I wasn't completely sure how a five-year plan worked, to get a better idea how to structure it and to plan it I look at a couple of videos, blogs and articles. When planning out a five year plan it's important to develop and plan long term, I need to ask myself what I want to do in 5 years. I know that I want to work for Ubisoft but how can I achieve it? By setting long and short-term goals, it should help me achieve my goal. Having long term goals can potentially make me lose motivation as it takes a lot of patience. Having short goals will allow me to reach a milestone here and then to keep me motivated and committed.

To achieve my long term and short-term goals I will need to create a learning plan, what I want to learn and improve on. Once I have a plan, I can re-evaluate every 3 months or 6 months as its most likely there will be changes along the way. Other than that, it is important that I stay committed to reach my goal. [1] [2]

A useful method to make a 5-year plan is use SWOT analysis method. This will allow me to focus on my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. By using SWOT analysis, I can plan how to improve myself in the future. My strengths are what I enjoy doing and my good skills. Weaknesses is skills I'm lacking and that needs to be improved. Opportunities is what benefits I have to get into the industry such as starting my own company. Threats could be student or people applying for the same job as me. My SWOT analysis will give me a conclusion of where I want to be in five years and how I'm going to achieve it. [3]

I have never done a five-year plan before, but this could be useful for a long-term career plan. Five-year plans have specific goals, I will be focusing on my career goals for this plan. To work towards my goal, I will set both small and big goals, the smaller ones will be easier to reach but will help me progress to reach my big goal. Since I'm currently studying this would be current situation, although my career goal is to become an Environment Artist and work for larger studios such as Ubisoft. Thinking about my current situation from a year ahead, I will be graduating and continue to work on my portfolio, skills, knowledge and learn new things. Participating in competitions, challenges and game jams would be a good opportunity. Game jams will show how I am as a team player and will help with my portfolio. I will also apply for jobs and internships, since I don't have a lot of experience I'm mostly expecting to end up with an internship for a few months. This will be very helpful for experience.

What bring me to this career goal is because I enjoy playing and creating video games, I always been curious games and liked to learn new software. Every process of it is enjoyable as I get to learn something new all the time and improve my skills. The best part would be seeing my final artwork as it brings all the pieces together and knowing the fact, I have created it. Modeling would be the part I’m most enthusiastic about, as this is the stage where I get to produce my concept. This comes to a lot of reference images and paying attention to details, I would say this is the most learning part. And working with various objects in environments makes it enjoyable.

To reach my goal I need to improve my skills, there are weaknesses I need to work on. To progress I need to work on my communication, I’m not very confident when speaking with others. In the game industry soft skills tend to be 50% important overall. My soft skill is important to show that I can get along with my team and participate in discussions. I’m lacking experience in the game industry which will make it difficult for me to get a job. I overthink problems, I tend to have a solution but always try to look for a better solution. Majority of the time, I end up going with my first solution. And I’m hard on myself, there are times I feel like I haven’t done enough work and that I’m not satisfied with my work.

To work on my weaknesses, I will participate in discussions more, I need to be more confident. As time goes, it will come naturally. Just because I’m lacking experience doesn’t mean I won’t find any jobs, there are always internships to help my experience and build my CV. This should however be relevant experience that could be used once I get a job. Even though I overthink my problems a lot, it can be good I want to find other solutions, but if I have a solution that works perfectly fine, I should stick with it. Instead of being too hard on myself, I should be pleased with the work I put on daily as I make sure I’m not stuck in the same spot. To build up my technical skills I need to keep creating more work to gain knowledge and improve my skills needed to reach my career goal.

It’s difficult to say what will happen in 5 years, but this is what I somewhat hope will happen. I will review my goals here and then, do some adjustments for my five-year plan, I’m sure there will be unexpected directions.

2020: Currently an undergraduate, work on portfolio and improve my skills
2021: After graduation, I will apply for internships and jobs (maybe). I will try to apply for as many as possible. If I get an internship I will work on their project and personal work. If I don't get an internship, my plan is to find another job and continue to improve my skills. I will also enter competitions, challenges and game jams.
2022: Pretty much same as 2021. If I have got an internship I will apply for jobs and internships, and hopefully I can get a job by then.
2023-2024: By this time, I should have got a job at a game company, I work there for 2-3 years depending on the job to build my experience. If it's a small studio, it's most likely my plan will be like that. If it's a large studio, I will consider staying longer. I don't want to get too comfortable; I want to keep growing.