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Sion posted:I think I'm being headhunted. Good luck!
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Oct 16, 2015 23:04
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Shalinor posted:I think it really needs some of those spinning siren animated GIFs. Maybe an UNDER CONSTRUCTION sign. Also kind of needs more use of the [blink] HTML tag.  
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Oct 16, 2015 23:13
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Shalinor posted:I think it really needs some of those spinning siren animated GIFs. Maybe an UNDER CONSTRUCTION sign. Also kind of needs more use of the [blink] HTML tag. After "what the gently caress", that was my next thought. :/ As other have said nuke it and start over, post again.
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Oct 16, 2015 23:29
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Welcome to My Cool Posts Portfolio  Please click below to see some of my cool posts Sigma-X posted:'previous gen' style. Sigma-X posted:Congrats dude! Sigma-X posted:interviews. I'm always adding fresh posts so check back often, this page is  Under Construction! hosted on geocities
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Oct 16, 2015 23:32
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If you google unconstruction gif or skull gif you get a bunch of cool things, you have to put classic or 90s in front to get something old. And geocities.com redirects to yahoo's small business web hosting  e: my first portfolio looked like absolute poo poo and used pale piss yellow and desaturated blue so please understand that I am coming from a place of love. This is my current (by which I mean hasn't been updated in 4 years) portfolio: https://www.ghostscape.com
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Oct 16, 2015 23:34
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Sigma-X posted:If you google unconstruction gif or skull gif you get a bunch of cool things, you have to put classic or 90s in front to get something old. And geocities.com redirects to yahoo's small business web hosting
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Oct 17, 2015 00:19
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Sigma-X posted:Welcome to My Cool Posts Portfolio Can I use those for my portfolio site? I they are rad and I miss geocities. If I get hired somewhere with those on my portfolio, do I win any prizes? I hate making websites. SupSuper posted:Have I got the place for you: http://www.cameronsworld.net/ Also this is amazing and better than my portfolio.
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Oct 17, 2015 00:35
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SupSuper posted:Have I got the place for you: http://www.cameronsworld.net/ ... but seriously just copy Sigma-X's.
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Oct 17, 2015 00:46
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Resource posted:Can I use those for my portfolio site? I they are rad and I miss geocities. If I get hired somewhere with those on my portfolio, do I win any prizes? I hate making websites. Sure but you must provide credit and a link back ok???
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Oct 17, 2015 00:48
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Sigma-X posted:Sure but you must provide credit and a link back ok??? I can get you in the best web rings.
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Oct 17, 2015 07:47
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Ok all your criticism is valid but the reason I asked for just colour criticism was to avoid a page of burns. Cheers anyway, I'll probably get round to fixing it in a bit. Like this is super helpful thank you Sigma: Sigma-X posted:Dude it is hella offputting. EDIT: At the risk of three more pages of burns, what content should I cut? I try and be self-critical, but I don't think I have a good reference of what other people find bad/off-putting. EDIT 2: I know the impermanence concept art page is terrible, it's a leftover from an even worse portfolio Frankenstein's monster, I was going to replace it with something better but whoops. Is anything there worth saving? curse of flubber fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Oct 19, 2015 |
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Oct 19, 2015 00:27
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Megaspel posted:Ok all your criticism is valid but the reason I asked for just colour criticism was to avoid a page of nothing but burns. Cheers anyway, I'll probably get round to fixing it in a bit. First off, read this article. Understand that for many, many years, until the guy who wrote this became the Unreal Marketplace curator, he was your target audience - all he did was recruit artists. Now he instead reviews and curates saleable content. This article is both 10 years old and timeless - he is your target audience. Not your mom, not you, not your friends. http://www.jonjones.com/2005/10/07/your-portfolio-repels-jobs/ Before I can even begin to assist in curating the content, I need to know what the gently caress you want to do as a job. You have modeling, concept, and rigging, and you're representing yourself terribly on all fronts. Pick on, represent yourself well there, and don't represent yourself badly on any others, which probably means don't represent yourself there at all. The impermanence video is a great example of taking a mediocre asset and spiking it hard into absolutely offensively bad. I'm going to break it down into all the bits -
The rig has bones and has verts rigged to them, and has some controllers to speed things up. This is showing me you fundamentally understand what a rig is, but not how to use it, why to use it, and how to quality control it. The concept is just a poor drawing (it wouldn't be out of place in a webcomic, but it's simple, has inconsistent rules in coloring/color bleed, has no directional lighting / some weird "the outsides are brighter than the insides" shading, etc). but then juxtaposed with the model there's a strong disconnect between them. I think your strongest pieces are these two:   And that artist, taken by those two pieces, looks a gently caress of a lot better than this hypothetical artist:   Or this guy:   etc etc. If you're really bad at self-curating, try just pulling things out and making hypothetical artists like the ones above. Or start from a blank canvas, then add a piece, then add a second. Instead of adding a third, make a decision - either add another or remove one. Once it's removed it can't be put back in the pool. Keep doing this until you've placed all of your art either in or out. Or, practice stack ranking - order them in absolute best to worst - no pieces can be tied for a place (no cheating and grouping like concepts together, either). Then start with the best and keep adding a piece until you add a piece that makes it look shittier than it did before. here's your homework - I want you to do the following. Not for me, for you, you don't need to report back or anything: 1) Determine your desired role (or one of them, for this exercise) in your desired industry. 2) Find 5 Senior / Lead level people who perform that role, and their portfolios. 3) Find 1 project they worked on and still demonstrate in their portfolio, and then find the portfolios of every other person in their discipline that worked on that project. 4) Find the most junior person on each of those projects, with the worst portfolios. These are your baseline competition. these are the people who got the job you wanted to apply for 5) Compare their portfolio to the best looking senior/lead portfolio. This is the seniority gap - this is how much better people get once they're in the industry for X years 6) Come up with a portfolio plan wherein you demonstrate the breadth of both of those portfolios together (breadth of subject media, technological restrictions, artistic stylization, etc.), with the goal of bare minimum quality that exceeds the baseline competition. This plan will be a list of assets. 7) Work down this list of assets. After each asset is complete, compare it to the baseline - did you beat them? if so, cross it off the list for now. If not, move it to the bottom of the list and move to the next asset. You don't want to spin your wheels on the same type of thing forever, because you'll learn more new things to apply to that first thing by branching out - ie, working on a character will teach you more about organic shapes that you can apply back to curvilinear hard surface work, learning about PBR material response will help you learn to paint better materials by hand, etc. etc. 8) Once the list is complete, Stack rank the portfolio, and begin replacing the bottom half. You can start applying to jobs during this time. Finally, what the gently caress is happening here? Did she decide to become an airplane? Why is she tumbling aimlessly in space while the music gets a bit discordant? Also, this isn't immediately obvious until you show your mocap with Thalia, but she can't close her lips. This is a requirement for speech. The demonstration of the rig with actual animation / mocap data is totally a legit thing to do with rigs (and a lot better than showing off ROM tests demonstrating useless ROM / rig functions), but look at your performance and her https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVrQlXYbCmk e: SA does not do bulleted lists well at all.
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Oct 19, 2015 01:57
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Megaspel posted:EDIT: At the risk of three more pages of burns, what content should I cut? I try and be self-critical, but I don't think I have a good reference of what other people find bad/off-putting. Sigma-X covered the work really well but I wanted to mention your CV-- You have a "Software" section that looks like it's just a list of every software you've ever used. Stuff like "Windows" and "Powerpoint" and "Audacity" is basic computer literacy, you don't need to list that as a skill (and listing every version of Windows from 95 up seems like a joke). You have almost two dozen artistic skills listed and most of the work in your portfolio is sub-entry-level. That pretty much undermines the credibility of the whole thing.
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Oct 19, 2015 02:52
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I literally did not see a CV link so that's probably bad, too. Also the navigation / notes section for the concept page for Impermanence is really awkward/bad in chrome at 1920x1080. Not sure if it works in other browsers/resolutions but it's awkward and like 3 levels of scroll bars.
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Oct 19, 2015 03:06
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I can't find the concept page for Impermanence, but I clicked the link to the article about Impermanence on the landing page and the article loaded inside the top frame of the website.
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Oct 19, 2015 03:22
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Sigma-X makes solid points. Your presentation is hurting you a lot: some of your content is pretty decent or downright awesome/cool (I loved jelly batman), but most art directors won't give you the time of day as a result of poor presentation and curating. Nothing new to say: I was immediately turned off by thumbnails that 1.) aren't pretty and 2.) don't represent the content in a meaningful way (which I had to find out by clicking on an ugly thumbnail: something a busy art director would actually never do. Instead, they'd close your site as soon as they see something they dislike). When you're curating, operate under the assumption that the person making hiring decisions has very little time and an ultra weak attention span. Megaspel posted:Ok all your criticism is valid but the reason I asked for just colour criticism was to avoid a page of burns. Cheers anyway, I'll probably get round to fixing it in a bit. I would rather see five of your strongest pieces than have to navigate through tens of weak pieces to find the couple gems. Don't feel the need to replace stuff when you take things out. I'm not sure I can add much more than Sigma-X already has, but at a glance: Your batman pieces are your strongest. You could literally remove everything else off the site and your portfolio would be a million percent more appealing to someone like me. Your demo reel has a completely inconsistent quality bar; take out the animatics and weird flash animations/line animations and show your absolute strongest pieces. Thalia model could be shortened significantly - I find your presentation really odd; as in, you're making me wait through the boring part where you model her, when I'm more interested in the final result (the mo cap part). Reversing the order and cutting out/speeding up some of the drier parts would keep me more focused. I feel that your 2D art/design section is your weakest: you're better served removing everything that's currently there. I liked some of your animations (Rocks.. and the very end of your Youtube pitch - the mo cap stuff was neat) When culling your portfolio, ask yourself honestly, "Will this piece get me hired?" If the answer is no, then remove it. Not trying to burn you. I do think you have some solid work in there that I literally can't see when it's surrounded by stuff I find extremely off-putting. I have strong sensitivities especially to 2D art/concept/illustrations since it's my background. e: also, it may make sense for you to gun for technical artist roles. Focus on making sure it's obvious in a description where you solved technical hurdles using your programming chops, smarts, etc. On this portfolio, I wouldn't hire you as a 2D/concept or anyone making preliminary aesthetic decisions (sorry if that's harsh, but it's the truth), but I'd be much more interested to know what brains were involved with your rigging and mocap stuff. Frown Town fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Oct 19, 2015 |
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Oct 19, 2015 04:29
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Sigma-X posted:stuff Cheers for the help, I'll make my way through it soon hopefully and I'll keep it saved in my text file for stuff I need to address. I'm still sorta unsure what I actually want to specialize in, I guess a technical artist is what my course was designed for, but I've been having some conflicts about it, but you're right, I need to make a decision. Some of the lighting problems may be coming from the limitations of maya's 2.0 hardware renderer, which I use just because it's fast, and even that requires me to not use my computer for half a day. I'd probably take Malcolm (the old man ghost) completely out of the newfolio. I did fix that issue, but I never got round to making a new video. As a rig, it's pretty bad, since it was one of my first rigs, but I liked the low-poly style and the reverse ambient occlusion effect. Is the model and style worth showing off, or shall I just cut it entirely? You've already given me loads of help, so no worries on responding to all my little questions. There's some issue with the UVs for the Thalia model, but nothing I can't go back and fix. That trains animation I wanted to include because it has traditional and digital 2D animation, which I don't have many good long-form examples of. There's some really bad Flash parts, but do you not like the animation itself or just the thumbnail? Regarding the concept art, we were doing a bunch of different look-development at the time, and it changed over time to what it was, but since that's not something I can really convey in the portfolio, I'll take it out I guess. The lip thing I've noticed before, but it's a massive ball ache to go back and change it maybe. Since you mentioned it, I'll add it on my todo list and re-render it out. Haledjian posted:Sigma-X covered the work really well but I wanted to mention your CV-- Yeah, that's a result from going to Jobseekers and them telling me I need that poo poo for whatever depressing job I get in the mean time. I should've just used two separate CVs, but I didn't really think about it at the time. I'll sort that out too. I'll go back and delete all that poo poo and any jokes. Are the images I put on there too comical/bad? Haledjian posted:I can't find the concept page for Impermanence, but I clicked the link to the article about Impermanence on the landing page and the article loaded inside the top frame of the website. Whoops, that must've been the result of me copy-pasting poo poo code at 4AM. I'll probably nuke the site anyway. Frown Town posted:more stuff Cheers for this as well, and thanks for saying what you like about it too. Sometimes I end up dismissing some internet criticism because I don't know if I can trust the person, and sometimes internet people just like to put people down regardless of actual quality, which definitely isn't the case here, but I've had a bit of that issue in the past in regards to trusting the criticism source. It's a lot harder to find decent crit now I'm away from IRL friends who are knowledgable about the subjects I'm interested in, but this is all the best crit I've had in years. In regards to the animatics, I know they're not amazing quality, but that's kinda the point. I was always told to put that in to show how I am at pre-production, which is still a vital part of animation. Are you saying that my pre-production work isn't good enough to put in, or is it the fact that it's pre-production and therefore not polished so I shouldn't put it in? Would it be better if I just focused on my best animated scene, and showed it multiple times at the different stages of development? It seems like a point of debate whether or not people include pre-production work. Regarding the Thalia thing, I think a lot of my problems come from that I did all these videos after 3 days of no sleep and wanted to keep myself laughing and get some laughs from my mates. I need to go back and remake them really, like you say, but I haven't just out of time or forgetfulness. If I were to focus entirely on attaining a technical artist role, should I remove all drawings and such? I feel like they can't all be bad, and one or two might be nice to show a diverse skill-set. I mainly kept them in to see if I could try and get some freelance illustration or design jobs. I think the main thing I can gather from this is I need to probably just use a template or something instead of my own crazy web-design, I need to delete 90% of the stuff I have on there, fix, streamline and re-render most of the videos, trim my CV, and that I have a terrible barometer on how people actually see my stuff. I've been pretty unmotivated to do a lot of this since I came back to my hometown where no-one gives a poo poo about any of this stuff at all, but this is definitely a good kick in the pants to fix stuff. I've written pretty much everything down in a text file so I can remember it. Cheers for that everybuddy. curse of flubber fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Oct 19, 2015 |
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Oct 19, 2015 16:26
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Megaspel posted:Cheers for this as well, and thanks for saying what you like about it too. Sometimes I end up dismissing some internet criticism because I don't know if I can trust the person, and sometimes internet people just like to put people down regardless of actual quality, which definitely isn't the case here, but I've had a bit of that issue in the past in regards to trusting the criticism source. It's a lot harder to find decent crit now I'm away from IRL friends who are knowledgable about the subjects I'm interested in, but this is all the best crit I've had in years. We all want to think that our submission is going to be carefully considered and that the person looking at it is going to extend the benefit of the doubt to us on any issues - they aren't. Your primary objective during the hiring process is to never leave them with any question marks. You don't want them to weigh your pros and cons and find that your pros outweigh your cons (which is how we rate ourselves, usually) - you want them to not see any cons at all.
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Oct 19, 2015 18:31
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theflyingorc posted:Remember your target audience is often a surly person who just wants to move on to their real job. Any "UGH" reaction is a huge, huge issue, and the posters who didn't give you a thorough rundown are letting you know that exists, which is still valuable information. Yeah definitely, thanks again. I was just saying I think I've had a bit of a chip on my shoulder in the past from some criticism, which may be because it was an untrustworthy source for critique or/and maybe I was hanging on to my own work too much. I think maybe I need to fall less in love with my work so I can let it go, if you know what I mean. Criticism is a bit of a dodgy area, because people don't want to give it that often in case the person asking doesn't really want criticism and goes on a rampage when faced with anything critical, which I'm sure I've been guilty of in the past, but again on the flip side sometimes you can ask for crit and some rando guy will turn up and be all like "poo poo sucks kill yourself lol" which makes you wary of asking for crit. None of that is really relevant to what's happening here, which is all super helpful, I was just trying to get over my own aversion to accepting crit, by explaining it to myself, I guess, since when I was growing up I sorta flip-flopped between communities that just said everything was great and communities that just said everything was bad, but this thread seems like it's full of people who know what they're talking about. I think I'm rambling now so I'll stop, but thanks again to you and everyone who's helped me out.
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Oct 19, 2015 18:44
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Megaspel posted:In regards to the animatics, I know they're not amazing quality, but that's kinda the point. I was always told to put that in to show how I am at pre-production, which is still a vital part of animation. Are you saying that my pre-production work isn't good enough to put in, or is it the fact that it's pre-production and therefore not polished so I shouldn't put it in? Would it be better if I just focused on my best animated scene, and showed it multiple times at the different stages of development? It seems like a point of debate whether or not people include pre-production work. Depends what role you're gunning for, but I never want to see a demo reel front-loaded with animatics unless that's literally the role you're trying for (storyboard artist). I don't need to see three/four other rough cuts on separate projects to get the idea that you can do pre-production work; but for a sexy 'hire me!' reel, you shouldn't spend much time showing rough, unpolished Anything. But yes, it'd be better to focus on your absolute best animated scene and show a few stages of development - but make sure you get the point across really quickly (under 30 seconds for the whole thing) so you still have someone's attention. I'd want to see Jelly Batman first, so you have my attention. Then maybe the national geographic piece since it's short/snappy.. Then your Rocks animation. Then, if you really want to show an animatic, pick one to show, and show me a very short snippets of it, then show me small snippet of the finished piece it reflects. quote:Regarding the Thalia thing, I think a lot of my problems come from that I did all these videos after 3 days of no sleep and wanted to keep myself laughing and get some laughs from my mates. I need to go back and remake them really, like you say, but I haven't just out of time or forgetfulness. Yeah, it seemed super silly, and made me wonder if I was being trolled. There's a place for humor in portfolios, but make it feel intentional and not like a hilarious mistake. But I think if you went back into it, polished up/shortened stuff, you'd have something very presentable. quote:If I were to focus entirely on attaining a technical artist role, should I remove all drawings and such? I feel like they can't all be bad, and one or two might be nice to show a diverse skill-set. I mainly kept them in to see if I could try and get some freelance illustration or design jobs. Make higher quality drawings or polish what you've got, if you're going to show any. One or two is fine, but they need to be stronger and less creepy; the floating head on the red background is okay from a rendering perspective, but a distended floating head is a terrifying/jarring to have in the portfolio that's working to get you hired. I'd push the drawings to the third column, and cut 80-90% of them. They're not the worst things I've ever seen in my life but in their current form, they will not help you land a full time position doing anything. Leaving them in will only serve to cast doubt on your eye for what looks good. Maybe the superb boxing club is one of your strongest pieces (broken link so I can't verify), but I really think you should nuke the session and start fresh, or put your 2D art in an entirely different section of your site (like a separate portfolio). theflyingorc posted:Remember your target audience is often a surly person who just wants to move on to their real job. Any "UGH" reaction is a huge, huge issue, and the posters who didn't give you a thorough rundown are letting you know that exists, which is still valuable information.
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Oct 19, 2015 19:16
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theflyingorc posted:Remember your target audience is often a surly person who just wants to move on to their real job. Any "UGH" reaction is a huge, huge issue, and the posters who didn't give you a thorough rundown are letting you know that exists, which is still valuable information. This this this. Demonstrate a few things and demonstrate them well, and make it easy to navigate. I MEAN SUPER EASY. Sigma-X's portfolio is still my ideal layout when reviewing work, the less clicks to see all your work the better. Professionals really don't want to be interrupted during the work day with applicants that make them go "UGH", the critiques are generally quite harsh unless your work is stellar and then you'll most likely immediately get a call or phone interview at least. Make something that people who aren't your friends go "holy poo poo that's loving sweet!" ...or at least that's what worked for me, and is generally the consensus when we are interested in hiring somebody after reviewing their work. Compare your work with professionals already doing what you want to do, and strive to get better than even them, as difficult as it may seem.
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Oct 20, 2015 01:29
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ceebee posted:This this this. Demonstrate a few things and demonstrate them well, and make it easy to navigate. I MEAN SUPER EASY. Sigma-X's portfolio is still my ideal layout when reviewing work, the less clicks to see all your work the better. The hardest thing for me to learn in interviewing was to NOT HELP THEM FIND PROBLEMS WITH YOU. I like to be frank and honest with people, so as soon as we start I'm talking about my weaknesses and then mentioning a strength (or why the negative didn't matter) in the next breath. Naturally, most people's brains process this as something like "I fed in 5 negative points and 10 positive points into their brain, so I'm up 5 points!" Nope. Nonononononono. I'm down 5 points. You need like 5 positives to outweigh one negative, and your competition has no negatives. Get good.
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Oct 20, 2015 16:21
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Do companies really think they are hiring flawless people?
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Oct 20, 2015 16:31
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baby puzzle posted:Do companies really think they are hiring flawless people? No, but if they hire the person that listed their flaws then the HR person looks like they're not doing their job right. Hire someone that's qualified, try not to clap after getting poo poo on your hands, make sure the automated payroll procedure ticks over every month. That's basically the HR life. Also this 
Sion fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Oct 20, 2015 |
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Oct 20, 2015 16:53
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baby puzzle posted:Do companies really think they are hiring flawless people? It has nothing to do with the company, it's about the psychology of the hiring process. The vast majority is about how good of a FEELING the interviewer gets off of you - and they're going to pursue the guy who left them with no lingering doubts over the guy who left them with some.
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Oct 20, 2015 17:39
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I'm so extremely displeased by how this comic reflects my life. I hope my love of solving for computational complexity shows when I find the optimal css margin value. Hint: It's always ±4, ±6, or 0.
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Oct 20, 2015 17:47
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Sion posted:No, but if they hire the person that listed their flaws then the HR person looks like they're not doing their job right. Hire someone that's qualified, try not to clap after getting poo poo on your hands, make sure the automated payroll procedure ticks over every month. That's basically the HR life. Missing that this bug is probably labeled a P1 and someone is bugging you 6 times a day because it needs to be fixed RIGHT NOW.
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Oct 20, 2015 18:07
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And the quick fix somehow makes the entire house of cards collapse in an interesting way. And when you ask why there's this weird dependency you're met with shrugs and "legacy code!"
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Oct 20, 2015 18:14
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Leif. posted:Missing that this bug is probably labeled a P1 and someone is bugging you 6 times a day because it needs to be fixed RIGHT NOW. Producer that's recently moved over from another department? I'm thinking... boxed product specialist?
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Oct 20, 2015 18:35
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Four months after i started the level design job and holly hell, it's more varied than i thought! I definitely see a deadline way different from when i was in QA 
squirt the daisies fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Oct 20, 2015 |
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Oct 20, 2015 20:04
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baby puzzle posted:Do companies really think they are hiring flawless people? It's more like "if this guy is telling me how poo poo he is here and is comfortable with it, what're the uncomfortable bits he's not telling me? If we are making an assumption that all people keep their worst insecurities / failures / negatives to themselves, then the guy who says he has issues with deadlines and likes to shout at people is going to be assumed to have some pretty nuclear skeletons in his closet compared to the guy who doesn't have a laundry list of negatives that he's comfortable with. The entire point of an interview is to get them to think you're good at what you do and will be a good fit. Don't tell them that you poop on your hands sometimes in the misguided belief that it will sell you as more honest than the guy who doesn't have poo poo on his hands. There's also something of a test here wherein if you're in any kind of leadership or even teamwork position, being able to present yourself, your work, your qualities in a positive way is a job skill we're testing for. This is especially true in Production. That doesn't mean lying or omitting things completely, but having soft skills. I know a producer who can literally, for months at a time, tell you how deep in a loving hole his project is while making it sound like everything is OK and keeping his audience agreeable. He can show you charts that are just straight in a loving pit, big red zeroes, but he can do it with such an aww shucks personality that he's likable despite that.
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Oct 20, 2015 20:26
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This was literally my first bug at my job, except it was to move it down 3 pixels
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Oct 20, 2015 21:35
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I hate how that is a desired trait of 'soft skills'. I know people desire a sense of security in a studio through the use of colorful words but it's not helpful since sometimes it masks some serious issues. I agree with you completely but I've seen that stuff get out of hand. It's how places 'shut down' suddenly like Bioshock with people fearful of actually saying things of merit or Crytek not making payroll because everything that's meaningful like projected costs are watered to the point of being meaningless. It shouldn't be refreshing to actually know when things are underbudget or behind or when small problems come up that explode into major ones. Without that information it's impossible to have solid plans to deal with it so instead we'll just argue in circles who's fault it is while the pink slips get printed. I know the opposite of being frank is bad too since it just gives more reason for people to look for another job but it's just sad that the mentality behind questions like "What are your faults" is loaded as gently caress as no one is truly interested in a real answer that's actually helpful or realistic. Better to just say, you're too passionate sometimes or you're used to a fast schedule so will have to readjust, etc or other such things that aren't really faults if that's the case. Granted they're overused but worded correctly, they work. Or the usual confession recovery strat. Buckwheat Sings fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Oct 20, 2015 |
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Oct 20, 2015 21:41
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Sigma-X posted:It's more like "if this guy is telling me how poo poo he is here and is comfortable with it, what're the uncomfortable bits he's not telling me? I'm not arguing that you're saying the truth or not, but this is a pretty dumb assumption to make in general. Just call it what it is: shortcuts. There are objective things you can look at to determine whether a candidate can practically do the job of the position or not, but once those are met it's like theflyingorc says, everything is based on feelings. If you and the 2nd guy both have portfolios that look good, I'm gonna go with whichever one makes me feel better, and it's impossible for you, as the interviewee, to know what's going to make me feel best be it frank honesty or flowery up-talk.
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Oct 20, 2015 21:53
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Buckwheat Sings posted:I hate how that is a desired trait of 'soft skills'. I know people desire a sense of security in a studio through the use of colorful words but it's not helpful since sometimes it masks some serious issues. I agree with you completely but I've seen that stuff get out of hand. The soft skills guy is the guy that tells you when things are behind or overbudget (I think you meant this and not underbudget) or when small problems come up that explode into major ones. The soft skills part is that he tells you in a way that you don't give up because they're behind or over budget and keeps you from blowing up the medium problem into a nuclear one. The producer I mentioned is largely responsible for keeping the studio project alive because dear god if I was in the publisher's shoes instead of the project's shoes I would have cancelled the project many times over. There were a lot of jobs that were kept until the completion of the project, and the final completion of the project did a lot more good for people's careers than having the project cancelled halfway would have. The stuff you're talking about is more political slime / bad business. Crytek not making payroll has nothing to do with soft skills, it has everything to do with bad business management and making bad money decisions. Irrational shutting down has nothing to do with soft skills and everything to do with Ken Levine not knowing how to run a loving AAA game and having finally hit the wall where his eventual good direction is outweighed by the cost of his inability to plan and produce effectively.
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Oct 20, 2015 21:58
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Sion posted:Producer that's recently moved over from another department? I'm thinking... boxed product specialist? Scary close. But yes. 
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Oct 20, 2015 22:21
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Buckwheat Sings posted:It's how places 'shut down' suddenly like Bioshock with people fearful of actually saying things of merit or Crytek not making payroll because everything that's meaningful like projected costs are watered to the point of being meaningless. It shouldn't be refreshing to actually know when things are underbudget or behind or when small problems come up that explode into major ones. Without that information it's impossible to have solid plans to deal with it so instead we'll just argue in circles who's fault it is while the pink slips get printed. Meanwhile, small studios with contractors go totally opposite. We're usually frank to the point of absurdity, and our people know exactly where we are, and we keep rolling anyways because everyone has planned ahead and knows the risks and the payoff we're aiming for. But. Independent contractors are probably self-selected for project independence and long-term financial planning and a bunch of other stuff that probably wouldn't apply to a random Studio Employee, so it may well be that what works there just wouldn't work for the larger studio. Though a lot of us argue that the opaque bubble approach creates a dangerous culture that doesn't reflect how risky games employment is, and that embracing the risk instead of masking it would result in healthier working environments. Which starts to look a lot like Hollywood with free agents and all of that, etc. It rabbit holes quickly. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Oct 21, 2015 |
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Oct 21, 2015 03:37
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Makes me glad I work in a particularly transparent studio compared to others I've worked at, in which you have no idea at all what is financially going on with a company. The majority of the time it was due to a higher up who was never there and had no idea what was going on with the progress of the development, so when things got bad he doesn't even want to bother letting the rest of the studio know, if you were lucky you'd know somebody close to the top who will fill you in or warn you. I was very fortunate in my first job that I was on friendly terms with the Studio Head and he kind of gave me a heads up on what they were planning, he was willing to tell people 1 on 1 and let the word of mouth spread, but if the CEO found out he told the whole studio he'd be shitcanned in a second. Turns out that Studio Head is now CEO, former CEO got fired from the board as well as Producers who were loving awful at managing times and budget, and ultimately burned out so many people that they just became complacent. There was also a HR lady who completely neglected people's complaints and defended the lovely producers who were mistreating employees. lovely people that high up usually get whats coming to them, one way or another. If all else fails it's probably not a great place to be anyways if there's literally nobody you can talk to. My current company has an open door policy with all the studio founders and it's pretty nice knowing that if I really ever did have a concern I could either go to our awesome HR department or the founders. Fortunately we have amazing Producers (at least for the art team) so I doubt that will happen
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Oct 21, 2015 04:12
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Sage Grimm posted:And the quick fix somehow makes the entire house of cards collapse in an interesting way. And when you ask why there's this weird dependency you're met with shrugs and "legacy code!" As an example, back when LoL was in beta we recompiled a material shader and it resulted in all turrets in the game no longer attacking. That was... fun to track down.
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Oct 21, 2015 07:46
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Leif. posted:Scary close. But yes. I once did some work on a content delivery platform for a free to play company. The executive that came up with the idea was an interesting fellow. He decided it was going to be 'the steam of free to play!' and that it was worth throwing a huge amount of money at because that's just what he did (it's worth pointing out this is less than three years ago, long after Steam started doing free to play and had become, you know, the steam of free to play games.) Still, he decided he wanted to set up a content delivery platform, invent the company's own funbucks system, court games from around the world and attempt to build a catalogue of games that didn't want to be on steam. This meant a bunch of Korean MMOs which couldn't previously settle on publishing deals in the west as well as headliners from South America (one of which was paid an eyewatering amount for and saw a peak CCU of 6. Not 6 thousand, but 6.) It started to look like this project might soon start to be about as welcome as a fart in a space suit so the bugs from the CEO started to roll in. A class, priority 1, no component, no version, no screenshot, no description but a summary. 'Needs 2px redline between company name and menu at top of screen,' is a good (theoretical) example of what happened. I was a little bit stunned. Confused, perhaps, by this development. Why was the CEO putting in bugs? Why was the CEO giving a poo poo about two px thick lines at the top of a menu? Why could we not go through the CEO's bugs and assign them proper production values? Why were we having to push back other, structural fixes to satisfy these insane, inane demands? I asked my producer who smiled, nodded and said "Teflon." Turns out that the CEO knew that it wasn't gonna be a go-er. He was throwing in these little, lovely bugs at a set rate - three a week - so when it failed he could say it was because he wasn't given enough creative control of the project. If it worked he could say it was because of his steady, guiding hand, shepherding rowdy and useless developers through milestones, here just look at the number (but not the content please not the content) of the bugs that I created! The platform got released and is getting close to making back 10% of its development costs. Which is nice.
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Oct 21, 2015 08:04
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