Workshop: How to find job in GameDev

1. Introduction: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the game Dev job hunt Master Class. I'm Anna Boganska. I'm a senior three character artist with over ten years experience in the game Dev, and I've been on both sides of hiring process as an artist building my own career and as a mentor helping others lending their first or next role in process. This workshop is designed to give you a practical tool and realistic strategies for finding a job in the game dev industry. From building a strong portfolio to writing applications that get noticed and finally to navigating the job market with confidence. Here is what we will cover. Lecture one is going to be portfolio. We will go through how to build a clean focused portfolio that shows your best work, including what renders to include how to structure projects and what makes a portfolio stand out to recruiters and outlets. Lecture two, resume, Link TIN and cover letter. Using two of my own real resumes, I will show you what a strong application looks like. I will walk you through the process, how to write a cover letter, and we will explore how to set up and optimize your Link TIN, so studios actually find you. Templates included. Lecture three, where and how to apply. Will share a list of the most useful job boards and websites from AA to Indy, and we will go over how to read the job post, spot Red Flags, and strategically organize your job search. I will also break down a real job listing to show you how to tailor your application effectively. So welcome to my course, and let's start. 2. Lecture01_Portfolio: Hello, everyone, and welcome to my master class on finding job in three D. The first lecture is going to be dedicated to your portfolio. We are going to talk about what should be in your portfolio, how your portfolio should look like, how many projects should be in your portfolio, and we will speak about the components about the renders which should be included to each and every year project. The first and weird thing which I want to mention here is that the portfolio of top artists is not a good example of the portfolios for those who start looking for their first jobs in three D. I can explain. The thing is that the top artists, they already have reputation and they don't need to worry about what they post on their portfolios. For them, their portfolios is a gallery because they have reputation. Everyone knows them, everyone knows that they are good artists and they don't need to prove to the world they really know how to make characters or environments or whatever in three. That's why very often when we go to the portfolios of the most top artists in our industry, we see that their portfolio consists of only hypoly models. A lot of renders, about 20 renders of the same character, and they don't show wireframe or they don't show textures and so on. They can allow themselves to do this because as I said, they don't need to prove to the companies that they are good artists. When you are a known artist, that means that you need to prove to the company where you want to get hired too, that you really deserve being hired. That means that your portfolio should show all the skills which you can do. I mean that in your portfolio, the character, the environment which you make should demonstrate that you know how to do high poly, you know how to do low poly, you know how to make is how to make textures, and still, your project should be attractive. Such things can be neglected when you already have reputation and that will happen to you when you will have already five, ten years experience in three D. Your portfolio will look same as the portfolios of all our top artists. My portfolio is also not a good example of a good portfolio when you're looking for the job, again, because I already have reputation and I don't need to prove that I know how to work in three D. You can ask me why my portfolio is not good example, and I the main issue in my portfolio is that a lot of characters here are only hi pools. So this is hi poly, high poly, hi poly, hi poly, hi poly. Same, same, same same. And all the characters, all the acts here, they are also highly. This is the first thing. The next thing that my portfolio consists mostly of the female characters. If you look through my portfolio, you will see that I have only 2.5 male characters in my portfolio. Again, this is not good if you start your career in three D. If you are talking about the characters which should be in your portfolio, then the best option is when you have a female character, a male character, a character of different nationality, a child, and an old person. This is going to be the perfect set where you can show that you really know how to sculpt different characters. So that was one of the main points which I wanted to mention. And the second one is your portfolio is not your gallery. Your Instagram, your Tik Tok, your Facebook are your galleries, but your art station or the link to your portfolio, wherever you created, maybe on your own website. It is your instrument. What I mean under the instrument, it means that the works which you post to your portfolio should be your best works. It will not work if in your portfolio, there are going to be work in progress or screenshoots from Zbrush or Maya. You portfolio will not work. If you want to post work in progress, screenshoots, or whatever, use your Instagram for this purpose. When you start your career, your portfolio should consist of minimum five works. How does it look? So let's look at my portfolio, so you need to have one, two, three, four, five. So this is minimum amount of works which you need to have in your portfolio. No one, not three, not for minimum five. That's just kind of standard of the industry. Before you start making a portfolio, you need to think about a couple of things. First of all, at the beginning, you need to decide whether you want to start your career with stylization or with realism. It doesn't mean that the future, you will not have any chance to change your mind and to transfer from, let's say, stylization to realism or just the opposite from realism to stylization. Only thing which it means is that you need to decide whether you're going to start your career as a stylist artist or as artist who makes works in realism. That's very serious thing, and you really need to decide. If you make one work in realism, one in stylization, one in semi realism, and semi stylization, then that means that your level of proficiency is still on the same level. All your works, they are not getting better. They are all on the same level because you try to work on everything. And we don't have enough time at the very beginning. Maybe some of you have, but in general, we don't have enough time to be professionals in all the stylistics. That's why we need to choose. If you make five works in let's say stylization, that means that the fifth work is going to be better than your first one. You just keep on hitting to the same point. You make works in silization in stilization. And that means that in stilization, your works become better, better and better. Know that everyone at the very beginning doesn't know what to choose, but you need to think about this and you really need to choose the direction. Next, one more thing which you need to decide is what kind of artist you want to be, whether you want to be a character artist or environment artist or Vp an artist or hair artist or VFX artist or animator. Whatever you need to decide it at the very beginning. And again, same as with direction. It doesn't mean that in future, you will not have a chance to change your mind and to transfer from characters to environment. It means only that at the very beginning, if you want to grow up quickly and to get your first job quickly, you need to decide on this. It will not work if you will have one project, a character, another one an environment, and next one only hair, next one animation. That's not informative. First of all, it's not informative for the recruiter because he doesn't know what job you can fit in the studio. And the next thing, again, your works are going to be on the same level because you are not hitting one point. You are trying to master everything at once. That's why your development as a three D artist will be very slow. You're choosing the style, if you decided to be a stylist artist, you need to decide on the stylistics. You need to choose one style or several related styles. And here, I advise you to select a pretty broad stylistics. What I mean if you select the style like llorunOwatch, Fortnight, these three, they are related styles. Of course, they differ one from another, but not that much. If you choose a style like Borderlands, then it is very narrow stylistic. I mean that there is no a lot of games in this style and you will be very much limited. At the beginning again, select plays a pretty broad style. You are going to start as a prop artist, that's very common thing with what people like to start their career. Then I have a big recommendation for you. Don't make a render of just, let's say, one chair, one table, one vase, and so on, because it's not interesting. If you are a props artist, then try for each project to create a kind of a scene. There is a table with vase and with chair in a room or in a castle. So I mean that your render should tell a story. If it is just separate props, it is not interesting, and I don't think that the recruiter, when he sees such a portfolio, will be interested in you as a candidate. Overall, each project which you post on art station should tell a story. That's why it is important to gather your props in a scene, pose your character, to work on the background of your character because all the things they influence how people react to your project. And the more people like it, the more recruiters are going to like it. So that's why it is very important. Next recommendation is if you start your career, choose a simple project. When you still don't have experience, don't start your first ten projects from the concept of Optimus prime because it is too complicated character, and it will be difficult for you to make this character good. And eventually you will face two problems, or you will not finish the project, or the result is going to be really bad. That's why the recommendation is to select a simple concept because you will manage to deal with a simple concept and your work is going to be looking more professional. No one will think about that it is simple concept. This is simple character. Everyone will see only the final result, and if the final result is great, then no one will start thinking about how difficult it was to make this project. Of course, with time, your concepts will become more complicated, your characters will become more complicated, but it should happen gradually. It is impossible to make a sharp growth. A sharp growth is possible if you are working with a mentor because mentor points out all your mistakes and helps you at each step of the process. In this situation, a quick growth can happen, but if you are working on your own, then you will not have the sharp progress. Your portfolio will become better and better gradually, and this is absolutely okay. Next, when you're a junior artist, don't make characters from the imagination. Always use concepts. The s is that if you don't have experience, if you don't have artistic background, it will be very difficult for you to make a decent character from imagination. C, the concept artist is a separate profession. People spend time on mastering this profession, on learning how to become a concept artist. They learn a lot of things about color theory, about nice curves, about lines, about dynamics, and so on. It's separate profession. And we three D artists, we are taught to make a character art from the concept where all the issues about posing, color, nice curves, silhouette are already solved by concept artists. When you start making a character from imagination, not from the concept, it means that you need to work as two professionals as a three artist and as a concept artist. The very beginning, it is immensely difficult. Don't make such a mistake at the very beginning. Later, later, you will manage to make really cool art from imagination, but not at the very beginning. I also made this mistake when I was a junior artist. I remember that I started making a lot of characters from imagination and none of them was finished because or I didn't know how to continue making this character or because I just didn't like the result. First time when I made a really decent character from imagination was last year. At that moment, I had already ten years of experience, and this character, I'm pretty sure you have seen this character in my portfolio, in my social media. This character was created from imagination. I didn't use any concept for this. I used a lot of reference, but I didn't have any concept, and I can't explain how difficult it was to make this character without a concept. But again, I had already ten years of experience. At the very beginning, it was practically impossible task to make a decent character from imagination. That's why please go through art station. You will find plenty of simple but amazingly cute concepts. Use them for your art. One more important thing which I want to mention is that when you're publishing your art on art station, it is very good behavior to mention in the description, the concept artist. We are not asking for the permission from the concept artist to make the character from the concept, but we always mention the concept artist if you used his or her concept here. As well as mentioning your mentors, your team leaders, your art directors who helped you to make this project is also a good behavior. I want to talk a little bit about fun arts. I know that from time to time, a lot of artists make fun art, and let's talk if it is really good practice and when it is a good practice. So if you're talking in general about fan arts, fan arts are very good way to make a lot of people look at your project. Because the fun arts are usually done for known characters from films, from games, from whatever, just actors and so on. Because people know who is this, they will click on your project and will look how you made this fan art. It's a very good way to attract the attention. But the tricky thing here is that everyone knows who this character is and you will be compared to other fan arts and to the original character. And if you make a fan art worse than the original or than the other popular fun arts, your work will be qualified in the minds of people as a bed work. That's why it is very important to know to understand that when you're making a fun art, you need to be 100% sure that you have enough skills to make your character better than original or better than other fun arts, maybe not better, but on the same level, not worse. Another situation when it is very good to make fun arts, it is not excluding everything what I said before. However, adding new information to what I have already said is that it is great practice to make fun arts on characters just from one game. For example, in the situation when you want to get job on this project in that studio, for example, if you want to work only in blizzard only on World of Warcraft, then it is obvious that your portfolio should consist of characters from the style. Here, if you make ten fun arts on the existing characters, and if all these fun arts will be on the same level of quality or even better comparing to the characters from the game, then you have a lot of chance to hide by that blizzard. In this situation, fun arts are working really cool. Heard about a person who made I think 50 fun arts for Zerk and he was hired by blizzard to Star Craft project. I don't know whether it is true, but I heard about this story. When you already have more than five works, you need to look at your portfolio and understand which of these projects is not already good comparing to your level which you have right now. So if you have bad works here, which you don't like, don't hesitate or archive them or delete them. You can leave all them for your Instagram. Instagram, again, it's your gallery. You can post the absolutely everything. The last thing which I want to talk about during this lecture, what should your project consist of? I mean, each of your project should consist of a certain types of renders there. I will show it on example of this project because I think it is the only project which is done properly according to the structure. Each of your project should have beauty render, presentation render, clay render via frame render, UVs, textualist. Maybe print screen from your random engine and optionally, if you have, it can be some short videos like simple animation or turnable or how the camera goes up and down around your character. That's also possible. It's not obligatory, but it is possible. Obligatory one is, of course, your beauty render. What is beauty render? Beauty render is your best render parse. You need to think about Beauty render as about the poster for the film. When we look at posters for the movies, we see the best picture from the movie and very often we don't see the whole character. See only the best part of this character. We see the story behind this character. For the Beauty render, your character should be posed because when we pose a character, our character starts telling a story and everyone is interested in stories. About Beauty render, you should think about an art in the art gallery. You don't go to Louvre and you don't see the characters in the tipos? You see artworks which tell the story. This is how you need to think about your beauty render. In this project, I have several Beauty renders. This is the main one. This is my video making off of this character. If you haven't seen it, go to my YouTube and watch it. So I have this Beauty render and this Beauty render. The next render purse which should be in your portfolio is your presentation render. The presentation render is the render. Usually, it goes in apples. My character didn't have apples. I made here straight in the pose. But if you have your character in apples here on the presentation render, is exact place where you can show your apples. On the presentation render, it can be separate sheets. Your character should be seen from all the angles. You need to have front, few, three quarters view from the back and maybe from the side. And the lighting here in this render is mostly neutral. When we're talking about the beauty render here we make accents. We make accents with light showing to other people what are the main areas on this piece of art where you should pay attention to. When we're talking about the presentation render, we are not manipulating with the attention of the viewer. We are showing our character in general. That's why usually here we use neutral lights. In neutral lights, usually we can see the whole character. Nothing is in shadow or maybe somewhere here, but mostly nothing is in shadow. Everything is visible. The next render pass is close ups. What is close up render is obvious. In close up render, we show the best parts of our character. Maybe you want to show how good you made the face, maybe the jewelry, maybe I have a creature here, maybe you have a cape and on the scape, you have a very nice ornament which you want to show. All these you can show on your close up render purse. Next one goes clay render. Clay render, again, I don't think I need to explain what is it because it's render without textures. We have two options how we can make this render and the first one is the obvious one. We render the hypoly. We can render the hypol that brush or in Mrmoset, whatever, or in Arnold, wherever. Another way how we can make clay render is we can use our low polymodel with assigned normal maps and ambient eclusion maps. This is also going to be your clay render. Personally, I prefer making the clay render from the high poly, not from the assigned normal and ambient occlusion maps because your hi poly will always look better than your low poly character with normal and ambient occlusion maps, only because we know that normal maps, they are not physically dividing your character comparing to displacement, right? Normal maps, they fake all the ditalization. That's why, of course, your high poly is going to look better on your clay render. Here I have two versions just because I don't like the way the hair is done here on the clay render from that brush because I was using exchange hair in the final render. Next render purse is via frame. It is one of the most important pauses because it will show the recruiter to your potential client that you really know how to make topology. If you're a game artist, then it is vitally important to make the frame pass because it will show that you know how to optimize your frame for the game that characters. Next pass is UV set. Here we need to show the UVs how late the UVs and how many UV sets we have. Next sheet is textures. And in the textures, we show all the textures which are on our character. There are a lot of different ways how we can make it. I made the simplest one. But very often, I saw that people render characters separately only with albedo, with normals, with roughness, with secular with metalness. And then let's say that here we have a character, and then in Photoshop, they just divide the character into Layers. Yeah, we can see layers. And here, we're going to have Albedo, then we have normals. Then we have roughness. Maybe metal ness. And so there are a lot of ways how you can do it. I use the simplest way. Another path, which is not obligatory is print screen from your render engine. In my situation was Arnold, you also can make it from whatever from Marmsat from Redshift, where you render a character. And in the end, which I don't have here is, as I said, short videos with your turnable character or others. The final thing which is important about the portfolio is this thumb nail. What is thumbnail when you aloud a project to Art Stan? Here you have a thumbnail, and you need to take it seriously because this thumbnail is going to be the first picture of your character, which as people are going to see on ArtStation when they go here to trending to community and other categories. You need to make people interested in what you did here to make them want to look what is inside. So take the sub nails very seriously. I don't recommend to put in the sub nail the whole character because it's going to be very small. You see the thumbnails, they are pretty small and it's not going to be visible. Comparing to all other works which we see here on our station. I think it's subjective right, but I think it's a good idea to put bust of your character for your sub nails. And of course, of course, your beauty render is going to be a thumbnail. So yeah, I think this is everything what I wanted to say about portfolios. If you still have questions, if you still unsure how to make your characters, you can always text me. I have a mentorship program. So if you want to become my inte, usually every month, I have one or two free places for new Minis. So if you want to become my Mint, you're welcome to send me a message on Instagram or on art station or maybe link it in wherever it is more convenient for you. And this is it for this lecture, and we are going to meet again in the next lecture. 3. Lecture02_CV, LinkedIn, Cover Letter: Hi, everyone. At our second lecture of our master class, we are going to discuss how to compose your CV, how to make it attractive, what should be written there and what we should not include to our CV. Also, we are going to talk about your linked in profile and about writing a cover letter. I want to start with types of CV which exist. And it is our classic CV and creative CV. This is an example of classic CV. Actually, I think it is classic semi creative CV, but this is an example of creative CV. Several years ago, I took a consultation from the recruiter to help me to compose a decent and competitive. Today, I'm going to share all the knowledge which you shared with me two years ago. The situation when creative CV is going to be great is when all the information which you have, you can write just in one A four sheet. If it is longer, then it is better to make a classic CV. This is my CV about several years ago. And this is my CV, which I renewed a couple of days ago and right now it looks this way. It consists of three pages. Your CV should not exceed five pages. More than five pages, nobody will read. Actually, I can open a secret for you that no one will read your CV on the whole even if it is one. The only thing which recruiter will read is this information, your portfolio, and the summary. So to write the summary is very important and we are going to talk about it today. There is an important thing which I need to mention about creative CV is that your background should be not bright. No colorful backgrounds, no bright backgrounds because the text which you have here should be readable. If your background is very bright or if I had this character more dark, then the text which is written here would not be readable. It is very important because if you make unreadable CV, then no one is going to read it. Like the very beginning. The first thing which you need to include to your CV is, of course, your real name. In the brackets, you can write your nickname, but it is not obligatory. It's better to write your real name. Then you write the position on which you want to work or on which you currently working, and then you include information about birth. Actually, it is not important to include information about birth, but classically, we include it. Same as the photo. The photo is not obligatory. Well, what I did in my creative CV, I just edit here the render of one of my works. Next here should be your actual phone number. It's obvious and the place of residence. In my situation, I'm Ukrainian, but right now I live in Rome. That's why I have my Italian phone number, and I state Rome as my place of residence. Important information. If you are looking for the job abroad and you live abroad, here it would be nice to state if you have work permit in the country where you are looking for job. There are vacancies who are okay with hiring you remotely. But some of them have requirements that you need to be in the same country as a studio, and that means that you need to have a work permit. Very often from our names, it is clear where you're from. For example, my name is Anna Beganska. It is clear that I'm not Italian. It is clear that I'm not American. It's clear that I'm from some Slovak countries. So yeah, if you have a work permit in the country where you live and it is not your native country, then it is better to mention here that you have a work permit. Didn't edit here work permit in Italy despite I have it because when I was renewing my CV, I didn't have a work permit. So right now, I think I will go back to Microsoft Docs and I will add this information here. Next, should be actual email. Check place that your email is working because I had situation where my email did not receive a lot of letters. I don't know why it just happened. Next link should be your portfolio. It can be to your art station or to your personal website, whatever. And then, of course, include link to your link it. Link DI is also another our professional social network which recruiter can check. And the next one is optional. If you have your YouTube channel about CG or your Instagram about CIG creative Instagram, then it is great to edit here. I don't think that it's going to be checked by recruiters, maybe yes, but you need to check your Instagram, let's say, because you need to make sure that everything is okay there. And of course, if you have a lot of photos, let's say, in swimming suit and you don't have your creative works then, your Instagram, then I don't think that it is a good idea to here. Maybe you have your discourd channel that of course, it can be edited here. But again, it is not obligatory. Obligatory ones is your portfolio until link it in. Summary is one of the most important parts of the CV, and in summary, we retell everything what is written lower on three pages here. So we write summary in the very end when we finish filling all the gaps about experience, about education, and all the rest, then we go back and we start writing a summary. In my situation here, I mentioned that I have nine plus year experience. Also mentioned here, featured companies and projects with which I work. If you also have them or obligatory mention them here. Featured companies, featured projects means the most popular or known projects or companies which you worked with. Also, I mentioned here that I am a mentor, I mentor at think tank at CG Spectrum. And I also added here that I act as a speaker at international conferences. One of them is GDC. Also included here that I am an official Maxon that brush leaves trim also, I have two YouTube channels. I mentioned here only my YouTube channel in English because I work only for foreign companies and don't work for the companies on the post Soviet Union space. That's why I think it's no need to mention here that I have YouTube channel in Ukrainian. Next, goes your experience, and we start speaking about our experience from now to your past. That means that first of all, you write information where you work right now and then you go back in your experience. So what we need to write here. In my situation, it is freelance right now. So you write here that it is a freelance or you write here at the studio. So here I have freelance, here, have Daro Studio. If it is an outsource cup but it's also nice to mention it here. It's not obligatory, but why not? Next, you write the position which you are working or work then you need to write when you worked a, and if you continue working there, then you need to write here present. I think that's obvious. Next, you need to write or projects which we were working on here, you write the name of the project and in brackets, you write the name of the company company client of that outsource studio, and then you write responsibilities, what you were responsible for. It is creating characters from high polytll textures or it's only hipolys or something else. If it is your freelance and you don't have featured companies, featured projects, you can skip this line and you can write your responsibilities in general. And if you want, you can mention your client. If you want to write here, that it is your part time job or full time job. Actually, it doesn't matter. So this is additional information, and it doesn't have any special value. That's why I don't think that you need to include it to your CV. Here we have a long list of companies where I worked. Next step is you need to write about your education. Here we write about our higher education. If you had some courses or it's like CG schools, then you need to write it to your supplementary education. In the education, we write only our high education. You write the period when you were getting this higher education, then you should write the university where you studied and your degree. In my situation, there's nothing connected with art time. I have master degree in English and Italian, and that's it. Supplementary education, as I said, it is all the courses, all the CG schools which you took. Next goes your key skills. In key skills, we write everything what we can do in three d it's three character modeling, hard surface, topology, making vis texturing, PBR texturing, hun ping texturing, maybe making hair with exchan or making hair with planes, using fibershop and so on all this should be mentioned here. I don't think that anyone's going to read this information, but classically, it should be included. If it is not included, then your CV will not look professional. Also here we like to include such skills like sociability, creativity, team player perseverance, not afraid of challenges, and all others, which you can imagine. Then we'll go to tools. Here in tools, we write everything what we know like brush, Mya, maybe blender, substance painters, D code, photoshop, whatever, and real Engine and others. Here you need just numerate them. You don't need to add such information like that rush, 90%, May 30%. No, it's unnecessary information. If it is necessary, then this question will be asked during the interview. But you don't need to overload your CV with all this information. Just right here the software which you know and that's enough. Additional. In additional, you write everything, what is not included to your CV, maybe your additional work, maybe your additional activity. Like in my situation, it did Bushlp streaming, Formax on, conferences, YouTube channel, and others. And the last one, you need to write about languages. Of course, if English is your first language, then it is great because all the companies require from you to speak English. My situation, I'm a foreigner, so I write here all the languages which I speak it is English, Italian, Ukrainian and Russian. So it is additional thing. And again, if a native language is English and you applying to the company which is in France, then it's great to mention here, maybe speak French. So it is always beneficial to write here that you speak several languages. If you speak only English, then it can be only English or you just can skip languages here. And in the end, if you had any featured projects, it is very nice to speak about them or to put here the logos of the companies or of the projects which worked on because it's pictures and they will be noticed by the recruiter. So if you had them, please add them here. And when we are done with whole CV, I remind you one more time that we are going back to summary and we retail all our CV in a couple of sentences here. Another important thing if you are making a creative CV. It should not be GPAC file. First of all, AliCVs should be in PDF, not dot doc, not from the Microsoft World. It should be only PDF because everything should be clickable. All the links should be clickable, and the recruiter should have possibility to copy everything what you have. Maybe he needs to put it in some forms or so on, but everything should be possible to control C, control V. That's why Olo CVs should be only in PDF. Next, we are going to talk about our LinkedIn profile. Why Link DIN is important is because Link DIN is a social network which was created for CVS. Technically, it is another format of CVS, and it is important to have your LinkedIn filled properly because it can happen that the recruiters will find you here on LinkDI. Very often I receive opportunities from different companies via LinkedIn. So the first your real name. Again, don't write your nickname. Only your real name, SMS, your position, and here we usually add photos. That's normal practice here on LinkedIn. On the background, I just suggest you to add or render one of your characters or to make a collage SMS D I here. But it is important to edit here because it's immediately understandable that you're an artist. And when you made your CV, it becomes very easy to complete your LinkedIn profile because you just need to copy paste all the information here. One important thing which we should do here is to verify your account. I don't know why I can't verify my account because you need to verify it with your phone and with your passport and your passport should be biometric. My passport is also biometric and you need to move your iPhone around your passport so that your iPhone could scan the chip inside of your passport. I don't know why. My chip can't be scanned by my iPhone. It's just not detected. Unfortunately, I can't verify, but if you have this possibility, if you can verify it, please verify it. What we have here. We also have about in the A, we copy paste our summary which we had in our CV. If featured, if you have any projects, if you have any YouTube channels, any publications, any recordings of your speech at conferences. All these things should be posted here. Same as your art station profile. Next, goes experience. Here again, we copy paste everything what we had in our CV. CMS in CV, we write about projects which we worked. We state our position. Here we have it is a full time job and so on. Education, same story as in CV. I have two categories here in education because I have my bachelor degree and I have master degree, and they are here. Also in the education, you can also add courses. This is the difference between YoCV and Ding Den. In the education seam, we write all our education. You have some licenses, as I, for example, have certificate that I know English, I have certificate that I know Italian. You can also add them here. Unfortunately, or fortunately in GameDv and three D, we don't have any certifications comparing to programmers because for programmers, I think they have some certification which they can also add here. Unlikely from us, we don't have such certification. But if you have any additional ones, you can always edit them here. Next one is projects. Again, if you worked on featured projects, all these featured projects should be added here to projects. Skills. You can also add here your skills and recommendation. Recommendation is a very powerful instrument. It is not powerful in my country on the post Soviet Union space, but in all the rest of the world, in Europe or in United States or in Canada, wherever, it is important thing because I don't know why but recruiters like reading recommendations. So if you worked in a certain company, you can ask your team leader or your director to write a recommendation to you on LinkedIn, and it will always be beneficial for you. Again, publications. If you have some publications, you can also edit here. What's the difference? Here we have publications. And here we had featured featured things. So here can be edit something else, not only publications. And then the publication should be only publications. All your interviews, maybe you wrote a making of some kind of a character in some creative blog, again, edit here. Again, we write here languages, and I think this is it. But there is one important thing which I want to mention. I beg you with the name of all the girds which exist in the world. For God's sake, please, never add here this label open to work. I will show you what does it mean in case you don't know, for example, here, you see, this label open to work, never, ever. Whatever situation you are in, never add this label to your profile. Why? It is a situation when this label was created for good reasons and with good purposes, but it doesn't work this way. So this label was created for recruiters to facilitate their search when they're looking for the specialist because this label means that you're open to work you're looking through different positions right now and you can negotiate with recruiters about the position. But in reality, it works another way. In reality, this label is like a black mark for recruiter because if you add this label for the recruiter, it means that you can't find job. Maybe because you have a low scale, maybe because you have a bad portfolio or you're a conflict person, or I don't know, whatever. For them, this label means that you can't find job. So when you add this label to your profile, it lowers your chances to get the job. That's why, please, never, ever add this label to your profile. The best option is always when the company is hunting you and it is not you who is sending CV to the company. Because in the first situation, company is more interested in hiring you. In the second situation, when you are sending the CV, you are more interested in getting work in the company. That means that you are playing by the rules of the company. And when the company is trying to hunt you, that means that you can have your own rules and you will present these rules to the company. Maybe I explained it very straightforward, but this is how it works. The last thing which we are going to talk about today is cover letter. Cover letter is something what we really don't like writing, especially when we are sending ten Sivis, 50 Sivis. But it is very important. Be the first thing which the recruiter will see, they will not see your portfolio. The first thing which they will see is your cover letter. The cover letter should not be as long as three pages. No, it should be short. But in the cover letter, we need to write a short summary about who we are. So we have our summary which we have in CV, and we need to shorten it even more for one or two sentences, and that's it where we speak only about the most important things like in my situation here. Next, what is going to be? You need to write about your other benefits, or you need to write why you are interested in working in this company. That means that you need to go to the website of the company to check their values and to write this part of your cover letter based on the values. Also, you need to check the project on which you are supposed to work and to write here why you can be a great contribution to the team of this project. It is really important. And then you can also add some more information. In my situation, I was sending this cover letter to my CV to an Italian company, and I mentioned here that I speak Italian. The cover letter is designed to break the ice between you and recruiter. If I exaggerate, I can say that you need to become friends with the recruiter from your cover letter. Let's think about the situation when the recruiter receives about 20 CVs on his email during the day. And three of them cover letter and all the rest of out. Which messages is going to read first of all. Of course, those which have cover letter. That's why writing cover letter is something very important. Right now, you have seen example of my cover letter, which I wrote myself. I hope that it will help you when you will composing your cover letters for the companies where you're going to send your CVs. After this video, you will also receive two my CVs and my cover letter for you to have an example how you should compose your CV and your cover letter. So for today, this is it. We have finished our lecture about CV, cover letter and linked in. And on the next lecture, we are going to talk about the sweetest part and it is how to find the job in gamed. Believe me, there are a lot of jobs on the market. You just need to know where to look for them and how to look for them. And this is I'm going to tell you during our next lecture. So see you soon in the next video. 4. Lecture03_Job websites, structural search, analysis of the vacancy: Hi everyone. At our last lecture during this master class. And today, we are going to talk where to find job, how to send your CV, and you will see that on the market in reality, there are a lot of jobs. I made the list of the majority of website where you can look for job. Of course, there are more, but these websites are the most popular ones where you can really find something. This file, I'm going to upload to the portal, and you will be able to download it and to save it on your computer. So the first website which I want to start with is obvious ArtStation jobs. So let's go to ArtStation jobs. On ArtStation, there are a lot of a lot of different jobs. The only thing that usually on ArtStation, we find the jobs which require from you middle level, senior level, lead level, and so on. But sometimes, sometimes you really can find here junior positions. Anyway, I recommend you to check it here or at least you can find here companies where you want to work and you can also make a list of companies where you can potentially work and include the company which you like to that list. What I like about art station jobs is that here we always see where it is situated. It is in Canada, Europe, Asia, USA. We can see here that it is remote or it is not remote, it is full time part time. Also I like that here on station, we can see the jobs where the help was relocation. In case unit, if you don't need grade. Here we have really plenty of jobs. The next website is LinkedIn. Also, by now, nothing surprising on LinkedIn, you can find really different levels, different jobs, and here you can see Junior artist usually if it is written as the artist, very often, it means that they can consider junior artist. So again, you press this link here, you can state your country. In my situation. I'm in Italy right now. So here I have Italy. In your situation, you can just put here whatever location you need. Again, here we have much more jobs which we have Art station, and here we can sort by the Jo. This is what I really like about art station. Also I think on ArtStation, you can subscribe to the newsletters and once a month, you will receive newsletters with jobs which are here on ArtStation. Why not? Next one is remote game of jobs. I really like this website because here we can find a lot of remote jobs. A lot of us like working remotely from our home, not from the office, so you don't spend time, money for traveling to the office. If you work remotely, you can work for any country from any country. That's why I like this website, especially it is good for those who really don't want to work in the office. And here, again, you can go here and look for a lot of different jobs we can find here. Art, you can filter it by art, looking for jobs and you can hear, let's not subscribe. Yeah. You can write here three D. And you will find jobs to which you can apply. And what I like here, here, we also have first of all, it's through all over the world, and also I like about this website that somewhere you can see even the salary which they can offer to you. And not everyone. But yeah, next is again about remote. It's remote gaming jobs. Another good website which I also like to look through, one more option. You can find different vacancies all over the website. Again, here, you can find a lot of jobs, it's in gamed, it's in art, it's in something else. Why not? You can go here. We have really a lot of jobs here. And again, I highly recommend you this website. And this website, I like that. Also here we have the time when the vacancy was posted. For example, five days ago, if the vacancy was posted one year ago, then maybe it's not a good vacancy or maybe they have already closed this vacancy, but they just forgot to close it on the website. Next one is game jobs direct, another website, and there are so many jobs here. We can write here, let's say, read the artist again, we have plenty of jobs here which we can look through. We have different character artists, lead artists, senior artists, environment artists, and so on. And here we can filter. I usually don't filter the jobs because maybe there is a company where let's say full time wasn't stated because they forgot, and maybe this is going to be a good vacancy for me and I will not see it because I applied the filter. So usually I really don't like filters. So usually I just spend my time on looking through all the possible jobs. Next one, animation jobs. I know that it is mostly for animators. But still, even on this website, we can find such vacancies as di artists. You see D artist, rad artist, d journalist, Senior to animator. Yeah. But anyway, even here, you can find vacancies for the art. Why not? Why not checking all the possible and most popular websites where we can find a job, right? Next one, Grecle Headquarters job. And yeah, again, here we also can find jobs. We have technical artists in three D artist. We also have fatter here, you can select art design. The difference between art and design is that usually design for concept artists to the illustrators because they need to invent something. If you're talking about art, that can be whatever, it can be in general, but it is already mostly about c. Sometimes, we have such positions as three D design. But mostly design is about two D and art is about three D because as I said before, three D artist should copy 100% the concept in three D, and usually you don't have the space, this opportunity for using your imagination because all the imagination was already used by two D artist and you are not allowed to bring something from yourself to the three D. Yeah look through this website. I think you are a lot of a lot of vacancies here. Yeah, you see the amount, 887. Next, next one is game jobs Co. Here we are another another good website. Again, with filters, you can even filter by company. Amazing. First of all, it's amazing that you can filter by company, and the next thing, you have a list of companies which you can actually check separately. You can go to the website and check what they're doing. What else do they have in the job list and so on. So yeah, check this website. Another really good variant for you and look how many jobs that are posted right now in art. It's over 1,000. And next website is hit Marker. Yeah, this is websites looking very pretty similar to this one. Oh, it's the same. Oh, my God. Okay, we have already talked about it. And the next one is ten GG jobs. Ten Gig jobs, another website to look for jobs. And what I personally like here, that they stand with Ukraine because I'm Ukrainian, but we are not here because of this, but we are here because they have over 1,000 listed jobs. And again, you can check here. And what I like here, that it is written worldwide BB contract. Full time level can be also written here on site. Sometimes you can also read the salary. Why not? I pretty good website. Go here and check the vacancy. Maybe you will find the one which you need. Next one is Jubil. I think it is one of the most popular. Again, if you type here video game IT, then look how many vacancies we have here over 70/70. Of course, we can specify, we can write three, and so on. But again, Jubil is really one of the most popular websites where you can look for the job. Next, Game jobs. I Game Jobs another great website. Usually, not so much companies here. But still, why not? We can also check it here. Use it if you need it. Right now, we were talking about the websites where you can find the jobs from the whole world. But in the situation, if you like, let's say portfolio is not really good or you're just afraid or you don't want to start your jobs from the real job in the industry. Or I don't know, you just want to start your work as in the artist or to work in the companies. I also have two websites where you can look for Indie. This is the first. When you work for Indie, very often, it means that you only receive experience. Usually, your work is not paid or you have promises that you will get percentage of the income of the game when's going to be released. I personally don't work in indi companies. Especially in those which are from Ukraine. But for experience, it can really be a good opportunity, especially if you have problems with receiving offer from big serious companies because you don't have enough experience. Why not? Or maybe you just want to work in the company. Why not? There are a lot of people who just want to work in them. Here you can also go here and check for the available vacancies where you can work. The next one is work within two and this is natural website. It's Google Docs. Here you can check the studio, the size. You can see if the vacancy is active or if it is not active, great website. Check it also. Don't be lazy and go everywhere. Also, there are bookmarks and you can check them too. It's publishing their database in the word, maybe outsourcing events, there are a lot of useful information, why not? Go here. Another two websites which I really adore is the websites where you can see the vacancies, somewhere the vacancies, some where the companies, which you have in a special area. So let's check the first one. It is really great website because here can click somewhere, let's say here, and this is Germany. And I can see. I don't know whether it's all the companies existing, but definitely not all, but you can see the list of companies which exist in your zone in your area. You can even filter them. Yeah, you can filter by country. You can filter by the city. But still, for example, you have moved to another country, and you have no idea which companies here in this country and you want to find a job and so here you can go and at least to make a list of the companies in this area. It is so great. For example, in my situation, if I click to Italy, I can see here over more than ten companies which are in Italy. Because when I move to Italy, I managed to find through Google only like two companies in Italy, and that's it. But in reality, much more. So yeah, very good website and you can go here. The next one is I think this is one of my really favorite websites. I personally when I look for a job, I personally very often go exactly to this website on the first place, first of all, I go here. This is Google form, and here we have animation game industry a lot of different jobs. They are through all over the world and they keep on updating this form. This is great because here you see the studio where it is located, the country, the job titles level. A remote or on site. The date, even the date when the vacanci was posted, you can see the link. And also, sometimes you can see the commands about this vacancy. It is amazing amazing resource. I really adore it. Moreover, there are a lot of useful things here, like you can check the studios. A lot of studios are around the world. And you can find here internships. I know that internship is something which is, well, on the first hand, it is popular. On another hand, it is so difficult to find because not all the companies provide internships. But here, you have a list of companies and internships where you can actually try to get. And this is fantastic. It is really fantastic. I highly recommend you to check it here in case you want to find an internship. As we have here a list of education, a list of institutions and education centers where you can go to master your CD. Again, here you can find another great bookmark here is entry level postgraduate. That is a list. Vacancies juniors for juniors for associates for people with middle level. So yeah, it is really one of my favorite websites where I usually check the jobs. So yeah, check it. And the next website is just useful information about finding job, about your resumes, about SUVs, about whatever. You can go here and check CMDvommunities, accessibility a lot of things you can check here. Yeah. Welcome to Check it too. And the next link is Game resources. And again, this is another list, very long list of possible websites where you can also find a job. So yeah, so now you have so many websites, so many work to do. And believe me, you really can find something where to work. What are ways to find a job? And it is not looking through the vacancies. It is using your LinkedIn, using your art station and using your discord and using your Instagram. It's really great practice. Go to your LinkedIn, add as much artists as possible to your LinkedIn profile, and then you can just go through what they post and you can see the artist. You can see I like this one. You can go to his profile and check where he works and where he worked, and you can make and you can add the companies to your personal list. Why not? That's what I very often do. Same you can do with your Instagram. Just follow the artist, follow the studios, and very often artists repose the vacancies from the studios. So if you follow this artist, maybe you are going to be the first who is going to see the Open job. So why not? And how you can look for jobs on art station except of just going to Game Dev job. I usually go here and very often if the game is released, here we see the art from the game. Of course, on the subnil we see the name of the game or of TV series like Arc and you go through the community or through the trending and you say, Okay, dragon, something interesting. You go here, you see that it is Project dragon. You can go to check which studio has made it. It is Phenic slabs, and you look at the art and you can decide, am I good match for the studio? Maybe yes. If yes, then add this company to your list of companies where you potentially can work. If not, just we are closing it, and we go to another Falcon. Again, we go here, and what? It's Falcon. And here we have a website. So, how it works, you go to the project and check the company, check the project, and if you like it and if you think that you can potentially be a good match to this company, you just add it to your list, as I explained before. Another great way how to look for the job maybe it is not very obvious, but it is discord communities. Very often popular artists, they have here on the discord channels. They have job boards. You can go to the job boards of big artists and you can check. Usually, there are some vacancies which you can like. This is the example of J Hill discord. I know that some as also have these job boards. It can be jobs, it can be open positions, whatever. But follow the discords of artists and maybe even there you will be able to find the job. Now, let's speak about how to organize your time, how to organize the process of your search for the job and what you should do. First of all, I want to say, if you send your CV to ten companies, you have a big possibility that none of these companies will answer you. This is okay. Usually, it is a small percentage of answers, and this is okay. To receive a really good result from your job search, you need to send 50-100 times your CVs to different companies. 50 50-100. I know this is a lot. That means that you need to write so many cover letters. You need to look through so many companies, through so many positions. But yeah, this is how it works. Ten companies a month will be not resultive. It can be resultive but usually not, especially if you're a junior artist. Be prepared that you will need to send your CVs many, many times. Send 50 CVs, then you will receive the answer, positive answer like invitation for the interview from maximum ten, maximum, maybe five. Some of them will offer you to make a test task, some of them not. And only one or two companies out of these 50 companies will send you an offer. This percentage of positive, let's say, result is very small, and it doesn't mean that you're a bad artist. That means that there are a lot of artists in the world. And that art is subjective. When something is subjective, the decisions can be made only because I personally like another work better than yours. It can be explained. It's just a matter of taste and you need to be prepared for this, you should not be very much discouraged if you get the refusal. It is absolutely okay. Next, what I want you to say? I would recommend you to make two Google tables where the first one is for the list of companies, where according to the style which you chose, we were talking about this at our previous lectures. So the list of the companies, which are according to your style and specialization, you potentially can be a good match. Maybe not now, maybe in future. Maybe you maybe you're making stylized characters using hand paint techniques for texturing and you want to work in rite games. But right now you really understand that your level is pretty low. You also can add rite games though to your list. Because potentially in future, it can be a good match. So you add the list of companies where you potentially can work or now or in future. And another list another table is going to be the list of companies where you are sent or going to send your CV. I recommend you to do the next way. You have the name. In one table, you have the name of the company, then you have the website of the company, then you have the link to the job. Then you have another table where you need to write whether you send CV or not. And another one is going to be where you going to write down the reaction. No, answered, but refused, invited for the interview, offered to make a test task or send an offer. So you need to keep record of everything. If you're not, it can happen that there is a company to which you have sent three times your CV during three days, and of course, it is not good. It looks like spam, and this is not good. So you need to be structural. I know that we are artists. And for us, it is so difficult to be structural, but it is something where we need to be really structural. Otherwise, our inner chaos will prolong this time when we are looking for the job and also all of us, we want to find the job as soon as possible. Now I want you to show an example how I recommend to analyze the job when you read it. First of all, I want to say, if you have a junior level and you see the vacancy written like three D artist and the level is not mentioned there, of course, you can send your CV. When I was a junior artist, I was sending my CV on three D artists on junior artist, on middle artist, whatever. The s is that in the vacancy, the recruiter writes the description of ideal candidate. And usually ideal candidate is very difficult to find. Or this ideal candidate will ask for the salary much higher than the company can afford. That's why don't be shy and send your CV to as many jobs as possible. You should not be 100% perfect for the description of the position. You just need to start sending your CV. Nobody will blame you. Nobody will judge you. It's okay. Send your CV. And wait for the answer. Right now, let's see how I personally analyze the job. I chose this job for you for an example, entities our three D character artists, two League of Legends game play champions. From the beginning, we see that it is three character artist, I fitted. This two means that's team two, just for you to know if you have here one, two, three, that means just exact team to which you are going to be hired. League of Legends, we know this game, gameplay. That means that you are going to be involved in creating characters for game, not for cinematic, not for marketing purposes, but exactly for game. In champions, that means that you are going to make the main characters. You are not going to make some bosses or so on. That means exactly this AkriKaarina and others. Company de gains Los Angeles. Full time. And I think knowing riot games, I know that maybe it is position exactly in California, so I need to be in California and I need to have work permission. So for me now, I'm Ukrainian and I live in Italy. That gives me information that maybe I'm not going to be a good candidate for this job because I live remotely. If it is the only obstacle, if that worries me, I would send my CV to this position because maybe they will like my portfolio so much that they will offer me full time job, and they will help me with relocation. With Right games, it's absolutely possible because last year I received the position from Right Games with relocation, with all the relocation assistance for three D character art Outsource manager, something like this. I refused because I don't want to be an outsource manager. If that was like an art position, I would have gone, but it was like outsource manager. That's why I refused. Next, we go here. We read the description of the vacancy. This is a summary. And I highly recommend you to read this because when you're going to write your cover letter, you can use what is written here in your cover letter. Of course, don't just copy paste. You need to overwork. But here, you can find information about value, sometimes about value, sometimes about the project when you will write why you are good match for this project because you have read this and you can find some benefits which you have and how you can be beneficial to the company and exactly this job position. So yeah, always read what is written here. Next one, responsibilities. I think it's obvious it is what you are going to do at this job if you receive an offer. So here, let's analyze on my example. Create three assets for humanoid creatures. Yeah, I'm good for this. Work with production subject matter experts improve upon efficiency process and pipeline. Yeah, why not? It's just working in a team. Understand game requirements chem parameters to create low poly assets that are optimized for deformation animation. That means that you need to know how to make topology for the game. I mean, game topology, which is different from topology for cinematics. You know how to make your frame optimized and you need to know how to make this optimized frame animate. That doesn't mean that you will animate. Your frame should be good for animation and optimized. Using can you fit this parameter? I personally cancel, great. Incorporate concept design while taking into account technical design constraints such as polygon, texture, memory limits and topology. This is mostly about your artistical skills. If you have experience, for example, I have experience in this, yeah, that's good. By now, I potentially can be a good match for this company. Next, use your strong sense of human creature anatomy to push character quality, and so on and so on. So this parameter is about anatomy. As always, if you're applying for the character position, always, you will have this parameter about anatomy. It's obvious. It's like, Okay, I omit it. Use your sense of color and texture to finalize game essence. Again, that's about your artistic skills. Strong understanding of legoflagi, style, shape, language, how to apply that to sculpt model and textures. This point is about the fact that you need to be familiar with the game. I think everyone can meet this point. At least you can just download this game and play it for a couple of days and look at this character closely and another parameter, which I think the majority of us can fit. Utilize your knowledge of subsets paint color to generate current gen textures. Me, this point here is very weird. I don't know what they mean here, because as far as I know, in the League of Legends, they use hand paint techniques. They are not using substance painter. They're not using roughness or metalness or so on. But maybe I need to just look through the game again because last time I opened League of Legends was about four years ago. Again, this is interesting thing and what you need to think here, do you know substance painter? Then maybe we can be a good match. Guide artists to hit productivity quality standards, who style guide principles and highlight improvement areas. That's a requirement for future. If you are good at your position in future, we will give you more responsibility, more money, and you will be a team leader, or you will have your own team or you can even be an art director, whatever. Communicate with various other disciplines to ensure all assets are performed. S be communicative. And in general, what I see from these responsibilities and using my background knowledge about the ego flages, I can say that I can fit this vacancy to 80% way to 80%. Be I know personally that my lowest skill is hand paint characters. I never had experience in hand painting, and to tell the truth, I don't really remember how to texture characters in Swedi coat, which is very often used for making hand paint. And I know that from the scratch from right now, I don't think that I can perform a good hand painted textures for characters, so I need to have some practice. And the style of Lego legends is that that this hand paint is very important. So by now, I still don't know whether I'm going to send my CV to this vacancy. Next, required qualifications. Full years experience in video game industries as character artists working multiple pipeline and game engines. Again, that's about experience. If your portfolio is good and your experience is not for years but two years, if that was me, I would send my CV. Because judging from my portfolio, maybe they would close their eyes on four plus year experience. Knowledge of human anatomy form and color sera, that's obvious. Experience working with modeling, sculpting, texturing programs such as Mamxups and painters at Bush Photoshops red code. Yeah, you need to understand if you know blender and you don't know Maya, that means that you need to start learning Mayer. Same as if you don't know TD code, that means that you need to start learning TD code or in my situation, revising your knowledge and TD code. Experience in creating high quality stylist three D character art. That's obvious because that's a position for three D character artist, demonstrated ability to create hand paint stylist character through past professional or personal work samples. This is important. This is important that I think they will not even consider your portfolio if you will not have the examples of hand painted characters. So if you just really don't have them like I don't have, then I don't think that you need to spend time on sending them your CV. Because this is important. First of all, it is stated several times in the vacancy. And the second is that we all know leg legends. We know that it is totally hand painted, and you really need to be good in it. Experience working and communicating with multiple disciplines to find creative solutions and hit production goals. That means you need to be friendly, cooperative, and all the things. About your soft skills. Des qualifications. Deside means that if you don't have, it's not a big deal. Development, experience creating material and PBR essays with modern game engines and real unity. It's just you are not going to work with that, but it's great if you have them. Familiarity of legends, IP and skin universe. Yeah, it's always great if you know the game. But, yeah, it's just obvious. Experience giving direction and delivering clear constructive feedback to vendors. Again, that's about maybe your team leader skills. So next, read all the next. We see the salary. You need to understand if that was remote position, it can be situation that it can be remote, but you need to be in California. Or if you abroad, for example, in Europe, then you will not have the salary. It's going to be different because it is for citizens of the United States or for those who have work permit in the United States. So you need to keep this in mind. But anyway, I think this is totally full time position on site in their office. To conclude it all, speaking about myself, would I send my CV to this position? And my answer is no. Only because of one reason because my hand paint techniques are very low. They are not very low, but at least to be ready to send my CV to this position, I need to make at least two, three characters, full pipeline with hand painted textures. Then it would be worthy to send my CV. Without it, exactly for this position, I would not send my CV. This is how you can analyze the vacancies when you are looking through them. So, yeah, I think this is it. I think this is everything. What I wanted to tell you during our master class on job research. I hope it was useful for you. If you have any commands, you are always welcome. I always listen to all the commands, all the feedbacks. So your feedback is always important for me. And if you have any questions, you can always write me in my Instagram or on my art station. If you still have questions or something wasn't covered, I always have consultations. In three D, I have mentorship, I have portfolio consultations, whatever. You can send me a message on Instagram or on RTStation and I will help you to solve your problem. So this is it for today. Thank you for being with me. Thank you for watching these three videos. I wish you luck in looking for the job and see you in the next master class or maybe even course. Bye.