Career progression

From uni into a junior role, being made redundent and restarting!

• Create some 3D models and practice rendering them in Unity

Play360.ai

• herd mentality
• working with existing IPs

• Developed from being a genral junior role into a specialist role
• Working outside of one software/one team
• Wider range of knowledge can be better than having a deep understanding of just one role
• Specialised roles come with a more rigid workflow and structure

Communication and collaboration

• Talking to different colleagues requires differnt ways to communicate
  • different roles have different levels of understanding of your role and need more/less detailed approach to the subject
• Team Leads
  • Share enough of the same knowledge to talk about similar topics
  • can provide feedback and advice
  • Research before review
• Different discipline
  • breakdown the language based on the outcome you need
  • translate what you actually need to get your desired outcome
  • Try to communicate the process and workflow
    • explain why you have to work certain ways and breakdown
  • Learning about other fields can help streamline communication and helps reduce friction
• Management
  • management don’t want to know the ins and outs
  • just wants to know if you are on target
  • “can you translate to english?”
  • timescales
  • deadlines
  • whats happening/changing

Uni really breaksdown how teams are structured and introduce soft skills really early on

Portfolio advice

• Have multiple portfolios
  • uni submission/industry portfolio
• Dev/artisit portfolio
• up to date linkdn/social media page
• personal website
• all portfolio pages should link together
• Not just one or two things
  • try to include everything that you know
    • not just softwares but also pipelines and process’

– Networking

• Speak to people on social media
  • broaden your social sphere and get your name out there
  • game jam and community challenges
  • being active on community pages
  • comepting with slop
• Learn who is big in the industry
  • learn who leads the media you like and follow
  • ask seniors for advice
    • be professional
    • where their inspirations come from

– Dev portfolio

• public code display
  • GitHub
    • widely used accross the industry
    • easy to update and manage
    • Make sure its easy to access and navigate
• Don’t just upload code
  • need to have playable evidence of complete games
  • understand code being used
• Itch.io/steam
  • Breakdown of how the code works on the Git page
    • example script and documentation
• Websites/blogs help breakdown and add personality to your portfolio
• Show you understand industy practice and process’

3D Artisit Portfolio

• Artstation
  • Lot of competition to stand out
  • pro account allows for unlimited uploads and of a higher quality
• Showcase your drawing ability to a competent level
  • shuold be able to get an idea of mood boarding and sketches
  • show that you can develop a concept and follow through with the whole process
  • Turnaround
• Having a variety of different drawing styles can show flexibility
  • technical/creative/fine art styles
• Show your understanding of art and design as a whole not just ability

• Show
  • wireframes
  • UV layouts
  • Poly count and texture sizes
  • Understand Level of Detail (LoD) and mipmap textures
  • Showcase different maps (normal, roughness, emission AO)
  • Baking textures!
  • Diferent Softwares
  • in-enging ss
    • differnt lighting
      • Unreal/unity
    • helps find flaws in the model
  • 3D turnaround
• Dont add detail to models for the sake of it
  • think about the context of the model
  • what is it being used for
  • Think of the actual use and process of what the model would be used for
    • mining mech would need to use certain types of bolts and certain size wheels etc
  • Attention to detail needs to be researched

• Avoid work your not interested in
• a handfull of great pieces is better than lots of weaker pieces
• showing inspiration is not plagerism
• Making it enjoyable to look at your work
• Passion but not ‘fanart’

• Learn the software
  • industry standard is always worth it!
• Z-brush
• Maya
• 3ds max
• photoshop

Courses

• Udemy
• Gumroad
• Artstation
• Youtube
  • can be click baity
  • incorrect
  • outdated
  • Doesnt provide the correct pipelin

Soft/Hard skills

• Soft skills and teamworking abilities can often times be more important than your techincal skills
• shows that you have the correct mentality
  • you can be trained up to a higher standard but you cant coach a correct culture
• Communication
• willingness to try
• push yourself out of a comfort zone
• show dedication
• collaboration
• take critisicm on board
• always listen

• Be flexible wiht team culture
• Find enjoyment in work to have a better workplace culture
  • enjoying the work can encourage others to allow you to have more responsibilty to take things on board
• Politness matters
• level of proffessionalism

Interviews

• dress approprietly
• 15 mins early
• bring portfolio
• eye contact
• engage in the interview
  • questions
  • happy to be there
  • prove you care about the company
  • more of a conversation than a one way chat
• evidence of your learning
• prove you can adapt to company culture and work ethic
• want to see how you work in a team
• how well can you fit in

Positive promotion rather than negative

---

Analysis

Jamies talk was extremely helpful and insightful into exactly how the industry works and even highlighted the specific importance of soft skills and exactly how they can fuction in the industry.

More importantly for right now, Jamie’s talk especially helped with how to develop my portfolio in the correct spaces. It’s quite interesting to learn why certain things are standards, like wireframes and UVs, is all becuase it helps interviewers/recruiters look into your workflow and if you would be a good fit for thier goals. This also highlights exactly why it is important to create a variety of different meshes and skills and highlight as many of them as possible in your portfolio.

Another key take away from Jamie’s talk was professionalism and how we should talk to our colleagues in different ways. It felt like commonsense, however, it really isn’t something that I had considered so it did give a different perspective.

Despite all I’ve said, the most important thing Jamie did was make the industry feel human. Oftentimes it feels like the industry is some immoveable object that doesn’t change or accept differences. It also, at the moment, feels like a massive doom sphere where no one is getting jobs and no one is doing anything creative, however, the new reality that Jamie brought up is the fears in industry but also the positives.

Overall it was a very interesting talk and Q&A that I feel broadened my horizons and even opened my minds to what I may want to pivot into in the future.