Nope no answers here that's why i'm asking. Some of the requirements asked for at some sites leaves me wondering "where the hell do you even learn that at"?

I can texture aircraft, but even that's iffy since i've never received any solid feedback on it.

example

http://www.activision.com/ROOT/cms_misc/ATVICareersTaleo/job_listings.html

Usually, you publish a couple of indie titles or make a popular mod before you get noticed...at least according my buddies who actually are programmers.

Might want to start with testing. That's how a lot of us did it.

Way I got in was through making a mod. Got together with a bunch of talented and dedicated folks, started putting together some stuff, got noticed. That landed my first, and probably my best remembered encounter with the games industry, which was essentially that of a contractor. My second encounter was through the people I met in the mod group, but that eventually turned out to be a bit of a bust.

Networking is the way to go. Networking, having a good portfolio of examples, and maybe some actual results/mods/indie games.

Having had my brief encounters, I've come to the easy decision that engineering is better. Less crap to deal with, regular, reasonable hours, and most of the people you meet aren't either out to use you or aren't genuine arseholes. But hey, I'm just one unlucky SOB; YMWV.

mod making seems to be the easiest way especially if you don't have any current contacts.

if you make a mod that a lot of people enjoy you will be contacted by somebody, somewhere, that wants to hire you for more work.

i made a couple of popular mods when i was a teenager and had several offers pop into my mail box after they became popular.

competition is fierce today and many know that making mods is a path to employment in the game industry. I made mods years ago. Back then as I recall, you always knew that you're among amateurs, hobbyists. It seemed easy to stand out by putting extra effort. Now, I don't know. I get the feeling that there are too many "professionals" making mods now.

and about feedback on your work... the community will take care of that.

Having been in the industry for a decade as an artist, the #1 tip i can give you is to expose your work on 3d related forums. If you are good enough you will be noticed, maybe asked to join a mod, or simply connect with other artists who down the road may connect you to a job opportunity.

To be noticed, your work must speak for itself, be open to critique and act on it. Never stop working on it, in this industry if you relax for a while you will not make it. Once you get in though it starts getting easier.

Also, diversify. Being an "aircraft texture artist" is incredibly niche as a specialty.

How do you get a game/app developed & then published if you have no skills to do all that, but have all the concepts & so-on all sorted out?
(Me - I've got a good idea for a game for phones & tablets, but I don't know how to make it happen)

2 things you will need, people and money. Find the right people to hire, and have enough $ to pay them. Thats what it boils down to.

If it's in 2D, buy Game Maker like I did

I agree with a lot of what has already been mentioned, the biggest thing is of course to just make games. However there's a lot of really dedicated and good people going for the same small number of jobs. It's not quite as easy to get noticed as it used to be, there's way more people getting degrees and such in gaming related stuff and trying to break in. I just graduated, I worked as game designer/2D artist while in school and at the moment I'm working as contract programmer. The job market has been pretty rough, a lot of people I know are having trouble getting anything other than QA. Art has gotten noticeably tougher, as there's a pretty sizable supply of artists graduating and trying to get in.

Exposure and who you know are really important. You can expand this by essentially doing the job you want to have on your own through mods/indie games and then being aggressive in applying and pushing to get your foot in the door. Don't wait around for things to come to you. Game companies tend to get loads of entry level applicants, so a lot of them are not going to do a very indepth search, especially smaller studios. Once you're confident in your work, you should go to them.

Testing jobs can be good if you have exposure to the developers, especially at small studios. You do the testing job and then around that volunteer for everything you can to get you closer to the job you want. Stuff like all the tedious work in photoshop or give really detailed and indepth game design feedback like you were a designer. Whatever fits what they need and what you want to do, that worked out really well for me.

In addition to just turning out good work, people tend to forget that you need to show that you're versatile and a dependable teammate that can work quickly under pressure. That makes a HUGE difference if you can somehow show that, it's one of the big reasons companies can be hesitant to hire people without previous industry experience.

A good portfolio might not show this without previous professional experience. Indie games, game jams, and any other team situation with a deadline/adapting/problem solving can help a lot and should be something you can speak to in your portfolio in my opinion. If you can show having solved a design problem with art or worked to create art that fits seamlessly into a style set by someone else or whatever it may be, it can go a lot farther than just a nice model or texture on it's own. The more you can realistically apply it to a game and then make sure to show that, the better.

It is pain in the rear. Some of my stuff is in a couple games and all. That's great........but still have not made a cent. BUT game credits are nice. While I have NOT made it personally. A lot of this is my own being totally stuck attempting to combine my real world military experience with my hmmm obsession with military hardware modeling. Still.......someone is making a little bit O cash off my stuff. And unlike many trying to get in that DAMNED door I have my name in two titles. At least at first just make stuff and do stuff you like. Develop speed and accuracy in your work. Challenge yourself and always look to add more to your portfolio. AND NO ONE now a days is gonna come to YOU unless your like that 1 in 1000000 guy that does something mind blowing. And they still likely will not knock on your door. AND WHY SHOULD THEY? The guy beating on the door clearly wants in more than the guy waiting for a knock.

Probably being more open to doing things that an employer needs and wants is a better solution that being like me and ending up with 3 years of nice military crap. Sort of like having a portfolio full of dragons or something lame like that . But for me it was helpful for my damage I received in Iraq so all for the good overall. Now to fill the holes with NOT military attack helo's, fighter planes, bombers, armored cars, apc's, heavy weapons, small arms, and rifle grenades. MIUHAAHA. Need to go make a pony or some thing daft and boring. I mean the BEST MOST PRETTY PONY EVER!. Who am I joking........it would end up a cavalry WAR HORSE DAMNIT.

GOOD LUCK... But to honest everything you need to GET the skills is out there. Its the TIME that is a ball buster. And realize it takes time to get to a point where both your skills are there AND you beleave your skills are there. That may or may not be around the same point or reversed.

Hmmm now as to these employers asking for the moon in candidates...... That I do not get. YA you should know max/ps/zbrush/softimage/maya/mudbox/blablabla. (this is art side of course) So either you been in industry for 10 years OR you got a few months training in each but an expert in nothing. And as new guy you probably really do not need any of that as you do scut work like cleaning up others stuff. But THEY can ask for that as SO many folks now.

first copyright and patent your idea and any branch ideas that could be susceptible to copying, then contract an indian development firm to do the coding and artwork.

Strictly speaking, patents are un-needed in this line of work/at this level, but if you are worried about things getting, out, then you might want to look into getting copyright protection/registration.

But yeah, at the end of the day, time, people, money. You might want to add persistence into that - how far are you willing to go to make your ideas see the light of day?

Yeah, a lot of it is because they're spoiled for choice and can afford to do so. The other part is often because they don't want to train or hold a new employee's hand, no one has time for that. It depends where you want work, but the skill bar usually is pretty high for good reason.

I should also point out that learning all the software is not the key, it's the fundamental skills. It can help, but they generally don't expect you to know all the software, you should know the fundamentals well enough to pick up the new software in a couple weeks. This includes basic art fundamentals, doing some tutorials on how to paint, do light/composition can't hurt. So if you can do mudbox, it's not necessarily the case that you need to be great with every other sculpting program. It's that you should be good enough at sculpting to turn out good work once you get used to any program.

lockpick's ?

In the shortest words possible

Make freeware - learn SDK's to open type games and make stuff, go payware if your stuff is good enough/platform allows it etc etc. Use that to create a portfolio, apply for jobs

My route in was by learning 3D Studio version 3 (the old DOS version) about 15-16 years ago. I put together a portfolio over a period of months and then just sent my work to every developer in England I could think of. Luckily, one of them gave me a shot. I spent 7 years there before going to Rockstar then Activision and now EA - shifting disciplines along the way from art to design.

I will say, however, that getting into the industry these days is much, MUCH harder than it was when I was getting started. It's also much more contract oriented - especially if you're a junior in a discipline such as art, animation, writing or QA. Getting a full-time gig is really tough these days, especially since so much modelling and texturing work is now outsourced to India, China and other such locales.

Getting your foot in the door is the single biggest thing you can do. I took incredibly low wages back when I took my first job and had to rely on handouts from my parents to make ends meet for the first couple of years. Once I'd proved my worth, however, my financial situation improved pretty quickly. That's really the key - particularly if you want to get into AAA console or PC development. Like it or not, you might have to swallow your pride at first in order to get your foot in the door and then work hard to prove that your skills and contribution are indispensable. I've several artists get flipped from TFT (temporary full time) to PFT (permanent full time) even in the last 12 months, simply because we didn't want to lose their skills to the competition.

Good advice here, especially from those in the business.

I'm in animation rather than games, but these days the two aren't that different from a modelling and texturing point of view (although I still get to use way more polygons and pixels ). All I'd add is to state the obvious and say you'll need demonstrable skills (qualifications are far less important), and the only way you'll get those is by investing a lot of time, the amount of which probably depends on how much aptitude it turns out you have for whatever discipline you chose. The more specific the area you're interested in, the better you'll need to be at it.

Even then, you're not going to walk into a studio and land anything but the most basic job without some experience. Hence the suggestions of getting involved in mods. There's no doubt this can pay off - the creator of the superb Minverva for HL2 was given a level design job at Valve, although I can't even begin to imagine how much work he put into that.


P.S. Having said I'm not in games, I did have a very large hand in this, modelling pretty much everything that isn't a character as well as texture work and building the entire environment. Coincidentally enough, it was probably the hardest three months work I've ever done. Go figure. Not that it wasn't enjoyable, even if the end product was a little disappointing after so much effort.

The out sourcing thing can plainly be seen on many titles that have threads on this board. Take 777 studio. US money it appears but made in Russia. Of course the flip side is that all the guys getting work over there for US/UK/Canada/whatever NOW will start making there own games later and be direct competion to those studios later. On the flip side however, it means niche things can get made that probably would never get created as margins can be SO low when embarking into the unknown. For the RIGHT job I would relocate for WAY less cash to Russia/Ukraine/CZ whatever. I wonder if THAT will start to happen.... And to be frank.....many vary good titles are coming out of Eastern Europe now. Innovative and quite frankly good. Time will well if the same happens with India and China.

On a side note I have Russian programmer buddy I collaborate with on things. When he saw the press for 777 getting new IL2 he said you should go apply for that. . I looked up where they ACTUALLY where (production) and said well YOU should go apply.

Getting the connections needed can be a BIG problem getting into the door......

Just how DO you get contract work anyways for mid and large studios?