* How Many Pieces - By the time you leave FIEA you want to have 3-5 Super High Quality Portfolio pieces. (3 is the bare minimum)
* Quality Is King -You are only as strong as your weakest piece
* Strategy With FIEA Timeline -1st and 2nd semester should be used to learn your craft, learn the tools and process, learn how to work smarter not harder. Learn how to make various styles. Discover what specific type of 3D artist you want to become. (Character, Environment, Weapons/Props, Hard Surface, Vehicles/Ships)
* 1st and 2nd Semester -The assignments from 1st and 2nd Semester will not be enough for you, you need to be doing personal studies outside of class in order to round out your specific skill set for yourself. (Character artist need to be doing anatomical studies for example)
* 3Rd Semester - 3rd Semester you need to produce 3 High Quality Pieces of your choosing. ( I will work with you to pick the best choices for you)
* 4th Semester - 4th Semester you need to create at least 2 High Quality Portfolio Pieces and use the remainder of your time making corrections to your website and Portfolio pieces you have already created. If you do not get an internship, the worst thing you can do is sulk and coast that semester. If you coast during the 4th semester, you will most likely coast your way to a job at Starbucks.
If you do not land a job after leaving FIEA, you cannot give up. Some people it has taken them a year of grinding after FIEA to land their first job.
Do not thumb your nose at non game jobs if you cannot land a game job right off the bat, a job where you produce art of any kind will be better than having a job that has no art component to it.
* Choosing Designs for Portfolio - When choosing pieces to work on, Art Station and Pinterest are great places to find high quality professional concept art, to emulate the job for real world, recreate that concept to the best of your ability. If the concept has missing information (such as only a front view) your job as the artist is to fill in the missing detail while still maintaining the look and the feel of the provided design (such as creating the reminder of the design on the backside that is missing).
* Animators - Animation should be your primary skill set that you are showcasing. But I do feel that game animation is a bit different than film animation. In film you build animation for a locked down frame/camera shot. It's all about that one performance. As a game artist, it's more about interlocking animation clips that flow in and out of one another.
Become MoCap certified. I have seen over the years more job opportunities for the animators that have MoCap experience. At the very least know how to clean the data and show it off in a compelling way on your portfolio.
Be flexible, know how to make skeletons, know how to paint skin weights, know how to set up simple calisthenics animations to test your deformation and range of motion. Know how to set up simple FK and IK rigs. Know how to effectively communicate with the rigger to get the performance you are look for.
Know how state machines work, build your own state machines, demonstrate how your animation clips work together to build overall compelling animations that work in a real-time environment.
I feel above all other groups that Capstone is the playground for the animators to build high quality animations that can live on in their portfolios.
* Tech Artist - Team up with artist to get high quality models and animations for your reels. The quality factor of what you are showing off can have an impact on the non-tech artist that may be involved with reviewing your work.
Figure out compelling ways to show off your work to less technically minded people, your challenge is going to be taking complex subject matter and showing it off to more of a lay person that my not have all the technical know how to understand why your work is important.
Part of your job is to be a sales person, you need to sell your work almost as a product. Convince us why your work will save us time or money.
Websites - KISS. Keep It Simple (Soldier) Make it as EASY as possible for anyone to navigate your website and find your work.
Your work will be judged in a highly time sensitive environment, if you make people fumble around trying to view your work, they may just move on to the next person and just skip over you period.
Make sure to use compelling thumbnails for your work. Draw people in to want to look at your work.
Keep EVERYTHING as professional as possible.
Resume and contact information should be as simple as possible to find.
No comments:
Post a Comment