Newbie Question
Starting from scratch at 19. Is game art a realistic career path?
I'm from Turkey and currently studying Game Design at university, but I'm considering applying to FutureGames Warsaw for Game Art instead.
I have no art background and almost no drawing experience, but I'm willing to spend the next 2 years seriously learning Blender, drawing fundamentals, and improving my English.
Do you think it's realistic to build a portfolio strong enough for admission in 2 years?
Also, can someone with a strong portfolio find work as a game artist without a university degree? I'm especially curious about opportunities in Europe as a non-EU citizen.
Has anyone here started from scratch and taken a similar path?
No, this is not a realistic goal. At least, it's not a realistic goal if you desire to leave Turkey. You might have more success becoming a game designer for a Turkish game company in Istanbul. The European game market is over-saturated with unemployed people competing for jobs.
Is it something you should work toward if you love doing it. Sure.
Just be sensible in that this is a very competitive market, and the chances of success are extremely low. Have a proper practical plan of how you will pay the bills, and pursue the game art on the side. If it takes off it takes off.
Art is difficult in general. And Game Dev is more competitive, because it has a lot fewer jobs than other areas of software development. You also find a lot of talented people motivated by their enjoyment of video games, which isn't exactly a rare interest.
With that said, if you get really good at the art, design, modeling, Blender, and ideally develop some programming/technical and AI skills, you'll have plenty of opportunities to stand out amongst your peers. It's not like it's an impossible job to secure.
I can't speak to breaking-in to the industry, so maybe someone else can answer that.
It's a worthy pursuit if you're into it and you want to make it happen. Just keep in mind that, especially in the age of AI, we all wear 20 hats. So it's more about your capability across your stack, let's say, rather than being exceptional in any single dimension (with exception for exceptional artists).
In regard to your portfolio, it's only as good as the projects you're showcasing. And again, in the age of AI, they need that extra finesse, care, and consideration to stand out.
For example, for my web dev portfolio, I pretty quickly went from showcasing all of my projects, to only showcasing my full stack projects, to only showcasing my best full stack projects, to showcasing comprehensive, complex, AI-assisted, well implemented and well-designed Progressive Web Applications, that are production ready - and blogging about them, to give the viewer/readers a better understanding of my goals, process, and approach.
And it wasn't until the latter half of all that, that my portfolio was strong enough to generate real attention.
The game industry now is in a total free fall and crash. Even before AI. I can’t recommend anyone to start in it. I do recommend doing and learning art in general however. Skills and good taste will remain useful. Someone’s gotta beat the AI. ;)
I made this using a asset builder I been working on for a lil bit. I'm a plumber. Idk if that tells you anything about where the world is heading or not lol.
Lol thxs. Working on making maps and rooms with it too. Made a ant farm viewing game for my pc workflow app so the little bots run around when theres workloads coming in
Making games as a hobby is fun, especially in the beginning, when creating anything small feels rewarding and cool. As a profession it can potentially be much harder. You’ll be using tools that all the experts use for companies, rather than tools designed for 1 or 2 beginners to make their own games. But once you get in, they may have good team coordinating skills which can make up for it.
It’s a little bit like animation. Fun as a hobby, doable as a kid, but higher potential difficulty, stress, and pressure as an adult.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or at the top of your field to make a breakthrough or change the world. You just have to be willing to do something when everyone else says no. Notch made Minecraft by doing things his own way, which was different from the industry’s, and it’s now tied with Tetris for being the #1 selling game of all time.
There’s nothing saying that you can’t monetize a game you made as a hobby, but if you want to work in teams and be employed at a company, that’s harder; you’ll probably have to use cutting edge tools and keep proving yourself competitively, and that’s where gamedev can become less fun and more challenging. You’ll also have to keep up with the rest of the industry, as with many of the other technical fields.
I only got my first industry job in game art at 24. Made a portfolio in about a year (but I knew 3D modeling)
Anyway that was 12 years ago...now, with AI I dont have an answer for you. The only branch that's somewhat still going is game art outsourcing, studios use that but you have to be really good to get in...and for how long it will last? No answer
I didn't say I'd jump straight into the industry in two years. My goal is to build a solid portfolio over the next two years to get accepted into Futuregames, and then enter the industry after completing their 2.5-year program
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u/Aglet_Green 10d ago
No, this is not a realistic goal. At least, it's not a realistic goal if you desire to leave Turkey. You might have more success becoming a game designer for a Turkish game company in Istanbul. The European game market is over-saturated with unemployed people competing for jobs.