What opportunities exist outside of the entertainment industry?

Professional
#1

Hi all,

I’m an 3D artist working in the animated film industry. Over the last year or so I’ve been getting more interested in programming / scripting and have been working with MEL and Python. So with some more time and dedication I will eventually be a “tech artist”, so to say.

I’m wondering- what opportunities exist for someone like myself outside of the film, games and entertainment industry in general? Are there any? Are there any creative but non-entertainment related tech careers out there?

Thanks for reading!

#2

It depends how you present yourself. Personally I think with the right open mindset and attitude, you can easily create your own opportunities.
From what I have observed, many industries could benefit from technical artists. When being able to learn quickly new knowledge, being adaptable, a good communicator, problem solver you can quite fill up existing positions.

A lot of opportunities are not called technical artist yet! So you might want to read the descriptions or ask more about the opportunity.
Sometimes they do not know they might need someone like you.

From what I have seen so far BMW was looking for a technical artist. Something related to creating a UI for their new generation cars. Google, amazon, intel, marketing companies, creative problem solving agencies, …

I have been communicating a lot with different industries and you can easily observe a pattern where technical artist can become beneficial.
Beware, the term technical art is still very young and many companies have their own definition to it.

#3

Yeah, a few months back I recall seeing a tech artist opening at… I think it was BMW or something. Intel has a bunch of tech artists doing really cool creative coding stuff (TAO’s very own Annie Harper and Seth Gibson). Like Robbert says, tech art is a young discipline and term. You’ll likely find a fair bit of role overlap in other industries.

#4

web design related work? deals with databases, python, graphics, interactivity, html5, networking and maybe WebGL in the future. There is a lot of overlap. I wouldn’t go freelance though, but there are agencies and smaller shops which do quite sophisticated and creative things with this tech for their clients.

UI design might require a folio of UI work and is probably more artistic when you have to make mockups, do usability studies, etc.

#5

Thanks for these replies everyone. :slight_smile:

In truth I’m still figuring out what a tech artist is myself. I’m intimately familiar with the term of course as it relates to my current field (3d animated movies), but not at all where it applies to other fields. For example, I can’t even begin to imagine what a company like Intel would do with that person. At a glance I would imagine that company would only be interested in experienced programmers who deal in the lowest-level programming languages. How would they use a creative person who deals in higher level programming code- or scripting? Every company needs graphics work when it come to advertising, website design, interface & UX design, and so forth, but that’s more ancillary to it’s main business.

It looks like any creative technical person is necessarily also involved in computer based graphics in some way- be it CG animation, UI/UX/graphic design, previz / simulations, etc. I have a hard time imagining a non-graphics, but still creative / technical role. Or am I wrong?

cheers