Advice for Artists
Variety is very important here: we look for a range of styles in 2D and 3D work.
In 2D, we look for skills in graphic design, traditional media, composition, colour use, and evidence of critical and analytical faculties.
In 3D, we are looking for both low and high polygonal work, including the texturing, modelling, lighting, animation, and rigging of scenes.
We do like to see plenty of game-ready and game-suitable 3D low-polygon models in a portfolio. We really can’t over-emphasise this, because it is totally absent from most applications, even those from people with industry experience! At the simplest level this means 100-5000 polygons, using a handful of 128x128 to 1024x1024 textures, and no fancy stuff like nurbs or other higher-order surfaces, or ray-tracing or radiosity; for the really hard-core, no reflection maps or sophisticated light types. Translucent polygons and textures are fine, as are animation techniques like IK and forward-K, but complicated skinning techniques beyond weighted vertices aren’t going to be natively supported by many game engines.
Despite what you may have read, these constraints are realistic. Plenty of people can produce a beautiful render, but it is a rare candidate that can do that and produce great work within these difficult but commonplace limitations.
Ideally the subject matter should cover the full spectrum of human imagination, and include characters, vehicles, objects, and natural and architectural backgrounds, in a range of genres or styles. For example from light to dark, sci-fi to cute, cel to photoreal, racing, platform, fps, rpg… This is the level of flexibility we are looking for, although other companies may have more specialist requirements.
Work experience
We don’t want to discourage people, and obviously we don’t speak for other companies, but we suspect you may find that the majority of video game developers will not consider applications for work experience — full stop. Generally we prefer full employment, which is a longer term relationship, and more suited to the creative nature of game development.
However, in the event an exceptional application was made we would certainly consider it seriously.