Portfolio Advice:: :: Become a Technical Artist?

Hi,

I’ve got a pretty strong background in illustration, I’m not at the level of a comic book artist or a concept artist, but the skills I have are sufficient to do pretty much anything to reasonable standard in the art pipeline.

I also have a fair amount of experience in programming, such as Java and C++.

Because I have this dual skillset, I have found it difficult to nail what/where on the pipeline should aim, the “I’m a generalist” tactic hasn’t worked very well for me, and whilst having a conversation with someone else who was a competent artist and scripter he said that he just advertises himself as a 3D environment artist and then just mentions that he do other tasks and does them when they need to be done as he’s going.

I really enjoy using the Unreal Engine, I want to specialize in the part of the pipeline that uses the engine, mainly blueprints, materials, level design and I really want to be at the center of the project communicating with artists and programmers, making sure the pieces fit and picking up any slack from the center. So I think that I should re-work my portfolio and specifically target the position of technical artist and build my skills up around that, people get confused when I tell them that I can draw and program, like it’s not possible or something.

Personally I don’t enjoy the competitiveness of concept art, its a very narrow focus, with many people able to only do either characters or environments and have little time for technical skills outside of that, I enjoy drawing a few times a week but I find it not so pleasurable to be constantly trying to force oneself to overcome creative blocks.

I think technical artist is a good goal for me, please give me your comments and advice I could get to achieve this position.

Those skills have nothing to do with Environment Artist, so definitely don’t use that title. Sounds like the job you want to do is Level Designer, where mostly you would be working with the engine, but it would involve knowing gameplay and understanding what that means when designing a level. Being able to use modular assets to detail a level. Lighting the level. And setting up gameplay interactions (Blueprint stuff).
As far as your skills go, looking at your website examples I don’t think your drawing ability is up to the level of concept artist anyways.

Its been going ok I been crunching down on the bugs, v=Y2f8K4lAiOs&feature=youtu.be .