Career Choices

[geldslaw]

What choices of career options are available in the CG Industry.
How best to approach a company?
How to best sell your 3D Modelling & Animation Skills?
What's the best DO's and Don'ts?

[geldslaw]

What Local events can I attend or should look out for to go and sell myself?
What should I bring? My laptop, printouts?
Do I need my own website?
How do I get noticed?
How do I set myself apart from others?
Do I offer to work for free?

What do I do?

[Motammad]

well, you sure got the most of the questions covered here...
now we have to wait for the answers...

[Jelmer]

What choices of career options are available in the CG Industry?
Well, there are lots of different jobs you can go for, of course it doesn't even have to be related to 3d, there's compositing, matte painting and many other things like that, but i'll cover the 3d stuff in more detail of course, because we're focused around 3d here..

Game artist
well this one is quite obvious, it involves video games and techniques related to that, 3ds max is one of the most used apps for gaming companies so there are many jobs in this area, most of the work will be fairly low poly but with the next gen games being released you will have to be able to model high poly models as well and understand techniques such as normal mapping. An easy way to get used to game art work in a semi professional, but accesible environment would be to join a mod, if you pick the right one and commit yourself you might even be able to land a job through your mod, Desert Combat for battlefield 1942 turned into a professional gaming company and Counter Strike started out as a mod!

Modeler
Mostly involves high poly modeling, besides max it's important to know other software for sculpting your base mesh made in max to add additional detail, well known examples are zbrush2 and more recently mudbox.

TD (technical director)
This one is a bit different and involves scripting and things like that, you'll probably need to know a lot about maxscript and C++ as well.
Other examples are shader writing and making of plugins for 3ds max.

Architectural Vizualization
Is another job option which is quite good, it's well paid and quite a stable market with enough work i think, you'll need to know more about architecture though and realistic lighting and rendering.

Texture artist
focus on textures, but of course you need to know modeling and shading as well, most of the time this is combined with modeling i think, texturing only isn't so much of a complete job, i think.

How best to approach a company?

First of all it's a good idea to see if the company actually needs new people, you won't have much of a chance otherwise, try to find out who's responsible for jobs related stuff at that company and address the letter/mail to that person.
Of course you need to show your work, the best way to do it is probably a demo reel, because it shows your work really well and quickly, of course a portfolio website is important as well, only put up the quality, finished work and try to update it regularly.

How to best sell your 3D Modelling & Animation Skills?

more to come here..

What Local events can I attend or should look out for to go and sell myself?
What should I bring? My laptop, printouts?
Do I need my own website?
How do I get noticed?
How do I set myself apart from others?
Do I offer to work for free?
What do I do?

[itschriswebb]

very very helpful thread this. anyone else got any thoughts?

i'm at that difficult stage where im not a beginner, but i'm not yet at the level to apply for these jobs. a junior position would be right up my street.

[geldslaw]

Selling yourself is always hard and its upto you to keep developing your skillset. You're only worth employing for the term of the existing project. Much of the CG work is very much like being a builder.

It pays well when you and the job you can do are vailable but you have to keep a look out for the next job. As a builder you don't upset when the building work is finished? You move on to the next job.

CG work is like that, once your contribution is finished, move on, or have other skills that they can use to want to have a reason to keep you on. When starting out you'll lack self confidence, but you already have more than you need otherwise you wouldn't be in this game or be looking to develop a career in it.

Opportunities abound you only have to teach yourself about the market so that you can spot a gap and as they say in 'Robots Repair - See a need? Fill a need'

[II Architect II]

Im dreading graduating next year, all my friends have really struggled to find jobs..

Oh first post by the way, hello everyone