Introduction

After deciding your specific talents and creating your website portfolio as I advised in Part One: Portfolios and following the steps in Applying for Your First Game Industry Job, hopefully you landed a job. Now what do entry level artists do while employed?

There are some extremely talented artists out there and those who have a great deal of talent are more than happy to share it with you. Learn from these folks and share ideas. You’ll soon find yourself growing as an artist and doing things that you couldn’t do before. Who knows, maybe you started as a modeler and now you are an animator and you’re happier doing animation. Don’t go into a dark corner of the office and hide. Be social, meet the senior artists and let them know that you want to learn from them.

There are going to be times when you have no idea what people are talking about. This ain’t school! You better ask someone right away to translate what’s being said. Put your pride aside and learn. Who cares if someone thinks you’re silly. At some point, they had to ask too.

And speaking of school, if you did attend school before coming into the game industry, you’ll find that you’re not getting a grade on your work and people don’t have the time to always tell you how good or bad something is. Sometimes, critiques on work have to be sacrificed in order to meet a milestone. So a healthy dose of self-confidence goes a long way.

Be active during company meetings—if you have a question or a concern and this is the right place and time, go for it! If someone asks for your opinion, don’t be shy, offer one. Attend after work ‘get togethers’ if possible. This is a great way to meet your co-workers outside of the stressed work environment.

Keep your website running and updated when appropriate. You never know when you’ll need it again.