A Look into the Future of 3D Artists
We asked our featured artists how they see the dynamics of the hiring process in the game dev industry in the foreseeable future. Check out the answers!
With the on-going growth of the 3D art industry, it might feel like the industry is overpopulating which can lead to issues for a 3D artist to find a job in the area. The Japanese market is one of the brightest examples of it. We talked to our featured artists and asked them about their point of view on this situation and possible changes in the 3D art job tendencies.
In terms of overpopulation, I don't have a great gauge about that, in my opinion, what's happening more is the loss of positions due to outsourcing, automation, and better technology. There are many job titles that have evolved due to the improvements in technology such as 3D scanning, Photogrammetry, Motion Capture, and generally better tools. For artists to be relevant during this transition, there is a need to keep up with the times and learn these new tools of the trade and constantly improve our skillset and portfolio.
I feel when it comes to oversaturation of the game industry that may happen, but in the end, I feel it comes down to the old decision of Quality vs Quantity, artists who have a great portfolio are always going to be desired more so than having more artists that aren't up to par. It also depends on your studio's quality bar. Do they just need a bunch of basic art done quickly to get things prototyped or do they want to go all the way to excellent art right from the get-go? All in all, I don’t think that underpaid artists will happen any time soon. Visuals are everything, and we are always striving to make things look better. I think we can leverage procedural tools in our pipelines to speed up certain tasks, but an artistic eye for things is always needed.
Answering your question about the 3D Industry market, in my opinion, the 3D industry is still far from reaching such a point of overpopulation, since demand grows at a tremendous speed everywhere and more and more labor is needed. I think that most 3D artists will need to increase their specialization even more in any of the fields (character modeling, hard surface modeling, vehicle modeling, weapon modeling, materials artist, environment artist) because each company in the AAA sector are demanding deeper knowledge to achieve the best possible results using the best available software. I expect prices, and wages, in this sector to outperform the average economic level.
I think the scales of demand vs supply will keep rocking back and forth and that will dictate salaries. But I do think we are at a point of very high competition and saturation. The bar to entry is getting lower and lower with online tutorials and even entire courses for everything 2D and 3D related.
Even with this high saturation, there are people willing to work overtime for free in studios to the point that overtime is expected. This mentality has to change. It’s a job--you have to keep it at that. This same mentality leads to undercutting yourself and quoting prices way lower than what should be charged. This is detrimental to other artists since clients or studios start underpaying because others are willing to work for peanuts.
As new technology is developed and integrated into the entertainment industry new specialized and niche jobs will emerge which could lead to better pay, until that becomes saturated as well. You could specialize, but we have to be careful that hyper-specialization doesn’t lead to sweatshops--the kind that artists in Japan are facing.
Honestly, I hope the day doesn't come where things get overpopulated to a point where people start getting underpaid in this industry but I do see that becoming an issue one day, especially with some of the larger AAA companies that hire talent on a daily basis and have people on the ready to accept any opportunity they can get because of how new to the industry they are. I personally feel like it damages the individual morale of the person working there because in the back of their mind they have that feeling of “they can replace me at any time so I have to accept the low pay in order to build my career as -insert blank here-”.
