Enthusiastic Intern seeking employment in the near future

edited in Jobs
Greeting everyone

My Name is Callum Macleod

I am currently living in London but will be returning back to my home in March 2017 ( Johannesburg, Sandton).
I have been an IT engineer for over 5 years now, but it just wasn't making me happy.
So i took it upon myself to learn a new skill. I am currently studying to be a Game assets artist through www.lynda.com .

The course covers:

3Ds Max 2017
Substance Designer
Unreal Engine 4

As i currently have no experience in field of 3D design, i'm looking for someone to give me a chance to prove that this is something i can really excel at.

Please see below my LinkedIn profile, and i will update this post with some links to my work once I've started a few projects. Also any advice or tips from any of the recruiters would be greatly appreciated.

Email: callum.d.macleod@gmail.com
Cell Phone: +44 7561 896496

LinkedIn Profile: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/callum-duncan-macleod-28868366

Lynda.com learning path link: https://www.lynda.com/learning-paths/3D-Animation/become-an-asset-artist-for-games

Comments

  • Hi Nexusarmy. Im not a recruiter , but one thing I can say is that you need to be flexible . So branch out into other software , once you have got the basics down. try blender, maya, and other software, because companies use a variety of software.
    I like being a 3d generalist, but if you choose to specialize in one area, then thats cool as well, but a good generalist kicks ass wherever he might be , because they usually "aim to misbehave". they are the type of people who say things like " No power in the verse can stop me" ;) and stuff like : " Im a leaf on the wind.....watch how I soar"
  • Hi Callum,

    If employment in the game industry is your goal:

    1. Consider combining your skills. If you're coming from an engineer background, and you're learning to do art, that's a pretty useful combination. Game positions for folks who can harness those skills in the fields of tech art, vfx, UI and rigging are currently hugely popular, in case those interest you or you haven't considered them yet.

    2. Research your target studios. What types of games do they make? What are their art styles? And therefore what kind of portfolio should you be putting forward as evidence that you can do work that's of the same quality -- or better -- than what they're doing?

    3. The sorts of courses that market themselves as "game" courses (like the one you're taking), tend to focus very heavily on learning software, and how the software, or knowing a ("a", not "the") game art pipeline is somehow what makes you a game artist. This is only a tiny portion of the truth. They teach that way, because learning software is really easy, and therefore not very valuable. Learning to be an artist, learning aesthetic and how to create it, learning to "see", is hard, and what makes a good artist valuable. Being a good artist who's also deeply intimate with asset creation and creative problem solving makes them invaluable. It's fine to learn software (and there's obviously a minimum you must learn), but don't lose sight of the end goal. You're not doing this to be a software expert; you're doing this to make you a better artist, and increase the numbers of tools you can use for making visuals. There's a lot of other things you'll have to do to be a good artist other than learning a particular software package, like learning to see the world, and how it works, and why it looks the way it does, and how you can translate these into a believable, beautiful world.

    4. It's not the responsibility of employers to contact you. Both globally and locally, there are far more applicants (for junior positions) than there are openings. It's your responsibility to research studios that you're interested in, know about/play their games, visit their websites, (most importantly) create a portfolio of work that would be relevant to them, write up CVs and cover letters, and send it to them. You've got competition with loads of other juniors entering the game job market, many of whom have studied 3-year courses. And I don't mean to scare you off or anything; I just want you to know what the landscape looks like so that you can best prepare yourself to navigate it and set yourself up for success.
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