Hello, I just hoped on this website, and I am new here. I have been using blender for 6 years along with gimp, illustrator, and photoshop and I would say I am at an intermediate level when it comes to textures and modeling. But I want to get an education in it and move into a career, specifically video game texturing and modeling. I am in-between two options. CG-Spectrum and Full Sail University. Though I have some experience I want to get better and go to a somewhat professional educator. My question is what would you think the better choice would be? Any other or better options? And what do employers value. Like would a game company that’s hiring prefer someone with a degree or certificate? Thank you
Employers value portfolio. Degrees and certificates are nice but not all that important in this field. So, how’s your portfolio? If it’s really solid, a degree would be a good “icing on the cake”, but if it’s not, you should focus on that first
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Hello and welcome here !
Basically it’s all about your portfolio, a bad portfolio with all the degree you can imagine is never going to work, with a good portfolio it will work and it might even be that recruiters won’t even look at your curriculum.
I don’t know all the school but most of the time they offer really basic training, generally best students are the one that already had good basis and/or who worked like crazy during/after their studies.
Schools tend to be quite expensive and they never going to tell you that you’ll learn only the basics and it’s you that do 70% of the work in getting talented.
Now how a school can be helpful to you ?
- probably that will help fill some gaps, and you’ll have access to good teacher to go a step further since you already have some knowledge.
- they might provide a clear learning path, as self-learners tend to be messy and lack of structure in their training.
- you’ll meet other students, get inspired by them, and maybe team up when entering the professional world/looking for your first jobs.
- Look if they allow you to get some internship, which is basically a good way to get your feet wet in the industry.
- They might help you to build an industry related portfolio.
I insist on the last point, I saw many self learners out there that are quite talented, but it’s really hard to see from their portfolio what kind of industry they target, and what kind of position they are after. It’s generally a mix of a lot of experiments with different craft and generally none of them stand out.
I encourage you to get other advice but don’t expect too much from a school when it comes to CG unless it’s really famous. It’s great if you can afford one, it will save you some time, but at the end of the day you’ll have to keep working hard and make the best of your time and all the resources at your disposal.
Lastly, if you already have a portfolio don’t hesitate to share it so we can see where you’re at in your journey !
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Thanks, there I have seen alot of people say its about portfolio. Personally I’ve worked on some game mods when it comes to modeling. As for image editing and vector designs I have alot of those. So I should probably do some more 3D stuff. Specifically with potential clients in mind.
This site is a good place to build a portfolio- as you share your art, it will automatically be added to your personal portfolio
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Ok that’s a good start but yeah you need to work on more complex 3D stuff, and closer to the quality of the games that are made nowadays.
Yes, the closest to a real life job you can do is to look for some 2D concept artists on artstation and try to reproduce their models in 3D. That’s how it will work in real life, as a modeler/texture artists you’d be given a concept / modelsheet of a character / props / environment and you’ll have to make a 3D model that’s going to be used in the game.
You can also look for modeling junior artists portfolio to see what kind of level is required , what kind of stuff they showcase so you know what you’ll have to aim for.
Yes you should start to build a real porfolio, either here or on artstation. Getting feedback on your work is also pretty useful so don’t hesitate to share your work.
Anyway, I advice you to keep studying on your own, the more you know beforehand, the best it will be when/if you enter a school.
I’d spend time with Unreal and Unity. Almost every job I see, even if it’s totally irreverent to what you are doing, will ask for experience in these AND your modeling software. I’ve had companies ask for unreal engine experience when they do not even use UE themselves. It makes no sense, but this is apparently the world we live in.
This also goes for substance painter and Zbrush. Sculpting in Blender is great, but so many jobs simply demand this or that software and it doesn’t matter if you can do the same thing elsewhere.
I’d also make some game assets. It seems stupid to me (because it is) that employers will look at a modeling portfolio with some good stuff, and then be like “hmmn, I don’t think this guy can model low poly trees for our unity mobile game”.
Art tests: If you get asked to do one, do be wary. I keep falling into the trap of doing these unpaid, and then getting ghosted. It’s tremendously demoralizing, and the companies (and staff) who do this are pathetic, no excuses. It’s easy to say no if you are working, harder otherwise, which is why it’s such a horrible situation. Some companies do pay, and these are the ones worth working with.
In my only industry job to date, I was specifically singled out for interview because I had a varied portfolio. The point I was told was “unless you are an industry senior, we just want to see what you are doing and have tried”.
It seems hard to know what to do since every hiring manager/recruiter wants something unique. I’ve seen people with worse/sparser porfolios than mine get hired, I think a lot is just luck and who looks at your portfolio/CV.
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Hey ! Many interesting points here !
Yeah it’s great to have a varied portfolio, however it’s even better to also being able to tell from your portfolio what kind of job position and industry you’d like to apply to. Because many portfolio especially self-learners one show many interesting things but in the meantime it feels unprofessional and unrelated to any industry or junior position. This shows that the artist only have a vague idea of what they gonna be asked to do if they got the job. Once the portfolio contains a few real-life project showcase this isn’t a issue anymore.
That said, it also depends on many factors, some companies might be looking for people being able to touch many aspects. But the bigger the company / project the greater chances are that you’ll be doing one things and it’s expected that you are specialized in that particular area. And for sure what I’m saying is more a generality from what I see rather than a strict rule…
There are some things to account for to make sure the company that asks the test is serious. All that said it’s part of what you can be asked to do to get a job. Generally this shouldn’t take you more than a day of work. And that work isn’t supposed to be used by the company.
Anyway, just like actors that have to do a casting you might be asked to do a test. It’s useful if you have equally talented artists and want to find the most appropriate to your project. Or if your portfolio doesn’t show something exactly related to the position / project your after. Once we had a generalist artist that wanted to do character animation but their portfolio didn’t show a lot of that. Therefore we asked them to make a test and it turns out that they were a good fit for the project.
Lastly, it’s true that there is a part of luck. Generally recruitment goes in 3 stages :
First it’s picked by the production team, who generally aren’t artists by themselves. So they might not be as accurate as we would.
Then a short list is made of 10/20 portfolios that is going to be reviewed by the leads. Eventually they’ll pick 5/10 of those and plan interviews.
Basically when you do the first interview and the last you tend to be a bit biased and probably won’t react the same way for a equally talented and equally nice and sociable artist…
I would be EXTRA careful choosing a school if that is your path. In my personal experience, I went to an art college that did have good professors and lessons, but apparently they lied so much in the marketing materials and charged alumni like me SO MUCH more than what the education was actually worth, that I was actually bailed out of student loans by the Biden administration! On one hand, it’s fantastic that I am one less American that is hindered by student loans for much of my working life and I will save $30K this year just because of that, but on the other hand the for-profit school I went to must have been really infamous if both major US political parties have been trying for about 20 years to give it so much as a regulatory slap on the wrist, and I could have saved even more money by going to literally any other more reputable university. Of course, I was only 17 when I made the decision to go there and the recruiters were EXTREMELY persuasive and took full advantage of the fact that I was a naive, dumb teenager.
It should also be noted that the school promised to help me get my foot in the door in the local video game industry (specifically Blizzard, for better or worse considering what we know about them now) after graduation. That is probably the single most important advantage that schooling has over self-teaching, it can help you make all-important industry connections. A quality portfolio is important too, of course, but it’s only half of the equation–having the best portfolio in existence doesn’t really mean anything if nobody in the industry of your choice knows who you are and your intent on working for them, especially in this day and age where there are extremely polished indie animations made by people who have ZERO interest in working in what they perceive as a “dying industry” like Hollywood or the triple A gaming scene. In other words, it’s harder than ever for recruiters to figure out which potential candidates on the Internet are willing to contribute to their team and which would actually prefer to keep their digital art interests a hobby instead of a mandatory, soul-crushing job with deadlines, and if you pick the right school, the “networking” side of things could be much easier if you do decide you want to do this for a full-time living. Of course, I did not pick the “right” school and such promises of helping me get my first job vanished when the school “suspiciously” went out of business mere months after I graduated from it…
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Highly recommended:
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I don’t have an account at Polycount, but I still like to visit there from time to time for some occasional well-preserved pearls of wisdom in the Wiki. Probably don’t want to visit the forums right now, though, especially the “General” and “Career and Education” sections. Naturally morale is low right now in the video game industry with all the layoffs mostly affecting the people who actually make the games (even senior-level industry veterans) just because the publishers they worked for made some bad deals under the assumption that increased lockdown-era demand would last forever, especially Embracer Group and Microsoft’s Xbox division. Some of the people that lead such industries out of their downward spiral into a new “golden age” are the kind of people that just work on their skills (both art and business skills) rather than let the current anxieties and worries of those still working in the industry discourage them, as valid as many of their complaints are, so as usual it’s best to tune out the negativity and just keep working towards your career goals!
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To start a career in 3D modeling/game art, learn industry-standard software, build a strong portfolio, and join online communities as you already did haha. Gain experience through freelance projects or internships and then its will be much easier to find projects