Game Art to Level design (Career Path Suggestion Required)

[Nerves]

Hello Mapcore

Well i started out my career as a Game tester first because i was so passionate about playing games and i thought this would be perfect , but later my interest shifted towards Game Art and Level Design , Simultaneously with my testing job i have learned the Art pipeline and have made a portfolio and also gathered knowledge about the level design (Like basic Blueprints in Unreal and Creating small playable levels in Cry engine with the help of flow graph node connections). Which i have really enjoyed while making them watching tutorials. Then i have placed in a company with the Title "Game Artist" 

Well as I am basically from India , there are no much of companies that have level design as the job most of them are indie(mobile) games and the designer itself handles them. There are many outsourcing art studios in India which contribute to AAA games though like (Modeling , Baking and Texturing 3D assets) , so i had to join the art team since i have got no option and became a Game Artist at least to gain some experience.

These outsourcing studios  work on the levels but they have freedom only for the Appearance of the level , 3d assets (under budget polycount) , Terrain Sculpting and placing the objects in the engine which are already whiteboxed and finalized by the client.  They don't have freedom to involve in the core level design like lighting , pacing and flow of the level.

But i understood that i'll really enjoy White boxing , scripting game-play elements and set dressing all art assets into a level more than Modeling/Baking/Texturing and material creation.  I myself got into Environment Art  creating materials and sculpting objects rather than level designing which is what i feel.

So i would like to know How can a Game Artist become a level designer? if so apart from his art portfolio there should be some playable levels in the portfolio? I have seen most of the level designers come from mods, creating maps for unreal tourny and csgo! i would like to know if the Art experience count for the level design to land a job? I need suggestions for making out a portfolio which gets me a job in the level design. Thanks in Advance.

[FrieChamp]

For simplicity's sake, think of the creation of a level to be 50% design and 50% environment art. It's two different disciplines working together. But they are not the same, because the people working in them have different goals and priorities. So you already got the 2nd half covered, which means that you can take a whitebox to a finished state by yourself - which is great as you won't need to rely on someone else to polish the visuals. But you cannot expect people to believe you that you got the first half of the process covered, because, well, it is a different thing. So it is time to start designing some levels, release them for people to play and be ready to explain why you made certain decisions when you encountered certain problems. The presentation of a portfolio is a topic by itself, but if you dig around you will find that we have resources on this as well. Good luck!