Hey there, I am planning to enter the industry after university, I am planning on being a 3D environment artist. From your experience working with them, specifically the fresh meat, would you suggest spending time going and working on a specific theme or style, an aesthetic preference or tailor to more realism regardless?asked by Fallun

This is a great questionDarian Vorlick: This is all you.

So from what I have seen from the artists I have worked alongside is do what inspires you more than just doing something that the industry requires. Like if you love sci fi, you love space ships, focus on that. Focus on 3D environments for that. There will be companies out there, like ourselves, that are looking for that kind of talent. If you like cartoony, If you like big world, if you like lots of color then do that but what I have always recommended to new artists going into the industry is look for your dream company or dream game and build your portfolio on that. If you get a interview at a company that just does 3d environments that is just forested stuff and all you have is this industrial, broken down rusted environments then they are going to go "well I don't know how to value you here, I don't know what I can use you for in the gaming we're making. We don't have any of that here. So how do you do forests?" So it more comes down to what you see in the industry that excites you, what you think your strengths are and tailor it to your strengths and building a portfolio around that. I have seen a lot of really great new artists that really just touch everything and that way that can see what they are skilled and talented at so they can tailor their portfolio to the company they are going to work for and this works pretty well so your question of what should you focus on – I can't give you an answer as it depends on what you want to work on and what art you want to make or what kind of game or movie or whatever it is you want to go into it's really driven by you and what excites you, from what I have seen with most artists it's what they are passionate about is what they are going to do the best.

It also helps to keep an open mind as far as being fairly versatile because there may come a point where you have a skill set or art style that your company likes but at some point they may ask you to do something else totally outside your comfort zone because the needs of the company or the project need you to do something else and if you are not invested in that or that's a skill set you don't have then you or the company may be unhappy with the results. It does pay to have a diverse skill set at least to begin with.

I don't disagree but with some of the portfolios I would be looking at with some of our artists and art directors – say you are applying for a senior vehicle artist role and you have just done a bunch of forest stuff. I can't associate what you do with vehicles or with the thing you are applying for. If you are going to apply for something or a company you want to work for... have your diversity but still build your portfolio around what they are looking for at that time. Because we don't have a ton of time to look through everyone's hundreds of pages of images to see you are really good at that one thing. I wish we had the time to do that, this is why on portfolios we say "front load, give us your best stuff right away" so you can really give us a sense of who you are. But it does help to do your homework on the company you want to work for, build your portfolio around it, and when you apply really put that stuff up front.