During week 6, we had a talk given to us by Rhys Sheperd, a Technical Artist at Epic Games. He shared his inspiring route into the games industry and showed that breaking into tech art isn’t perfect, it’s about persistence and building skills.
Rhys graduated in 2018 and immediately began refining his portfolio. His final university project (a horror game) became a strong foundation for demonstrating his artistic and technical ability. After graduation, he continued developing it, building experience whilst applying for roles.
His first professional job was not glamorous. He worked as a QA tester at Globacorp, focusing on gambling games. Although this wasn’t his dream role, he gained experience with industry tools, pipelines and testing standards. This early experience helped him understand how real studios operate, providing an entry point into the industry.
Looking to move closer to development, Rhys reached out directly to the CEO of 22 cans, which led to a Junior Programmer role. Working at a small studio gave him hands-on experience, responsibility, and networking opportunities. Though he left after 3 months and described it as a challenging environment, it still have him important insight into production workflows.
His next major step was joining Mediatonic as a Junior Tech Artist. This was his first proper tech-art role, and the larger team of 300+ people exposed him to a wide range of departments and tools. He developed scripts, extended functionality, and solidified his love for tooling and optimisation. He also experienced his first cancelled game and the imposter syndrome that comes with joining such a big studio, but the moments strengthened his confidence.
When Epic Games bought Mediatonic, Rhys transitioned into a Tech Artist role at Epic, working on major titles like Fall Guys and Fortnite. On Fall Guys, he focused on tool development, shaders, lighting and cross-platform optimisation. Fortnite introduced hi, to working professionally with Unreal Engine 5 on a massive AAA project built on a completely new engine. This blend of technical problem-solving and creative input became the perfect fit to his skill set.
Rhys ended up sharing valuable advice for aspiring tech artists, find the tech art you love and keep experimenting with new tools as well as working on personal projects. During interviews, he emphasised the importance of problem-solving questions, self-reflection, and explaining how you would approach tasks differently next time.
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