Creative Futures '26

 

Neil Roberts :  A Career in Games Art, Concept Art, Comics, and Illustration

I attended the Creative Futures event with Neil Roberts discussion careers in the creative industry. Throughout this talk I gathered some notes specifically regarding what sort of things are beneficial to beginning your career in the games industry. The first thing that is crucial to put together [before even applying for any jobs] is your Portfolio, in this, you should keep several things in mind: 

Consider what you want to do for a job, If your interest is concept art, show concept art , if you want to focus on environments, show environments. With this in mind though, companies are looking for good artists with a breadth of work, show off your core skills especially when it comes to communicating your ideas. Even if your work isn't totally polished, getting a feeling and idea across is absolutely vital when it comes to games. Keep your style open, try some new things, and make sure not to pigeon hole yourself into one thing because you fill find it very difficult to find jobs asking for that one particular skill. At the end of the day, you have to draw what the client wants, so showing flexibility in your artwork is very important [but at the same time, make sure you do sprinkle in your own personality, after all that's what makes your work different to everyone else's].

When it comes to mediums, work with whatever you are most confident in, however Neil Roberts recommends everyone to at least try painting/ traditional methods, don't just stick to digital art. This is because it demonstrates to your employer your eye for detail, in the industry observational drawings and building your visual library are very important.

Prove you can work in a pipeline, showing production art [if that's the field you want to go into] that could be easily understood by the modelling department or VFX demonstrates your understanding of the pipeline and how you fall into it. Employers want to see that you can be a valued member of the team, and can work as efficiently as possible. Too, look at what the company you want to work for usually does, does it line up with the things you like to create? try  to apply to places that fit within your interests, that way you can better enjoy your work and feel more confident in your abilities. [Most people working on games were/or are fans of the projects they work on].

Self promotion! create an art station that represents you, If it's not a "hell yeah" when someone looks at your portfolio, you probably won't get the job. So only put your best work forward. Also, make contacts, network, sometimes the best opportunities only arise because you were in the right place at the right time with the right set of skills. Jobs will come along, take the opportunity while you can, and if you can't? you can always work for yourself.

With this last part, it lead into a discussion about freelance work, its pros and cons, and some hurdles you might have to overcome if you choose to work for yourself. Freelance work is a great option for a lot of artists, you work to your own timescale, and have freedom to spend your day however you want as long as the work gets done. However, with this freedom you have the fear of your next pay check not being guaranteed, a lower pay check than industry work, and of course the laborious task of filing your own tax returns. You also have the issue of working with clients directly, this involves a lot of back and forth, edits and feedback which can be quite frustrating at times. This is why it is important to develop a freelance contract before you take any sort of commissions, this states how you work, your rates, and what happens if your client requests a change that will take a significant amount of time to do. Usually, clients are pretty understanding, if it really comes to it and they want you to redo the whole piece, they might pay you for the extra time, But this demonstrates why frequent feedback and communication is key.

Good deliverables to put in your portfolio:

- send work that slots into the pipeline 

- annotations of your work

- iterations 

- show your process

He also talked a bit about how he personally works with client briefs:

1. Receive brief and artwork limitations from client [usually bigger IPs will have smaller limitations to smaller IPs]

2. Thumbnails, block out your work and follow the format that your client has requested, generally providing 3 iterations is more than enough.

3. Gather feedback and make changes

4. Value paints in black, white and grey, value is very important, maybe more so than colours. If your values are wrong, your piece may be difficult to read.

Block outs and formats

5. Add colour [if you can paint overtop your value paint, great! that will save time. If not, you can always use tools like 3D paint overs to help you save time]

6. Send to client for more feedback and make any changes necessary

7. When the client is happy, send them the copy of the work and an invoice for how much they owe you, hopefully you should receive the money not long after.

Always remember: If a client wants to communicate with you they will, no news is good news just remember to keep your client informed .

He did say a phrase during his talk that really stuck out to me "The world needs art, more so now than ever" Just keep trying, a lot of the best opportunities arise by chance and all you have to do is just continue to create. As you build experience, your portfolio and work will develop too, and you will slowly get where you want to be, you just have to continue to work hard and enjoy the process. I found this talk to be really informative and helped me understand what I should be including and working towards in my portfolio to boost my employability.

Starting a creative design business -

The second talk I attended was the starting a creative design business as this is something I have potentially been considering. The talk involved three guest speakers, those being Tom Oliver: Owner of Alchemy films [Previously partnering with large companies such as Netflix, Sky, Hello Fresh and Activision], James Falconer owner of Nomad [Working for the Premier league] , and Lucy Hardcastle [Previously working for Chanel, Samsung, Apple and Bentley] and their experience and opinions on the world of self employment.

When setting up your own business [which apparently it only cost £15 to set up your own limited company within the UK - not including an accountant which is very important] one of the most important things for you to do starting out is building a niche and knowing how to then sell that niche. You need to "Make your work unquestionable " to compete against the very hostile and chaotic creative industry. At the moment, things are very unpredictable, with peaks and troughs of business income at an all time high, this means that the industry is more competitive and you need to make sure you build your brand to the best it can be. 

Building a strong network of likeminded people is key, you never know who might help you out in the future and who's skills might help unlock doors for you, so make sure you reach out and talk to people. Too, internships and work experience give you that extra bit of insight to gauge how to run your own business in the future, especially understanding how to manage tasks which is a vital skill you will need to learn. Returning back to networking, your circle of contacts will be the people you turn to for help, its scary starting and running a business, but with the support of others it does make it more manageable.

When it comes to the industry itself, things have changed a lot in recent years, with the invention and implementation of AI, the creative job field has certainly changed. With lower tier work being taken up by AI, only the middle and high priced jobs are empty now. You need to just aim higher than AI, make sure you're pitching to those higher standards because competition is fierce. Stay enthusiastic, continue to create and know what you do well and stick with it, sometimes chaos can be good. With Scope creep being such an issue in the job market today (clients expecting more and more from artists and creatives) its important to adapt and try new skills, and also keep in mind those contacts you met to see how they can help you out.

Actually getting a job in the first place, if freelance isn't your thing, is quite difficult. With companies receiving hundreds of applications you need to know how to make yourself and your work stand out. Be bold, try something new, companies not answering emails? give them a call! Unsure of how to word an email, ask for a chat, employers are sick of seeing the same "hi I'm such and such graduating from such and such" time and time again, just start conversations and be friendly. Most employers aren't looking at skills alone, the way you interact and communicate is also a big deal. They want someone who is friendly and can work well as a team (also make sure you have some Strong employable skills such as adobe, and other industry software).

Portfolios are also crucial, you want yours to stand out from your competition, represent what you stand for and show what you're working on. With this though, you also want you and your portfolio to be easy to find, so make sure you're present on social media, and linking all your apps together to broaden your contactability.

 

Finally, they covered some reassuring statements. Remember that you don't need to be amazing at everything right away, you'll get there the most important thing to do is just continue to allow yourself to grow, and of course Take risks! The worst thing that could happen is people say no. This seems to be reiterated a lot from many people I've heard, and its something that personally I've been trying to do more of. Even just talking to people and making those connections could lead you to something really good further down the line. This talk as a whole was really reassuring, I'm still not sure if self employment is something I want to do as my main source of income, mostly because I'm not the most "business minded" individual, but having it as an option for a supplementary income on the side I feel could really help me build my work as a professional. Also, personally I think it would just be really cool to share my personal projects with others and maybe get a little bit of money from it :). On a whole I found these talks to be both informative and reassuring, I feel like I at least have a little more of an idea of what to expect after graduation and entering the professional working world.