Ahhhh I made my first mobile game reel!! And though it feels unfinished, this is the most finished any of my reels have been. There's so much to fix and so much to do with it, but I sent it off to potential employers and I am NERVOUS. SOOO nervous.
I'm just realizing I haven't applied to any jobs outside of RIT affiliations until now. I just didn't have a reel or experience in PC/console work, but in all fairness, that is what I'm working on this summer (space ship is coming along guys!)
They asked for an hourly rate, which was new for me and a little unexpected. The guys over at Ardin had recently talked to me about differed payments and had offered me $20, but I lowered it down to $14 because I felt like the work I was doing wasn't worth that much. And of course they're not just coworkers but they're also my friends, so I wasn't too bothered taking a lower pay to help out the company. This blog was supposed to help me keep track of my work and how long it takes me to do things, but it's FaiLiNG mE.
But this is so different!! And the more I researched and talked to my coworkers, it seems like 20 is still pretty low. I took Business and Careers in Animation, but that information didn't help me much with this kind of situation either. I just don't want to hurt my job chances by asking for too much, even though I know "haggling" pay is common practice in the industry. I'm sick to my stomach just writing about it.
Pay me whatever you want, I just want to work in games! I'm trying not to get myself too excited, I've seen all the reddit graphics that people make to show their application process and just how many rejections they've gotten, but I just love video games and 3D so much. I would love some more "assignment" type work again. Portfolio pieces and online courses are a whole different feeling.
It actually feels really good to get my work out there and put together a reel with actual industry work in it. Unity still caused me multiple break downs because I'm still in that "Everything you do is wrong, and it will take 20 failures before you see one success" stage, but. . .
GUESS WHO FIGURED OUT HOW TO RECORD VIDEOS DIRECTLY OUT OF UNITY!!
THIS GIRL!! Screen recording software can no longer hurt me with it's low quality outputs!
It was also very funny to have Max and Matthew help me get my animations to play in Unity. I had a stream going in Discord and we wrote a tiny script in notepad and set up the animator components, but when I say they helped me, it was more like "type float, no, capital f, space, bracket, no curly bracket. Click on the transition arrow, no not that one, go over to your side bar and click the plus button, no not that one," and so on. It's been a hot second since I've done any coding, but I might as well relearn it now when I have the time.
I still managed to break my animations, but baby steps right?
There is a light at the end of the tunnel. We just went to look at our new apartment, and at the end of the month I'll be moving in with Matthew, (my coworker,) my boyfriend (a 3D artist,) and one of our friends (also a 3D artist.) Soon I'll be surrounded by talented and motivated artists and game designers, and I'm sure I'm going to ramp up on my productivity and quality of work. Now that I'm not afraid to ask for help anymore, I'm looking forward to having three people to help troubleshoot and get critiques from. I'm really looking forward to it.
But speaking of Ardin, I've been doing some more work for them. The games all seem super fun to play and I THINK my art is adding extra value and marketability. Now that I know about screen recording, it's just a matter of us sitting down and making some cool trailers to send off to publishers. What an exciting time we're entering as a studio, even with everything going on with the world right now.
I think they look really good so far, and even with all the modeling, UVing, and setting up materials/names/etc for exporting, it only took roughly 2 hours (Amanda, write that down.) I'm feeling confident that I'm improving my knowledge and work flow. It all feels so natural - even if I don't see myself staying in mobile game development forever, I'm really enjoying the work I'm doing right now. Looking back at the two published games in my reel, I'm remembering how hard but FUN it was to make those things.
So in conclusion, I'm feeling great about my art right now! :)
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