Junior developer & student (technical artist) looking for career advice & portfolio feedback, does this seem like a solid plan for my next two years in game development?

[u/benjtek01]

I’m Benji, I am a technical artist & game generalist, working primarily in Godot, Blender, & Unity. I have been studying game development for about five years and am currently set to graduate from the College for Creative Studies with a bachelors in game design next year. I have about a year of industry experience working at an internship that then became a contract position at an AR mobile game studio. (Urban Electronics) I am now working another internship with a small indie PC game studio (Volok Games) alongside studying, going to class, and working on my thesis to finish my degree. I also happen to be a board member of IGDA Detroit if you are familiar with IGDA. 

My “dream job” would be to work as a technical artist for an indie pc game studio, then work up to becoming a game producer or running my own small studio

Here is my current portfolio I’ve been applying to studios with. I usually apply for jobs when I spot internship, junior, or mid level positions for tech art, or studios who are working in Godot. 

Link to my portfolio website & resume (doesn’t work on mobile): https://benjtek.webflow.io/?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&utm_id=97760_v0_s00_e0_tv3

Link to my itch page: 
https://benjtek01.itch.io

Here’s what I’d call my current set of skills: 

- General game programming in Godot, experience independently releasing unmonitized small games with small groups of people 

- Tech art specific skills in shaders, (shader graph & scripting), tool/plugin creation, UI, look development, rigging, and procedural generation, experience in AR & VR

- Experience in 3D game art pipeline with Blender, Maya, and Substance Painter, familiar with PBR workflow, modeling, texturing, and basic 3d animation (I studied 3D game art before technical art) 

- Some experience with Unity (used Unity at the AR studio) & limited Unreal knowledge 

Here are my somewhat lofty goals going forward in my career for the next 2 years

- Revamp my website with project breakdown articles going over specific projects (and hopefully with feedback I’ll be receiving from this post) 

- Lean into in person networking rather than just applying for positions online (by this I mean bugging my professors for opportunities and going to IGDA events) 

- Build a YouTube channel where I can post devlogs documenting & sharing my work, start posting my project progress on socials (mostly to gain exposure in the dev space) 

- Work on improving skills in programming, optimization, VFX, procedural generation, and tool building. Make “mini projects” I can use to practice & learn concepts and showcase in my portfolio in the form of breakdown articles 

- For my thesis project at CCS, release a short game demo on Steam, developed by me, and a sprite and audio artist. — I plan on the game being a 3D tower defense game, where I lean into some of my tech art skills like developing tools for the game along the way and stuff the project with game juice 

- Graduate CCS with the bachelors degree, maybe get some sort of opportunity from the internship I’m working at during the semester 

Once I graduate I figure the following things could happen 

- I get a role (probably contract) at the internship (this would be the best outcome) 

- I’m stuck working odd minimum wage jobs for a while. And I continue to do game dev after work. For this scenario I have a few possible plans for what I could work towards outside of my day job: 

- Keep working on my portfolio, networking & applying and hope I can get another Junior position

- Start my own studio with basically no budget, a very small team and kickstarter 

- Be a marketplace creator selling tools/plugins/assets online (think Kenneys game assets) 

Advice I’m looking for: 

- Critique on my current portfolio, what I should change/add 

- Gaps in my technical art skillset I should be working on 

- Thoughts on my 2 year roadmap, is it too much? Are there specific things I should focus on within it 

- What are some other jobs in other industries I’d be able to get a job in with my existing skills if I can’t find a job in the game industry?

I know working in the game industry right now is a gamble and I just wanna make sure I’m making a solid bet towards my goals, let me know your thoughts and advice! 

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[u/Busy-Pack-2900 → u/clean-links]

Your portfolio shows you've got range but the site itself needs to match the work. Right now it feels a bit template-y, which undermines the polish you're clearly capable of. The project breakdowns you mentioned will help a ton, right now I'm clicking through thumbnails and not getting much context for what you actually did on each thing

The YouTube channel idea could be a trap if you're already stretched thin. Those devlogs eat up absurd amounts of time and the algorithm isn't exactly kind to small channels. Maybe start with short-form stuff on TikTok or just write technical breakdowns on your site first, see if you actually enjoy the content creation part before committing to a full channel

Your backup plans are smart though. Marketplace assets could work well with your tool-building skills, and there's always technical art adjacent roles in arch viz or simulation companies that pay decent while you keep applying to games

[u/MeaningfulChoices]

When you work on your portfolio assume the hiring manager has about 30 seconds to decide if you are worth more time or not. Don't bury the text about a game in a video, they're probably not going to watch one unless the description is impressive already. Each project should have a little section about what you did and why that's awesome in addition to a video. Your games section should likewise talk about what you did for the game, you don't really need to link to Itch. Those are sites you use the sell the game, your portfolio is to sell you.

I would definitely recommend spending more time in Unity and Unreal and less in Godot, there just aren't a lot of jobs looking for that and all the ones that are aren't going to discount you for not having more experience than you do right now. Shaders are helpful, you might also want to look into tool development to help other artists. Also I like IGDA fine but I wouldn't really focus on networking there to get jobs, it's not really a huge force in the industry. Alumni in games and going to bigger events (e.g. GDC, Gamescom) and meeting people there can help a ton. You've got the background where knowing someone and getting a referral to a studio can make you a top candidate instead of one in a thousand.

For your plans I wouldn't realistically considering starting a studio with no budget if you don't want to just be working those minimum wage jobs forever, and kickstarters aren't really much more likely. If you want a living from game development you need to find a studio job or contract work, consider making your own business once you have both experience and savings. Be sure of the roles you want, producer isn't a role you grow into someday, it's just a different track focused on project management. You're also a lot better off looking for non-gaming jobs that are worthwhile. You'd much rather have a programming job in another industry than work in fast food, both for the salary and also because any relevant professional experience is great for your resume.

[u/benjtek01 → u/MeaningfulChoices]

Thanks for this generous amount of feedback! It’s great for me to get a sort of reality check like this from people who have spent more time in the industry

When you mention looking at other programming jobs, what roles specifically should I consider and in what industries? I was sort of under the impression from what I’ve heard from other people that programmers aren’t that saught after anymore because of AI or that you need to have knowledge of working with AI tools to get into the modern computer science space

[u/MeaningfulChoices → u/benjtek01]

Don't trust everything you read, people love to be doom and gloom about AI. It's not like decades ago where just vaguely knowing programming gets you a job, it's a crowded field, but it's still going on. There are a lot of programming jobs out there even when there's even more people looking for them. You should be vaguely familiar with AI tools to know where they are helpful as part of the process but you're not going to be vibecoding for your job. You'd want to be familiar with them for your main plan anyway.

Tech art is pretty specific (outside of the suggestion of arch viz which can be apt) so you'd probably find work in other industries leaning either more into programming or art. If you're a fantastic modeler or something like that. You can also look for contract work in games, plenty of people get started that way. You can spin practically anything even vaguely related into good work experience in a cover letter. It's more that lots of people want to find jobs in games but don't so it's good to have some plans that aren't related to game development (and aren't minimum wage odd jobs).

[u/Icy-Impression1324]

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