Jared Lewin's GDC Recap

Post date: Mar 17, 2017 6:20:46 AM

First Day:

    This is my second time at GDC. My first day began similar to the year before. On the first day I saw a lot of other student portfolios while waiting in line for professional reviews. They were looking to warm up and make easy connections before talking to other professionals. Luckily because of this I was able to see a large amount of student work that I would not normally have access to. (Side note not every student has an online portfolio ready to go strangely enough). Anyways even after going through ten portfolios they started to blend. I forgot faces and I forgot work that I saw. This was in a short period of time. I cannot even begin to imagine what a recruiter must deal with. The first day of GDC is a great way to try to develop a sense for what your work looks like when stacked with a ton of other student work. I really feel like I have a better sense of what sifting through a mountain of work and unknown faces feels like. As well as this I now have a clear image in my head of what portfolios stand out. Slick is the key word. A slick portfolio is the only way, because only one or two really stand out. And what makes it slick is the attention to detail. That's it really. If the details weren't there than I honestly just didn't care and I wouldn't expect anyone else to either.

Summary: If you want to stand out you need to be the top, not near the top, the actual top.

    Second observation from this day. Social media is extremely important. I went to do a portfolio review and the artist commented that he knew my work. Don't think I need to explain how good that is but simply put when you've created an image for yourself on the same playing field as those who are working you seem more credible for it. Online you're just an artist showing what you can do, and the lens of oh this artist is a student isn't applied.

Summary: Social media is crucial

Second Day:

    This is the day I learned how intense the competition is and how different companies look at portfolios in different ways. Early in the day I joined a line for a review at the company Hi-Rez. They had recently opened up many internship spots and because of this the line was much like one you might find at events like black friday. So with time in line I began again to talk to the students around me. To my surprise the students in front of me were from Feng Zhu's school of design. These were, according to online sources, some of the top concept art students in the world and here they were competing for a chance to join the same studio I was competing for. Needless to say I wasn't super excited to have to show my work directly after their's, even if it was for a different position. The quality was raised the second they entered the line.

Summary: Competition is fierce. 

About the review. The artist reviewing my portfolio took one look and asked if I was sure I would actually want to work there. He was surprised I applied. I was surprised he was surprised. I assured him that I would be interested interning there. He then proceeded to give me portfolio advice that began to contradict what the artist from the first day had told me, mostly stylistically. But then again the companies have different styles. It was not that the information was wrong it was just that it was tailored for their company. I would later learn after talking with these FZD students that they were also told to make work that specifically fits Hi-Rez.

Summary: Specializing for companies is part of the process

After that I saw my second example of how fierce competition is. Bradford Smith was doing a talk of how he did materials for Epic Games' Paragon. Last year he did a talk about the materials he did for Naughty Dog's Uncharted. I realized, or rather had my knowledge reinforced, that the good artists go where they please. For whatever reason, studios sizing down, or just a general want to move, artists hop companies. Considering there are only so many companies and so many jobs the fact that an artist like Smith can most likely take any job he applies for could have some bigger implications. There are multiple artists of his caliber and I'm sure at one point in the future I will apply for the same job as one of them and in a competition with someone of that caliber I would surely loose without a doubt. On a more educational note Bradford went over creating custom tools to use inside of painter. Creating these tools in Substance designer allowed him to create effects that would normally take forever to complete. One example is a heat map that simulates super heated metal in a full PBR spectrum. This spectrum is then taken into painter and applied using masks and parameters. In matter of seconds he could map where the heat would be affecting the mesh based off of where the exhausts and cracks were modeled. Impressive.

Summary: Again competition is insanely fierce and custom Substance workflows are the future of texturing.

Third Day: 

    On the final day I decided to see some of the smaller studios. Two noticeable things happened. One we met with the Xbox developers from Rocket Hammer. We also played their game with them. Here was this tiny team trying to sell us their game. And to be honest the game was better than some games I played recently from studios with up to a hundred employees. Not only this but the small scope and simpler game allowed the one artist on the team to really develop his own style. He stood out to me more as an artist than some of the AAA artist I had met. I guess it just goes to reinforce that indie titles can easily outshine their AAA brethren. And seeing as how this small indie team was having their game displayed on the Xbox pavilion I'm assuming that they had achieved some level of success.

Summary: Indie games are a viable path and sometimes better for artistic growth.

    After this was the final talk. This was the talk everyone always waits for. The killer portfolios talk. On the panel was an art director of Ubisoft, past art director from Bioshock, art director Firaxis, and others. They said exactly what they want to see when people are applying. And what they don't. What I can boil it down to is tailoring your work. That was the key word of the talk. According to the art directors if you do not tailor towards a company you will have one hell of a time breaking in to the industry. Generalizing your work after you start a career in your free time is a good way to move up in a company, or move companies, but as far as any of them were concerned when they hire they don't like it. They have a specific job and they are looking for the person that does that exactly. I was lucky enough to also get a portfolio review from the art director of Ubisoft. She told me what she wanted to see in my portfolio. Essentially keep polishing and tailoring.  

Summary: Tailor your work

Overall I think this was extremely important. I think you can learn most of the things from this conference partially online. But only partially. You can't really see the big picture until you've been there.