Generalist to Specialist

As the gaming industry rapidly expands, young budding artists need to know the real deal with what is needed and wanted in industry. It is a completely competitive industry so knowing your weaknesses and skills and changing them according to what is desired by the industry.

    Once upon a time in a land far different from our own, there was a bedroom coder. This boy would have to be generalised and good enough at all areas of game making to create a fully functioning game. This covers everything from concepting art, creating models to scripting and introducing assets to the gaming industry. This seems incredibly difficult, to be able to be good enough at all aspects of game creation to make and sell a fully working game.

   Nowadays, multi-million dollar industries require specialists. It is better for the average jack-of-all-trades to be able to be superior in one aspect than good in many. This is because the industry is in constant competition with each other and require workers to be absolutely godly in what they do and can achieve. Because the industries have a large amount of money, they can afford to pay many people to cover many jobs. They need an expert covering all areas to get the best from the employees. These include such things as artists, lead art director, concept art, 3D artists. Programming roles such as scripting, engine work, animators. That’s not even including such things as overall game management and researchers. There is a wide variety of jobs in the industry, it’s knowing which role is best suited to your abilities is the key to success.

   For me, I would prefer to go into the 2D art side, being a concept artist or something similar. There is an incredibly, super majorly slim chance of becoming a concept artist in industry. You have to be able to use both traditional and preferable digital art skills and are able to quickly produce rough and interesting concept ideas. Now, I can be quite quick at drawing, but I am no way near good enough to become a professional concept artist. I practise to try and better myself, but it is going to take many, many months until that is even a slight option. This reality check is something I need to keep in mind. However I will not let it crush my ambitions. I do not want to enter the industry blind and foolish. I need to be able to recognise my strengths and weaknesses so that I can change in accordance to what industry needs. Instead of faking reality and thinking  everything is fine and dandy. If you want to get into the industry, you need to be absolutely amazing in what you specialize in and you have to want it like your lungs want oxygen. This course is not for the faint-hearted, I’m overjoyed that I have got this far, I’m going to chase this dream until I physically can’t anymore. The only way to improve is practise.