Mastering Tech Art as a craft

Professional
1

Hi guys,

This is more of a philosophical question, but I’m reaching a point in my career (which is still young) where I’m unsure of where I’m headed and what I should focus on.

I’ve been a technical artist for about 2.5 years, and I enjoy it immensely. It is the perfect blend of art and tech, a job I really never knew existed growing up. You see a lot of young people who decide they want to make games and say “I’ll do whatever you need! Art, programming, you name it” and little do they know, that such a job DOES exist but it requires a compatible mindset and a truly “both sides of the brain” kind of thinking.

I have a Computer Science background, but believe I am an artist at heart. I find programming to be fun, really. But I was never fascinated or in love enough with CS to want to just look at code all day. I love working in Max and having one eye on the viewport and one eye on the editor, writing code and switching back and forth between.

But…what’s next? I’ve been reading a lot about how artists approach their craft, like this amazing post on cgsociety:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=5912866&postcount=7

So… what does a TECH ARTIST do? What do you devote your time to? What core knowledge and fundamentals are we learning, or are we forever just very applied “tips and tricks” kind of people?

I personally want to feel like I am learning a CRAFT, something I am mastering. Our tools aren’t as traditional as a pencil and paper… so what is our lifelong goal? Or are we ever just filling in vacant “well, someone’s gotta do it” roles from company to company?

Personally… I’ve been drawn towards developing my art skills. Traditional, 3d, you name it. If I could go back and do it all again, I would have gone to art school. As it is, I have a tech background so that is kind of my bread and butter, but I would love to have a more well rounded “traditional” skillset to fall back to.

A question I often ask myself is how useful I would be if I were marooned on a desert island. Even an artist, in that scenario, can keep themselves busy, draw on cave walls like in Castaway starring Tom Hanks, or entertain their fellow survivors by drawing in the sand. What place would a tech artist have there, with no digital tools to use? What should our though patterns be, what are we observing in our environment, the people we see? What universal knowledge should a technical artist have that transcends which digital content creation package we use?

As fun a job as technical art is, I am nearing my late 20s and want to feel that I am setting myself up for a life of noble pursuit. That this career I just sort of fell into isn’t so specialized that I can’t explain it to someone in a sentence or two. I want to know that someday I’ll be a grand master and honed my skills as sharply as I was willing. I want to put in the hours as an artist does. I want to practice daily. I don’t want to feel like I just happen to be one of the internet generation kids who grew up with computers so this stuff comes easily to me and just likes tooling around in Max and learning what this year’s features are and why they make last year’s obsolete. I love doing tech art and want to consciously and purposefully pursue it as any other dedicated professional pursues what they love to do.

A lawyer went to law school, a doctor went to med school, a painter probably went to art school and draws every day of their life… what does a Technical Artist do?

2

Awesome question and I’m sure others will chime in. But let me say first of, if a technical artist is marooned on a desert island, unlike the artist who will cry and wheep and moan and then make some great art to capture it’s feelings, we will fix it, we will build something, come up with some solution to enlighten the situation, and make it look good too. Sure it will not have as many layers of depth and meaning as the artwork from the artist, but we will stay alive and the others that are there will survive too, beacause you gave everything you had to fix it (and make it look good too).

I think the sence of pride and accomplishment should come from the attitude you have towards your work, your team, and the surroundings. This job is too hard to explain, one day you’ll be cleaning mocap data, next programming some pipeline tool in python or c# or writing a script in max or maya. Then you’ll be in the server room fixing hardware (if you’re in a small company). People come to you, because you know how stuff works, or how it should work because you’ve invested many hours trying to figure out how stuff works. You can rig, animate (at a certain level), do particle effects. If some new technology is introduced you’re the first to asses it and advise if the company should use it or not.

So it’s true that it’s hard to explain, but would you rather explain you’re accomplishments in the brief moment you have something that resembles a social life or rather have fun at work and make a living out of it.

To me it’s a mindset thing, you figure out what you want in life, set some goals, go after it and re-evaluate every once in a while, and just maybe that’s why you’re posting the question. Maybe it’s not what a TA does, it’s what do you want to do?!

-Johan

3

A couple of things that come to my mind where I am constantly trying to improve :

  • problem solving : How to quickly understand a problem, simplify it, experiment, learn and solve. There are many ways to do this. What are these different ways and which one to choose for which situation? Improving your problem solving skills never stops and they way I try to tackle this is to observe different disciplines and industries. Psychology, biology, robotics, …

  • attitude : Becoming the main guy where people go to for their problems. A huge problem in projects is the inefficiency of communication. A lot of people do not know where to go with their problems or they do not even tell us about it. Being able to read people, detect problems, be very positive, constructive, honest, respectful, dynamic, social, … It all adds up to your attitude. When you talk about mastering a craft, most of the people think about a hard skills, but what we can not forget is that our soft skills or equally important.

  • learning : We are confronted with a lot of new problems, creating new technology or fixing old one. Adapting to knowledge and quickly get up to speed with information is an important skill to have. Many people fear new obstacles of information and this slows their progress down. What you might want to do is to find ways to speed it up. Find out how you learn and how you can improve it. How do you look up information, how fast can you scan a document on information, how fast do you discover associations between information, … ?

So how do you know you are making progress? They way I see it is by confidence and the respect you get from the people your work with.
My explanation might be a bit vague , but I have been thinking about this a lot for myself. And the more you reflect on it, the more clearer it can become.

4

I’m still a little green as well when it comes to tech art. I’ve only been able to truly fill more of that role from my last studio, and the previous places before were even more generalized. I do find myself developing more tech skills than art skills though. There are some seriously skilled and talented artists out there that make my art work look like I’m a hobbyist, but I’ve found my passion in making tools for them instead, and when they break my tools, it just drives me to make them better. The thing that keeps me going is knowing that there is so much more to learn, explore, and experience that I know I’ll be happy and have a strong passion for being a tech artist for quite a while. Technology and various art techniques change over time as well, so I don’t doubt that the evolving industry will keep us on our toes. I also like the fact that it’s not so easy to explain to people that aren’t in our industry what it is we do, I personally think that it shows how adaptable and skilled we are and can become.

I see the potential of turning into a tools developer much later down the road after I’ve gotten more comfortable with core programming languages, and if I feel that the best way for me to provide for the artists is to make more extensive tools. I’ve only dabbled a bit in C#, but I’m more comfortable with Python, and then of course there’s MAXScript and MEL. I’ve also done a lot of game programming from a previous place with ActionScript 3.0 and UnityScript. But I still have a desire to learn more of the C++, C#, and whatever else may prove to be useful, perhaps HLSL for shader work since that’s an area I haven’t explored yet either. Funny thing is that my fiance went back to school to get a degree for programming, so I plan on stealing his books on the languages I want to learn (once he’s done using them of course).

But back to something more obtainable with my current skill set, I’d like to do more higher fidelity rigs (perhaps just more character rigs in general since most of my projects were not so high quality), including more facial rigging. I’ve only had to do target morphs in previous experiences, but I’ve bookmarked or wish listed books and/or tutorials for these type of things so that when it is time for me to explore them, I’m not just going in blind. I’m still finding plenty to learn with building tools in Max or Maya for the artists, so it’s just finding a balance to expand more on my rigs and tool dev for the time being. I like a little chaos between juggling tasks and putting our fires, it makes each day a new experience.

5

Just wanted to offer another perspective, I’m one of those guys who went to art school and have some degree of mastery from a digital art perspective, and I actually wished I had gone your route and learned programming first and then maybe a minor in art, if only for the job security. :slight_smile: I’m in my early 30’s by the way. Personally, if you’re enjoying your work, enjoy some job security and have a comfortable income / living situation, you really aren’t in a bad spot at all. A LOT of jobs these days don’t fall neatly in to any category, most of them dealing with the new digital landscape that is evolving in front of our eyes here in the 21st century. Things are changing so fast with the rise of big computing, communication and information. That’s why we have such a hard time explaining what we do to our grandparents… :slight_smile: For what it’s worth!