Nervous About Comparing!

[CKeene]

Tutorials are a great place to start but honestly, they only go so far. I have never seen a tutorial that says "Now I put that there because if I smooth this model without that segment of geometry in this precise location there wont be the visual look of an indent for a door panel of this car". If they did this for the entire tutorial it would be like 14+ hours long.

Not to get technical, but the ones I recommended do go pretty in-depth with explanation. People have a tendency to explain in video tutorials, in general, but these are purposefully created that way.

That said, I do agree with you... to an extent. Personally, tutorials are generally where I learn to experiment. I very rarely follow a tutorial step by step to get the exact same result as the person who wrote it. Maybe I just don't have the patience, but I find it far more effective to strip the tools and basic teachings from the tutorial, apply those, and then absorb more tools from other tutorials. A lot comes from trial and error, yes, and no one can teach that, but it doesn't mean you have to go in alone and unarmed, does it?

Regarding your opinion about portfolio versus attitude. We'd all like the total package... someone who has a great portfolio, is passionate about their work, and isn't a jackass, and in a competitive industry it's these people who get hired, but if you were in the position to hire someone, would you choose someone who had a great attitude and a mediocre portfolio, or keep waiting until you inevitably got something stronger out of the oodles of applications?

That said, I do believe attitude and especially the ability to be a team-player are extremely important qualities to have.

[Geffex]

Agreed Courtney, as I stated tutorials are a great way to start. If these tutorials explain the baby steps and rationale then sure, go ahead and start with them but as stated do not copy and paste and realize they will only take you so far. I may have been a bit hard on the tutorials but from my experience I never used tutorials for modeling.

Adding to the qualities of that perfect candidate, so many things can make or break the candidate. I believe the personality in a team based industry is held higher then the level of work. Which is why I say talented people just do not get jobs due to attitude. But theres more than even this as you probably know Courtney. Over all, you need to be out going, build a "hard skin" meaning be ready to have people tell you that your model just sucks and realize that and do it again, extremely talented, honest, passionate about games and be able to talk about your work and how it relates to the relevant games.

Also, Tim, touching on poly count - there definitely are poly counts. I had 5 Art Tests total and not a single one was allowing over 3,500 Tris for a Next Gen Game and for the two MMORPG Art Tests, I was limited to 2,500. Now these rules can be broken. When I flew into one Game Studio they had something they call the "awesome" rule. If it looks freakin' awesome and the engine can run it, they put it into the engine. An example of this is an asset one guy was modeling that was a ship you can fly in the game so essentially it was a character and it was nearly 10,000 tris. Now they said they will take it down to 6,500 but still, 6,500 for a character model in a MMORPG is pretty insane. Not to mention they are doing many maps such as Normal, Diffuse, Specular and Gloss.

Oh by the way you guys / girls can call me Ryland. I will go put it in my sig.