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Artist Job Applications

5/19/2017

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I never thought I’d be writing about this of all topics… yet with my new job I find myself on the other side of the table and combing through stacks of artist applications. It’s been a really interesting experience, where I’ve learned a lot and realized just how much I personally wasn’t doing with my resume and cover letter. In today’s post I’ll be sharing some tips/thoughts that I’ve picked up while trying to hire artists!

Please Don't...

I’m going  to start with a bunch of things that I’ve seen, which you may not want to do when applying for a new job :

  • If you’re applying to be a UI Designer, and your resume doesn’t have a nice layout… I’m not going to hire you.
    • Honestly guys… You’ve got to think more critically about presentation. If you can’t present your information in a clear and concise way, why would I think you’d do any better at work?
  • Know what you’re applying for. If you’re applying for a job in video games and have only ever worked on websites… you better have a kick ass cover letter.
    • I get a lot of applications with no previous applicable work experience, which feels pretty odd.
  • Double check your links… A few times I’ve received URLS for a portfolio, and the applicant has misspelled their own name.
  • If you can, make your resume a PDF. Links to your portfolio should be at the top, I don’t want to have to dig around looking for it, and make sure it’s clickable.
    • There have been a few instances where I’m trying to copy and paste a URL from someone’s resume, and accidentally copy an extra letter or line… it’s frustrating and you don’t want the person hiring you to start with a bad experience.
  • Maybe don’t mention your “rate” in the first correspondence with a new employer… unless you’re dirt cheap.
  • Your portfolio link, shouldn’t be to your facebook page. It’s unprofessional.
  • Please don’t give me large blocks of text and expect me to read all of it. You’re an artist, make things succinct, bold your points, and make things as graphic as possible.
  • Try to make your resume one page.
  • Be honest and upfront about your planned vacation time.
    • Do not wait to receive an offer to tell your new employer that you’re going on vacation later that month. ​

Please Do!

Now not all things were bleak during this process. I actually saw a lot of interesting ideas and unique way for artists to showcase themselves! While I can’t show actual examples from artists, I’ll try my best to showcase and describe these methods.

  • One Artist actually created an Invision click through for their cover letter, portfolio, and resume. I thought this was a really innovative idea, while this artist didn’t quite pull it off well, I’m sure someone else could. I would also consider making something to share from Axure.
  • A repeating theme I saw were that people would give themselves ratings on their skills, rather than list them out long form.​
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  • In a few resumes I saw people had written a brief description of their expertise at the top. Now this could backfire if it’s written poorly, too long, or just not displayed well… but often it felt like a nice merge of a cover letter and a resume.
  • Clickable links/areas of your resume that directs employers to examples of your work, portfolio, linkedin, etc. Since recruiters are often looking through many resumes in a day, whatever you can do to ease them into your information the better off you’ll be. Unfortunately there were a few applicants that I gave up on, only because I couldn’t access their information easily.
  • I had a few artists do Art Tests after our interview, and one artist went a step further to create a fake marketing image with their mockups. They had stock photos of someone holding a tablet, and they had photoshopped their mock up onto the tablet. It was a bit cheesy but definitely made their submission standout.

I’m realizing now that this won’t be a very long post, but I wanted to share some of the good and bad things I noticed while attempting to hire new artists. It’s been a learning experience for me and hopefully this post might give you some insights on your own job applications in the future. It’s definitely enlightened me to a few details. 

Thanks for reading! 
​
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Little Nightmares : "Limbo-like" or "Limbo-lite"

5/6/2017

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Little Nightmares is a game that follows a similar pattern in gaming that we’ve seen since 2010, if not longer. After having done a recent post on “Rogue-like” games, I can’t help but think there should a term that describes games like Limbo, Inside, and Little Nightmares. In today’s post I’m going to mainly be discussing Little Nightmares, but also it’s similarities to other games in the same family. I’ll avoid full on spoilers, but I will hint HEAVILY on the plot of these games… so you’ve been warned!
Let me start by saying that while playing Little Nightmares, I had little to no clue what the actual plot was. I had a vague idea what was happening, but after doing some research… I realize how little I actually knew. For instance, I had no clue that my character’s name was “Six,” which I can only imagine has a lot of different plot implications. In any case the story of Little Nightmares is centered around a girl named Six who is trapped in a place called “The Maw.” As the wiki describes it, the Maw is “a surreal resort catering to the whims of sick and powerful creatures.” Hunger is a pretty large theme in the game, as it’s implied that these “powerful creatures” are potentially trapping and eating small children. Not to mention that in late game missions they are seen as the epitome of gluttony as they are forcing food into their face. Six also struggles with hunger as she tries to make her escape, and there are several moments within the game where she’s weakened by this and has to find something to eat. The core of the game is about exploration, avoiding these large monsters, some slight puzzle solving, and trying to get out.
I did sort of a deep dive in my exploration of main themes between Little Nightmares, Inside, and Limbo and found four common criteria I could use to compare these three games:
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“The Run”
Stressful moments where the player has to run or are forced to move forward due to danger.

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“The Alarm”
New or returning dangers are introduced.

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“The Clue”
Plot beats or foreshadowing moments.

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“The Twist”
Major change of character, big reveals, etc.

From here I used walkthroughs to begin mapping out these key events in the three different games. I’ve tried to be as accurate as possible but I’m sure there are some discrepancies in my exact timing of events. Below you can see my findings based off of these criteria : ​
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There are a few things that I found interesting while going through this process. Namely the differences in how the games divide themselves. Little Nightmares has 5 clearly distinct chapters with an obvious flow implied. Inside actually has 12 parts, relies heavily on puzzle variety, and leaves little hints as to the game’s ending along the way. Limbo is a tightly packed sprint of puzzles and events, yet is divided into 39 parts! Each of these parts can last quickly as 30 seconds if you know what you’re doing. As I see it, Limbo is the most puzzle driven of the three, Little Nightmares is the most narrative driven, with Inside in the middle but slightly leaning more towards puzzle content. I expected to see more rhythm or clear intent to these key events among these games, yet I think we can see the intent pretty clearly with Little Nightmares. There’s three evenly spaced narrative beats, each time getting more darker for our protagonist, before a main twist moment and then sprint to the end. I also found it interesting that running moments were often at the end of a chapter, kind of closing it out. I think the way these key moments are spaced out we can see the rise in tension within the game, climax within the Guest Area, and then conclusion. Whereas Inside is a bit more of a slow burn, with fast moments, until a major twist and then free for all rampage ending.
I went into this exploration wanting to find the similarities between these games, and ironically enough I found the differences. While these games maintain similar mechanics, protagonists, and overall mood... The game play intention varies between these games. Is this an argument to say that these games don't belong in the same family? I don't think so. Similarly to my post about survival games (Survival games and Survival Games 2), I compared games of the same genre and isolated how they modify their mechanics for different driving factors for players. This is thematically similar, sort of on the spectrum of puzzle gaming vs story. I'm not completely positive that we can start defining these as "Limbo-like," there may be other games that fit within this criteria that even pre-date Limbo that I haven't considered... Yet I think it's an interesting gaming trend that I hope to see more of it. 

I'm keeping this one relatively brief, even with all of the research work I put in on this one. I hope that this was interesting! I've been wanting to do an analysis like this for quite some time, and have even considered doing this on some horror games... to compare the beats... Yet these games were short enough that I was able to compile this data relatively easily. In any case if you haven't picked up Little Nightmares yet, I highly recommend it! It's a pretty great gaming experience. Also I'm happy to see that I'm not the only one feeling the strong Coraline Vibes : 
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    I make games, I play games... and sometimes I have some thoughts about that. 

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