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Post date: Mar 14, 2015 9:57:46 PM
tl;dr - GDC is fun, go to parties, have a digital portfolio, make lovely business cards and make sure to have a lot, socialize and enjoy it all!
Brief Overview:
View when you first walk in!
Down shot of the floor!
Microsoft open bar!
Swag collected throughout the week!
This was my first time going to GDC as this year I finally felt confident enough to show off my portfolio as well as financially have the ability to go. GDC was more or less exactly as I expected it to be, which worked out perfectly in my favor. That's because I excel when it comes to striking up conversations and talking with people. Makes sense as I've been called a social piranha before. I also helped out with the Ringling booth, which I will talk about as well.
Overall, while the "job hunt" side of GDC involving the Career Center, expo floor and main areas was a little disappointing, the main goal of connecting at GDC was still worthwhile overall. GDC is something I would definitely plan on attending again sometime in the future, though next time I think I will apply for the GDC Conference Associate. I talked with Kenae who happened to be their working as a CA and she said it was totally worth it.
GDC Day Summaries:
Tuesday:
Not too terribly much to describe about this day as this was when I flew into San Francisco. I will say overall that I wish I had more time to explore the city and go site seeing as San Francisco is an interesting place for sure.
Wednesday:
The first big event day of GDC for myself and it was pretty fun overall. My first impressions walking into the expo hall were exactly like most comic conventions I had attended in the past. There are a lot of booths with big names with interesting stuff going on. I headed to the Ringling booth first just so I could get its location for when it came time for me to help out. After that I headed off immediately to the other booths and made my first free t-shirt grab at Mixamo. I then ran into a programmer who was wearing a Vigil shirt, who incidentally actually worked at Vigil from the beginning and now worked at Nordic Games. That was pretty much a highlight for me as I loved that company and Darksiders is my favorite game.
The day would only get better though later on after helping out with the Ringling booth and walking the floor a bit more. This would be due to the parties that I had lined up. Insomniac, Mixamo Mixer, Polycount and Epic. My night didn't end until about 1am after a first very long day. Got to talk to some awesome people and get my portfolio reviewed by them as well. Lead artist at Insomniac, 3D artist at Rockstar, etc.
People are super social, especially with alcohol in their system and there are tons of people to talk to at the parties. The Polycount one was extremely packed and the Epic one was just as packed.
Overall it was a really good first experience of GDC.
Thursday:
Today would be the day that I was planning on hitting the Career Center. As I had said, it was pretty disappointing this year as I had heard about it being a trend at GDC it would seem. This time however, even names like Insomniac and Obsidian weren't there. I went to only three places which were Glu Mobile, Creative Assembly and High Voltage. Out of those three I actually got a potential offer from Glu Mobile, which I am waiting to hear back from. Creative Assembly I actually got a portfolio review from the lead artist and he was super nice, even giving me his email for personal feedback if I wanted. High Voltage I actually was reviewed by a hiring manager and not an artist, which was still good feedback. She seemed intrigued by my work but wanted to see a little more variety on the realistic side.
Other than that I helped out at the Ringling booth some more, walked the floor to see the places I hadn't already seen Wednesday and then tried to find more parties. I was only successful in getting access to the Sony party. It was with a ticket only and it turned out to be more of a programming party interestingly enough. However, programmers need and know artist so I continued to be as social as possible. Met some fun people who were more so on the Indie side of games, which was nice.
Also had a really nice time eating sushi with a whole bunch of people before the Sony party!
Friday:
Wrap up day and winding down for GDC is what Friday is for. I helped out at the booth one last time and then briefly took one last look at the floor. My flight was scheduled to leave around 5 so I hung out with Sarah, Picco and Devan in Japan Town before getting ready to leave.
I was a super disappointed as I was going to miss the Ringling Alumni get together later that night. However it seemed luck was on my side as Picco, who I was flying with, received a call from Delta that they had a better flight for us that left later that night! We took up their offer and made it to the get together!
We packed a bar called John Folley's, literally to the point where they had to get out ropes to section off a walk way so people could still get through. Everyone from current students at Ringling, to alumni, to past and present teachers and other friends of Ringling people were there. I caught up with a lot of people and met some new faces. Handed my business card to the person who had hired Phillip, a CA graduate from 2 years ago, at Zynga. It was really nice to be able to get to talk with people who had been in the industry now for a year or two or even more depending on the person. Getting to hear their experiences is always good as I can be more prepared for when I graduate myself.
Party Master Tylo!
Line for the Polycount party
Everyone waiting in line for the party!
Don't know why this image is upside but it works as the place was crazy enough as is, packed to the wall with bodies!
So I was officially dubbed Party Master (self-dubbed but generally accepted by all) as it turned out that I knew where all the parties were but everyone else didn't seem to. However there were only two parties really that I was able to get into that I hadn't known about before that I got lucky with. The Epic party was posted on Facebook if you follow their group and Marty emailed us about it. The Polycount party was posted through their Facebook group. The Insomniac party was actually posted on Facebook as well but I didn't see it and didn't know until Clarke told me about it. Then the Sony party I got into thanks to getting a ticket from Hyung, who happened to be there.
The parties were also something I planned out in advance and made sure to set reminders of where and when they were, what I needed to get in, etc. This was because I knew that this is where I could chat with the awesome people working at awesome companies on awesome games. Plus, it doesn't hurt when the parties have an open bar. People are far more relaxed and open in this type of setting than on the GDC floor. It was something actually an HR person at Insomniac stated when I went to their party. They hosted it themselves because they could host it where they wanted to, it wouldn't be in the loud GDC area where you would have to yell and it's more welcoming and inviting. They wanted to make it easier to talk to people like myself, which I really appreciate!
Overall, the parties I feel were the most beneficial part of GDC as it is where I made the most connections. Not only that but they were legit connections to some people who work at awesome companies. I then followed up by adding most of the people on LinkedIn and then sending a thank you email to people who reviewed my portfolio.
Helping with the Ringling Booth:
So first off I would like to start out with the fact that I ended up with two GDC passes. This was because the school got my an Exhibitor badge and then I bought the Expo badge. Now, there is literally no difference between these two badges whatsoever. I however thought that the Exhibitor badge was just for access to the Expo floor early and wasn't an actual badge. It turns out that it is a regular Expo badge as well. So that was $250 I didn't actually need to spend, however Ringling didn't really make this clear. So if you help out with the booth, just let them get you the Exhibitor badge as that is all you need.
Helping out with the booth itself was alright but I don't think I would help out again. This was mainly due to having to stick around at the booth where there wasn't really a lot of activity of people coming to the booth. This was at least while I was there as I heard people kept coming by and taking business cards. The other thing was that most of the visitors were other students or from places I hadn't really heard before.
Overall, it was another one of those opportunities where I like interacting with people and knew I could use that to help out at the booth.
Portfolio Feedback:
A good tip I received about portfolio feedback was to immediately write down all of the feedback received so you wouldn't forget it. A simple tip but it reminded me to do that. I actually kept notes of most everything throughout the days while walking around GDC. I am going to paste all of the notes that I wrote down as I feel that it is important to know which companies gave what feedback rather than compile them into a top feedback thing.
Overall:
Didn't receive a single negative comment on my portfolio
Most people said I had a really good portfolio and to keep creating
Feedback from most was to get more variety into my environment work
Feedback was mostly small fixes to environments and stuff
Individual:
Gavin Goulden (Insomniac - Lead environment artist)
Really liked my environment
Asked about my grass and how I did that
Said to specialize and don't generalize so either environment artist, character artist, etc.
Told me about how they had a brush stroke mask they had over the painted textures
Had a guy who was awesome with houdini who made the roads and could apply the textures to their roads
The road really looks like sunset overdrive road
Definitely send us funny pun stuff like the mustache and stuff
Really like the two trunk boss as I haven't seen a bipedal elephant boss that has two trunks
Beautiful biome should use tiling textures for things like the trunk
We used material instances as well for textures and stuff
Worry about either optimization if it's meant for mobile and stuff or just make it beautiful for portfolio
Maybe make the tree trunk a little more bumpy and not so smooth, more shapes
All our rocks have tilable textures that we can just rotate and use
Really like the stylized Muscle Mac and his sharpened shapes, really sunset overdrive
Looking forward to an actual playable demo of your game
Overall really liked my portfolio
Hayden Wu (Rockstar - 3D modeler)
What do you do?
Made funny face when I said student or soon to be graduate, can't exactly remember which
Do you know Maya?
Do you know zbrush?
Do you know Substance?
Bullshit
Looked at work and didn't say much critique wise but gave me his personal card
Jeff (Teaches at Full Sail - knew Ryan Ribot)
environmentartist.com
Separate values for grass and trees
Have light come from one direction in beautiful biome
If you ever need feedback let me know
Email at jeffenvironmentartist
Maggie Bohlen (High voltage - Director of human resources)
Get some more realistic variety
Maybe some indoor scenes with the lighting coming in
Always think about how lighting affects the environment
We need people who can do a girly stylized game and then someone who can do the super realistic
Really like how you handled your textures
Think you've got a good start you just need to keep making more and updating and when you do just get in contact with us
Watch out for black harsh shadows on stuff
Pawel Wojs (Creative Assembly - Lead environment artist)
Like your stuff but the stylized stuff we don't really do
Beautiful biome looks good
Could probably optimize your textures a bit more on the leaves and stuff, have them overlap as they are on separate cards.
Weakest project would probably be the first shot of environMENTAL as it shows the geo and stuff on the trees so would maybe take it out
Nice to have characters but would probably keep them separate for an environment artist position
Though your characters are good for an environment artist, most of the time people have ok environments but then put in a crappy character that brings their portfolio down
You can email me if you want anymore feedback though I won't respond immediately as I am busy but I will try to
Rocks look good, could possibly layout all rocks on same sheet for textures and do the highlights
Trees are one of the hardest things to do for an environment, water is too
We are actually looking for vegetation artist as it is hard to do
environMENTAL tree looks good in second shot but first shot I can clearly see the geo
Just seems like you should keep going but it looks good
Waterfalls look pretty bad and kind of stand out as glass planes so if they weren't in there it would look good
Jozias (Glu - Artist)
Got a really strong portfolio and are really talented
Would like to see a variety of work more for genre as you have fantastic stuff but if we need a guy to work on a sci-fi game I like to see sci-fi stuff in a portfolio
We are actually setting up a new team of bad asses that I will definitely throw your name into the mix of our favorite artist
I wish I had a card but I will email you after GDC
Definitely get into Unity, we do all of our stuff with it, they have tons of tutorials
Have you gotten into lowpoly stuff for mobile?
Would love to see effects and different times of day with your environMENTAL
Awesome work though overall for sure and you definitely seem like you have pinpointed your work
Raymond (Rock Star - )
Definitely seems you are on the right track
Just keep trying and going for it
Your stylized work is definitely stronger and what you seem passionate about
It would seem Insomniac would like your work
Definitely do what you love and go for that
It shows when people are passionate about their work and that's the people that companies want to hire
I'd maybe try your work at Tell Tale as well as it seems to fit their style
GDC Top Tips:
Be Social:
This one is really a given as everyone you talk to about GDC will tell you this but it's still something people just don't truly get. Not everyone is a social piranha like myself so it is understandable.
Most of the awesome people I talked to were simply because I said hi and introduced myself or because of simply liking their shirt. The conversations with the Vigil guy and two Rockstar employee's were simply because I said I liked their shirts that usually dealt with a game. Other than that I simply tried talking to anyone and everyone.
Planning:
As I stated earlier, planning was a big part of having a successful GDC week I believe. I planned out the companies I wanted to visit in the Career Center. Each year they release a pdf right before GDC of who is hiring. I downloaded that and saved it to my iPad so I would have it with me. Then there was planning my portfolio and presenting it. I downloaded an app on my iPad called Kredo that is better than just using the Photos app. I made multiple portfolios for different companies such as a Realistic one, Stylized one, Character one, etc. The only difference being which work I showed first depending on what the company wanted. I then wrote down the booths that I wanted the visit including the number.
Overall I prepared as much as possible so that I wasn't aimlessly walking around with the hopes that something would come to me. GDC is about you going to everything there as they are waiting for you. Opportunities are all around GDC, you just have to look.
Portfolio
Be prepared is one of the major things I remember from my time in the Boy Scouts. Prepare for anything and everything. Seriously! As I said I put all of my work on my iPad and then created multiple portfolios for different people and companies. However even with this, you are going to get a ton of different feedback from different people. Don't generalize, you should generalize, don't have character if you're an environment artist, character stuff is good to include even for an environment artist as it shows you are diverse, etc.
Definitely get a digital device to show off your work because we live in a technological age and it's professional. The work is easy to see, regardless of lighting, people can zoom into your work and they will, and everyone has one.
Enjoy it!
This is again, something people will tell you but it really is as simple as it sounds. Enjoy GDC and San Francisco and the experience it has to offer. It's a really fun trip where you don't have to worry about anything back home. You can get free stuff, try out the Oculus Rift, randomly see Phil Fish or Cliffy B., drink for free, etc.!
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