[MENTORSHIP] Senior Tech Artist looking to mentor in UK (London)

Professional
#1

So let me just put this all super formal in writing first:

About me:

Currently working as a Senior Technical Artist in London, with a focus on shaders and Houdini.
Have been working in the industry for 7 years.
I know that tech art is a bit confusing because of all the facets and want to offer mentorship to help out anyone who is new to the profession.

What I’m looking for:

You are between being in your final year of school/university and having less than 2 years of full-time work experience.
You are heading for, or already in, game development.
You are pursuing game development full time.
You either are already in the role of a technical artist or you are trying to switch to this role.

Also note:
I have decided to limit it to mentoring anyone in a minority.
This is because while I support the industry being more inclusive, I oppose diversity hires and want to help people feel sure that they are hired on their merit and not on their diversity.
The tech art community is very open and welcoming, but consists of a lot of white cis males, which can make it hard to feel like throwing out random thoughts and worries in a public forum.
I therefore feel like guys like myself, already have good conditions for finding guidance.

What I can offer:

Weekly online chats and generally be available for any questions on career, skill development, specific technical problems or just chatting about things.

I can not offer any proof or merit or help you secure a job through social connections, but I can advice on the process.

Honestly though, I imagine it being rather casual all the way through and maybe it will just be an occasional chit-chat or maybe it will be a weekly thing.
You can contact me here on the forum, by PM, or on the Slack channel.

Please note:
This is all wildly experimental and I will need to also figure out how to do this right. So please bear with me :slightly_smiling_face:

6 Likes
#2

Hi MBaadsgaard im Valentin Zacarias from Argentina student 1 year far from getting a Computer Egineering degree, and working Part Time as Technical Artist / Developer in Unity3D.
I love the focus you have on Tech art, I think my 2 strong fronts of the career are procedural generation and rendering (shaders/vfx), I also like pipeline management.

I dont know if you are planning on getting paid for this and I think that is totally fine and logic. The thing is I dont have much money at the time, but would really love a chat with you, so you can tell me your experience on the Tech art path.

Thanks for the intention of helping us the new aspiring tech artists, its so damn cool we have this comunnity of people who are intrested in us to grow and be part of this.

I give you my discord user so you can message me any time: z.valen#7412

Greetings from Argentina!

#3

Hello Valentin :slight_smile:

I will reach out to you a bit later today and we can have a chat.
And no, I am not expecting any payment for this.

For anyone else interested, you’re still welcome to write.
Otherwise, I could imagine something more official around mentorships coming out of the recent talks on the forum.

1 Like
#4

HOUDINI!? I could really use a Mentorship for this program and field.
Hello, I’m Renzell R Singleton, Houdinist.

My Strong points are Animation and VFX, but I do dabble into Technical side starting from installing Houdini on to my Linux PC to, setting up my simple scripts with hython.

I have been working in Houdini for about 2 years, but still feel “behind” when it comes to a lot of the Technical work.

I’m currently 25 and Graduated from University…still have passion though to be apart of something.

I’m also African American, so I guess that makes me a minority :frowning:.
I’m online most of the Time nowadays, so I should be able to make it to every chit-chat.

#5

Hey there, I’ll PM you and we can have a chat :slight_smile:

#6

Thanks for doing this.
As busy as we all are, this can be a very challenging thing, but will help you all grow in ways you can’t even imagine. You totally rock dude!

#7

This sounds really interesting. I’ve been wanting a mentor to help me with my path into being a tech artist. I’m lacking a lot in Houdini and I’m hoping to learn about it. Its a really fun career path for me as you’re always constantly learning new things and finding ways to utilise stuff that pushes boundaries.

#8

We can have a chat if you want, just drop me a pm here :slight_smile:

#9

Hi MBaadsgaard!! Not sure if this is too late to respond to but I’ll give it a shot anyway!

I graduated DMU’s game art course this year and realised that I wanted to get into tech art during my final year. I’m currently trying get some kind of internship or junior level job in this role, but I come from the artist side of tech art so right now I’m trying to learn some basic coding before I go into HLSL shaders etc.
I’m most comfortable in UE4 with tech art and tech animation without the use of coding, but have been watching Unity C# tutorials and learning in my free time so that I’ll eventually be comfortable with the programming that will be required within this specialisation.

Eventually I’d love to specialise in shaders and vfx, so any help you could give me in reaching this would be greatly appreciated! I’m definitely a minority but I’d rather not talk about it on a public forum, if possible I’d be most comfortable talking on discord

Tysm for the opportunity, it’s cool if you already have too many people reaching out to you and don’t want to take in another mentee though!

#10

Hey there Tsu, I have added you on Discord :slight_smile:

#11

I have to close the offer at this point,
However! The great people behind TAO have let me know that discussions are still up for a mentorship programme, so if you are looking for a mentor, stick around! :slight_smile:

#12

I’m busy trying to get adjusted to my new job but I I’m going to publicly say that I’ll have the first draft of the TAO mentorship program ready for public comment by Monday the 19th. By saying it publicly I’m going to embarrass myself into getting it out there. From there we’ll accommodate feedback and start taking names of potential pairs. We want to start small so we get experience (many of our would-be mentors need a bit of help managing this too!) but we should have a clearer idea of the shape of the program pretty soon

2 Likes
#13

Can’t wait to read it!!

#14

Hi MBaadsgaard, I’m Minh, an VFX artist from Viet Nam. Not sure if this too late but imma give it a shot anyway.

Technical artist was always the path that I wanted to follow since gradution (not so long ago actually). But for the lack of mentoring here in Viet Nam that I have to move my specialty to VFX. I’m mainly working in houdini for now, but all is for pre render stuff. So I hope that with your mentorship, hopefully I can get a touch with you, that I can finally shift my career to a fulltime technical artist.

Here’s is my discord tag : MinhVu#2648

Sincerely, Minh.