Industry job requirements

For this task we were set to find a job request for a role we’d be interested in filling in the future to get an idea of the standard and requirements industries are looking for and give us a clearer picture of what we’re aiming to achieve on the course.

I went with a listing for an environment artist, while I’m a huge fan of characters and character art when it comes to making things myself I find I’m much happier with environments and they are what I spend a large proportion of my time in-game stopping to look at.

(Colour coding probably isn't the best way to do this but it’s the easiest way to organise it to make sense to myself to avoid this turning into a much bigger rambling wall of text so, red would be something I’m nowhere near, blue what I’m already working on improving and regular black something I think I can already do)

This ad is for a senior environment artist for Sony in one of their London offices

“We are looking for an experienced and highly motivated Senior Environment Artist to join our world-class development team working on our next generation PS4 titles.”

Job Responsibility:
- Creating environment and prop assets to a high level of skill and ability within a predefined art style

- Able to take ownership of distinct areas & work through complex areas of work with little to no supervision

- Proactive in being aware of industry knowledge and highlighting examples of technical and quality benchmarks in current environment asset creation

- Ability to independently plan, brief, review & integrate outsource environment and prop work

- Contributes to ideas for development of the environment department, projects and team

- Able to identify personal growth and be proactive in following a self-development plan

- Mentorship to junior environment team members

- Proactive in driving internal communication and inspiration within the environment team

Knowledge and skills:
- Very high level of modelling, texturing, and UV mapping skills including high detail modelling techniques in Maya, Zbrush, Photoshop (or equivalent 3D and 2D programs) with an attention to modelling relevant detail when creating environment assets

- Strong understanding of the principles of form, composition, colour and lighting.

- Ability to independently plan, brief, review & integrate outsource work.

- Strong creative and technical problem solving skills. (who could deny it with my amazing colour coding system?)

- The ability to meet deadlines and to work to a technical and time budget for assets.

- Strong time management abilities, able to self-direct and maintain a sustainable predictable art delivery process.

- Ability to highlight examples of inspirational work that pushes technical and quality benchmarks

- Able to take direction and feedback from the team Supervisors and Directors.

- Proactive and self-motivated team player who works well in a collaborative environment.

- Excellent communication skills - artistic, verbal, and written.

- Flexibility & the ability to learn new skills over time.

Ok so overall there is very little black text there. My employability currently consists of willingness to learn and receiving feedback which is generally the minimum for every university student. 

All the red pretty much highlights my two biggest weaknesses, communication and management. That is honestly no secret, it's always been that way. Over the years I've used a lot of methods to get myself organised and while they work for a while they've never stuck more than a month or so. The only solution I have for this one is to develop some damn willpower for a change. 

As for communication, especially verbal it's something I'm always working on and a factor that's dragged me down for years. My work suffered all through my foundation course from an inability to communicate with and ask for help from tutors. While it caused all these problems believe it or not that's an improvement, go back a couple of years and I couldn't catch a train alone without someone to buy my tickets so I didn't have to talk to the conductor. Written communication doesn't come easy either, I'm one of those dyslexics who could sit there for hours sometimes trying to put thoughts into words without success. I've found coping mechanisms to help organise my thoughts (amazing colour coding) but while this helps me I'm never sure if what I end up with makes as much sense to others as my systems do to me.

And finally all that blue is pretty much what the course is trying to help me to do and what I'm already trying to work towards, it's almost as if the course structure was written to be industry standard, funny that. 

But how to go about turning all those requirements into black text? I think the biggest thing to sort out with all this is communication and with some hard work everything else will follow. I have no problems taking criticism but never actively seek it so my work never really varies from the ideas I have and the problems I see so I should try to talk with the other course members more and use the DMUGA Facebook account more often. The up and coming group projects will also be a good opportunity to experience working in a team for the first time on an art based project and is a good starting point for fixing some of those red issues, since while practice probably won't make me perfect it can make me better.