Yeah don't get me wrong. Its not like coding is the easiest thing ever. Just like art it is a skill that you need to perfect, master and work hard at and even then it still could be a stretch for people if their brain just isn't wired for it. When I was in art school, one of the requirements was to do some graphics programming...in Turbo Pascal of all things. My classmate took to it instantly and is coding today on HALO of all things. It might as well been ancient Greek to me.
But Raf is spot on. It's the portability of coding that can better insulate you from the churn in the CG industry. This kind of art is just harder to be portable. I remember a long time ago saying that I didn't want to be 40 and still an environment artist. Well, I am 40...I am not an environment artist but I am not as far along in my career as I would like. :) _______________________________________________________________________________ Marc Brinkley GO GO GO Microsoft Studios [Fun]ction Studio marc.brinkley [at] microsoft.com From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Raffaele Fragapane Sent: Monday, June 17, 2013 8:25 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: OT: (sort-of) getting in to game dev To no-one in particular: Software development, thinking cooly, is ALWAYS going to be a safer choice in terms of future proofing your arse than most content work, and a good chunk of the artistic work. It simply gives you a much broader range of skills and a much higher level of portability of efforts the more you do it at almost any level. If you've worked in an RnD department in a film shop for years, or did work on a game engine, chances are in a pinch you can move to mobile development in no time if needed, or web development, with just some minor language adjustments. It doesn't mean anybody can do it though. Not that's beyond people's intelligence, but because not everybody has the aptitude or interest, or is willing to put up with the relatively steep entry fee, much like not everybody is up for the gruelling years it takes before being able to do half decent concept design It's a mistake to think this is purely related to development work. It's just development work tends to cater to a certain type of individual more frequently than most other roles (but you'll also find plenty fossilized one-trick-pony developers that didn't survive some bubble or other bursting). A big problem with our industry is that it's always encouraged too many and too much in the middle ground of button pushing and hacking together culture, and now large amounts of people find themselves with skills and mentalities that have absolutely zero portability whatsoever, because they focused on tools and procedure, and never on fundamentals and concepts. The way out of that is encouraging a healthy and curious approach to disciplines, whichever they are, that has little to do with one's previous employment, and a lot more to do with what you learned, how and why. When all you do is pull levers and push buttons in some exotic software, with little knowledge of cause and reason, you shouldn't be surprised when you find out they'll replace you with a monkey the moment they invent a machine with less and better levers. Just make sure you learn more than pulling levers and pushing buttons and you'll be a lot more likely to have a plan B, and possibly a healthier outlook on employment in general. If you're pointing a kid in some direction in his life at the present and uncertain times, don't start showering him in horror stories about the field (because you can dredge up many of those in practically ANY line of intellectual work), just make sure he doesn't become a monkey.
