Escape Studio's, Paul Wilkes talk

Today I went to see Paul Wilkes talk at the Waterfront today, his talk today has been helpful, he didn't talk specifically about the video game industry, but what he he did tell us was some really good tips on how you should arrange your CV, what the industry wants from your portfolio and the best way of approaching games companies.

What i have learned about what games companies expect  and they are quite surprising and encouraging at the same time, Paul talks about the main mistake some people make in there 3D portfolio and that is trying to make something way above there skills, or try to make something unreal. When you apply to a job in 3D or art and if you do become an employee it is more then likely that you will be in a junior role and as such will not be given the responsibility of creating the main character or any valuable models in the game, the most likely thing that you will be given is creating small time props and objects in the scenes.

In any portfolio he said you should play to your strengths and not try to challenge yourself to create something that is way above your level of skill, again it is likely in the junior role that you will not be given any important assets to create and will be given the more simple tasks that would be in your skill level. So household items and life objects would be much more preferred in portfolios then items such as characters and complex assets that may of not been up to average to the person viewing your portfolio.

Paul goes on about contacting companies in the first place, and again this was quite relevant and different from what i thought was the best way of contacting companies. First of all he said that most companies that he knew recruited from specialized job sites and professional sites, he talked about how rarely a company would hire someone who is directly contacting them most likely because they may just not have the human resource capacity. I thought that phoning and emailing was the best way and it seems that i was half right about how to approach this situation. Paul said that getting onto job sites, making sure you have a good portfolio site keeping up to date on what you do, and avoiding sending mass emails is a generally good way of getting interest from companies.

Finally Paul talks about how to present your CV in a professional manner. First of all he says that you should only include what is relevant to what you are applying for, do not add any unnecessary information and keep it clear so that the person reading it can get all the information that is required to get you the interview, this also leads me to a point I already knew but I thought was very important THE CV IS THERE TO GET YOU A JOB, in other words its not your life's story your personal statement does not need that, you can just write about your education and any other necessary information you think would help. You should also not be negative in your CV and again you dont have to list everything that you have done when you started to work, yes... Working at Sainsburys for 2 years is not really a professional job no matter how i could argue against that.

This is more of a light summery of all the points Paul went through today as more of his talk was about other professions within the 3D digital community. However i feel a bit more informed about what i need to do after these 3 years are up, all in all i am glad that I went to the talk by Escape and i feel a little more confident about what to do and what to expect in the future. I would like to thank Rob Kurta and the art and humanity department for giving us all the chance to take in this advice.