GDC 2016 - Poji Chow

Post date: Mar 24, 2016 6:53:53 AM

So this year was my first GDC and definitely an interesting experience overall. Being the oddball case that I am I went to GDC as a concept artist and not what Ringling specializes at all (just for context). I realize that I am heavily underprepared so I definitely had to make due with what I had and just chalk it up to next year being the more important one. I will stick to the lessons I have learnt as a breakdown of the daily events will simply lead to a long wall of text.

Know what you want

GDC turned out a little bit different from what some of us first timers thought it would be. A lot less crowded than we thought and certainly was a little bit smaller than it was all hyped up to be (the main event at least). Being early always has its perks and it is nice to actually know what they are depending on your goal. Career center? less lines to wait for. Expo? get your appointments for VR. I would count myself in as lucky as everything I had to wait for was not nearly as bad as what it could have been. Factoring in events held outside during the main GDC event also does not help (Blizzard in this case) as there are so many things to do (talks, guest speakers at booths, etc...). Going around to get a gist of the situation definitely will get you clearer perspective on what could be done, when, and where thus make good use of your time rather than stand in line or wander around aimlessly. Same goes for after event parties, do you want to talk? or party? (both could be done I guess but haven't ran into one like that yet). Unannounced appearances are definitely worth sticking around for so watch out for those (missed my mentor because I went to grab food). Final thoughts? Whatever you do you will most likely miss out on something else equally as interesting, thus plan and think beforehand. It definitely feels like you have enough time to touch upon a lot of things but if you want to dive in more (e.g. go through the G4G booth and talk to everyone), it may take a fair amount of commitment. 

Where do you fit?

With my unpreparedness I ended up with basically a High Fantasy portfolio and with the studios present at the career floor... total mismatch. I have always known the saying of "Is the art for you or the company?" but as someone who has basically been studying up till this point (and will never stop really), kind of shoved that to the back of my mind. Oddly enough I got to talk to Feng Zhu and that is exactly what he brought up. Gearing up the portfolio to what studios will do would become the trend to the feedback I receive throughout the event. It sounds super obvious but it could easily go over ones head and is even more true to concept artists as they do not have the open ended-ness of 3D environment artists (and how their are more flexible as it is more of a technical thing rather than design for example). This however only holds true if your work reaches a certain level/ standard. Say that if you are unable to consistently render out form with proper proportions, that is a much bigger problem than you not tackling a certain genre. To simply break it down concept artists require much more specificity in their work to prove themselves as studios tend to look to hire concept artists rather than intern them (exists, but more rare). There are tons of factors that go into all this but at the end of the day it boils down to, know what you want (studio), and just do what they do. From the people I talked to they seem to like what I had but they would simply like to see my work that fits their studios needs for better context (everyone i spoke to seemed to be on the same page of "you seem to know what you're doing, just do it to fix ... studio's type of work") *I could go on forever with this kind of stuff*.

Meeting artists

Oddly enough I do not remembering meeting many industry artists that are not art directors and such during the main events. I was only semi active in terms of looking out for them but I guess I just did not have that much luck in those regards (whilst waiting in lines, getting food, etc...). It was at the Polycount mixer that made things really interesting. You would always hear of stories like people chatting then end up with portfolio reviews and such but that could go in any direction. You obviously never want to be the guy that shoves a portfolio into someone else's face so it was definitely a cool experience to see that a lot of people actually are curious to see what you do and actually be the one to come to you. Student or not they genuinely seem to want to know/ see more. Dropping the line of I am doing concept art is definitely interesting (accidentally put character artist on my badge and never changed) as some will quickly bring up how hard it is to do so. It is also a very cool experience to see some of them genuinely be surprised by what they saw. Seek out artist, they are a blast to hang out with. Not saying that you should stick to artists only but there is definitely a difference from say someone from HR/ PR manning a booth at the event.

I will further explain things if I have to as some of the things I bring up seem obvious, until you actually experience it that is. Just trying to avoid writing an essay on this.