First-Timer at GDC...

Post date: Mar 28, 2014 1:31:2 PM

    I flew in from Tuesday to Saturday and attended Wednesday through Friday. I had a kickass time! 

I had the expo pass, so I couldn't go to many of the talks. Instead, I took the opportunity to walk around the job fair floor. I stood in lines for a while, but I talked to a lot of different artists while I waited. 

    The big studio lines i stood in were primarily Insomniac, Riot, Obsidian, and Warner Bros, but i spoke to all sorts of professional nerds. I'll break down my 3 days in San Fran and fill you in on what made GDC such a great experience..

Day 1 (Wednesday, 19th)

    We walked to the conference bright and early. First thing i did when i got there was wander the expo floor, trying to find our Ringling booth. The venue was huge, way bigger than the space for Siggraph last year in Anaheim! After adjusting to the shear scale of the conference, some friends and I made our way to the job fair floor. 

It was intimidating at first. I didn't really know what to say or how to introduce myself to these artists and programmers. 

    The first company i approached was a small team from Denmark working on a digitally-rendered, Norse adventure game, very similar to Mist. He told me all about the game, their inspirations, and what stages they were at now. then I simply asked him to review my portfolio. 

    He really dug my stuff! We traded business cards, I thanked him and shook his hand, and for the rest of the day, I was fearless. I went on that day speaking primarily to the smaller companies about my reel, getting all kinds of constructive criticism. 

    The one big line I waited in was for Insomniac. I got great advice from one of their lead environment artists on organizing my contact sheets to show more of my textures, other than that, I got a lot of appreciation for my portfolio. I walked back to our hotel later that day feelin' like a million bucks!

Day 2 (Thursday, 20th)

    I have to say that my second day didn't work out too swimmingly. We got there around noon this time, I went straight to job fair. I didn't approach nearly as many smaller companies than i did on Wednesday. Instead, i spent the time waiting in line for portfolio reviews from Riot and Warner Bros.

    Talking to the guys from Riot was sweet. I had a lot of my questions answered by their team while I waited in line. We even met Fang Zhang while we stood there! We spoke to their lead environment artist, Oliver, who organized kind of a group-intern-portfiolio-pow-wow review. Five of us in line all sat with him at a table and shared our stuff. I was with 2 other Ringling environment artists, a concept artist, and this other asian kid who was a beast environment artist (like his style went right up Blizzard's and Riot's alley). 

    Oliver was super friendly and laid back, critiquing everyone as he swept around the circle. His critique for me was to push my model forms more, trying to give it more of that 'Tim Burton' style to fit more to what Riot was looking for. His overall note, was If you want to work for us, make creative and unique things that will totally fit into our universe. That means a lot more hand-painted textures!

    After speaking to Riot, pounding Oliver's fist (they don't shake hands, it's a Riot thing), and getting his email, I decided to move on to wait in the Warner Bros line for a while. They were filled up on scheduled portfolio reviews, but there was one guy doing unscheduled ones. Now this critique got a little ugly. The guy panned through my stuff in a second, didn't make eye contact, and basically told me that I need way more process work on my reel (mainly texture and wireframe samples). The critique was helpful, no doubt, but the WB guy seemed very unexcited by what I had to offer, and that really bummed me out for the rest of the day.     Disheartened and broken, I wandered the floor for another 30 minutes, then decided to meander back to our hotel and sleep away my sadness.

Day 3 (Friday, 21st)

    My last day at GDC was by far the best! We got there super early, before the job fair floors even open up. When those gates finally opened, me and my friends prioritized where we'd head first. I went straight for the guys at Sony. I sent an application to them earlier this year for an internship opportunity, I just wanted to make sure there were no other ways to apply. We spoke to a guy named James for a couple minutes and he filled us in on the Sony internship program. After that, I tried to schedule another interview with WB so I could gain some redemption (I updated my portfolio the previous night), but they were all booked already. I decided to go check out Cloud Imperium instead. They do extremely high-poly, hyper-realistic modeling and texture work. That was pretty much their advice, that they wanted to see more high poly modeling and realism in my work. From there I went back to some of the smaller companies I spoke to on the first day. Companies like Big Robot, OPQAM, YETi, ThatWindUpRobot, and a whole lot of South American and European studios. 

    After talking to Big Robot about making some freelance modular kits for them over the summer, I went over to wait with my friends in the Obsidian line. After waiting for 30 minutes while talking to a programmer about Z Brush, i finally got a review by this really nice girl form Obsidian named, Maria. It was a different kind of critique which was nice. I never heard "make things for us," which seemed to be the keyword of the day. She advised me to keep pushing the range of my environments and showing all the things you can do. It was a complete contrast to what the two previous companies had told me. But I liked her advice the best. Other than that, she advised me to have more call-outs, as well as more shots from my actual demo reel, in my portfolio images. We then went on to talk about how many sci-fi hangars and robots they've seen today, and the guy next to her cringed in response. The dudes from Obsidian were really cool! 

    GDC ended on the early side on Friday, so the rest of my time was spent exploring San Fran until my early morning flight on Saturday.

    Flying to San Francisco is a trip in itself, but having your GDC cherry popped is a whole other experience! There was so much to do there, and I feel like I haven't even scratched the surface yet. I had an amazing time at the Game Developers Conference, and I'll surely be returning for next year, hopefully seeing many recognizable faces.