Unless you work to support yourself while in further education, you generally have a lot of spare time to develop your skills above and beyond what you can achieve just by following the course curriculum exclusively. It looks like he just did the bare minimum and then got a bit down about the reality of his situation. Most of the folk on this forum didn't do design or art degrees, yet they have taught themselves to model, texture, map etc. -- many to a professional standard -- and yet this guy is complaining that he can't get an interview despite completing a dedicated degree course.

    More to the point: Why on earth would a company give a graduate job to someone like him when there's literally thousands of better candidates? I'm not trying to be overly harsh here, just realistic, but I've seen better models pumped out by people who picked up 3ds max and start showing their work a couple of weeks later. Some people are naturally gifted or have training; others just work really hard at it and get good very quickly over a short space of time. If he was really that passionate and really wanted it, then he would have a much more impressive portfolio. Maybe he should just accept that he's not willing to try hard enough or that it's a field in which he will never excel. He complains that companies won't even let him have a phone interview so that he can explain his passion for the medium, and yet he demonstrates very little passion in his portfolio. Art is an intrinsically visual medium -- you can't paper over the cracks with 'enthusiasm' and sound bites if your portfolio tells an entirely different story.

    If you apply and get rejected, then you got rejected for a reason. Either you weren't experienced enough for the role, or your portfolio was not good enough to get their attention. I had two knock-backs from the same company. Instead of writing a woe-is-me article about it, I spent several months working on FF while also improving my own portfolio website. I asked people what I could do to improve it and, when a friend of a friend who has performed recruiting duties shredded my CV, I took the advice on board and improved it. I got hired the third time around and, it was only then I realised just how piss-poor my initial applications were when contrasted to my new stuff. Why? Because the newer applications had a lot more effort put into them -- it's as simple as that. Feeling sorry for yourself gets you nowhere.

    The antithesis of that guy is someone on this forum (can't remember the name) who posted about how he wanted a level design job but wasn't good enough. So he started learning UnrealEd for months on end until he finally achieved his goal and got a job out of it. It's inspiring to hear somebody say something like that -- that's the kind of attitude and passion that puts other candidates in the shade

    That being said, I do sympathise on two points:

    1. If he was told by his course leader that the degree makes him a shoo-in for a job. But then again, you should always thoroughly research prospective degrees and try to maintain realistic expectations. As someone else said, there's a lot of bad games degree courses out there that try hard to get your attention (and money).

    2. The games industry is hard to get into as a newbie. You sometimes need a bit of luck to get the first job. However, you know what they say: the harder you try, the luckier you get

    I continue to disagree that the games industry is hard to get into. That's just not my experience, nor has it been for many I've worked with. I got a test + interview after having done a single map for dods, without the interviewer having played it no less. 90 to 95% of every Ubisoft Campus class goes straight to Ubisoft after they're done studying. So many juniors have joined the industry around me within the two years I've been in myself that I just wonder whether staying after one project isn't harder than getting your foot in the door.

    That's my experience of the European industry at least, where the huge powerhouses are few and far between. You're usually going to go in one studio for one project, be asked to stay unemployed after that's done until they call you back again 6 months later when they kick off the production of their next project. When you're lucky, as I've been, you get to work for Ubisoft or other major publishers, and if you're willing to play the mobility card, you can access a wide array of projects, though you're likely to end up in a European studio if you're a Euro, as there are no paperwork to do.

    To me, complaining about the ease of entry in the industry sounds way too much like someone hasn't been taught what he really ought to:

    - You never get anything for free, you need to work your ass off

    - Any amount of education will never overtake the right amount of talent and passion

    - If you're only as good as the next guy, no one will take you in.

    One of the main beef I've had with every single games related school, and countless universities in France at least, is that you're fed knowledge that's supposed to make you able to work, but you never get to learn how to work. Hands deep in problems, tight deadlines to meet, you get to see if you're made for that path. I've lost track of the number of guys I've talked to who have absolutely never had any class on how to write resumes, apply for jobs, answer the phone professionally, prepare for interviews, and general negotiations.

    That to me is the very backbone every single degree should train people in, because once you have these skills chances are you can land a job much easier regardless of the industry and your experience. Having been to a business school, I've had that training as they were deemed skills I would probably need in one of my future jobs. The reality is anyone could use those, and I've been lucky enough to get the upper hand during negotiations thanks to those. As a matter of fact I know I wouldn't be here in Montreal if I hadn't negotiated my way through many hurdles. My career in this industry would have taken a much different turn, and probably dead end.

    Quote

    What makes me sad is that he actually got a degree in this....

    Yes I agree, but what is a degree worth? Who is it dished out by? Is the course recognised by any games companies? etc. If it's some backwater place with no real recognition, then that probably explains it.

    Analogy: A lot of people have black belts in martial arts but don't know the first thing about how to fight because their instructors are talentless money-grabbers. The students pay their money and 'progress' quickly to black belt (under two years, sometimes much less). The moment they enter the real world and need to call upon their 'skills', they get a reality check in the form of having their heads kicked in. In both cases, you really ought to check up on who is teaching you and look around before committing to it. I feel this is exactly the same thing, but in education-form. At least he's starting to realise that his work leaves a lot to be desired. Even his portfolio site is riddled with spelling mistakes

    Even on more respected courses there exist people who churn out average to poor work; that includes technical disciplines, too. Sadly it's a fact that you can generally cruise through many university courses, put in a cursory amount of work and still expect to get a 2:2 in the UK. Other places can be even worse. I guess it's no real surprise that the art degree students can churn out bad work and still pass on certain courses; after all, someone that gets 40% in a university maths exam will scrape through with a degree award. The main difference is that crap technical folk have drab CVs with unimpressive numbers which is not exactly jolting. On the other hand, an artist's work has to stand alone and if it's not good, it's extremely obvious.

    Furyo: Those are some great points; especially regarding general skills / conducting yourself. I've heard some horror stories about candidates turning up for interviews with a great chance of getting a job, but then basically shooting themselves in both feet due to being a horrible interviewee (e.g. not knowing anything about the company, or just saying things that are totally unsuitable). Considering a lot of companies pay first jobbers poorly, negotiating skills are an extremely good thing to have, too.

Participate now!

Don’t have an account yet? Register yourself now and be a part of our community!

Register Yourself Login