Guest Speakers

Over the past couple of weeks we have had a variety of guest speakers come into our lectures to offer their advice which have provided a small insight in the industry that we are heading into. The first speaker was Danny Bannister, who currently works on the title APD Reloaded, which is a third person shooter MMO.

He came in to speak to us about his own personal experience about leaving university and cracking his way into the gaming industry while giving us valuable advice on the way. He told us about his own portfolio being geared towards environments however he has now changed over and become a vehicle artist which has shown me that even though I might want to be an environment artist at the moment I have always got the possibility of changing job roles further down the line however I need to make sure that my portfolio is always up to date and showing off my best work as potential employers would want to see what stage I am working at presently and not any work that I produced at the start of my career.

In addition he also advised us on not overspecialising into one area because employers wouldn't be looking for somebody so specialised into one area, they would rather have someone who is specialised but can also adapt to a situation if needed and could help out in another area of work. Another recommendation from Danny was to try and experiment with different software due to the fact that companies use a wide range of software that might be different from what we are used to, this is personally good advice as I have only really used Maya as a modelling software so I am planning to look into 3DS Max so that if potential employers use one or the other I know that I have got experience in both pieces of software, I also want to try and look into other engines such as Unity to also help boost my knowledge in game engines.

Finally he also advised us to look towards entering 3D competitions as they are a great way in which you can build up your reputation. I think this is a great thing for me to look into as I will be able to work to a variety of different briefs while also getting some critique from people who have experience in the 3D industry outside of the university.

Following this I will start to look into other software that I can start to experiment to help my modelling skills and also I am going to be on the lookout for any competitions that might be starting soon.