every thing he said with one addendum,
I will add that I have been doing digital art "professionally" for a little over a year now and am just now able to start making a steady living off of it, so i'd say keep your job do enough work on the side, and maybe even some volunteer free portfolio work, keep repeatedly critiquing yourself along with having others critique you, until you build a large enough portfolio so you can get some decent work.

yeah, I agree with you. I guess programming games is the same way to right?

Generally speaking, yes. Although what type of programming are you talking? Entire games? Tools to help the developers? AI?.

As far as programming games I've found, if you want to get in to the games industry and work for a company it is quite hard with no prior experience, unless you know people already in the industry. They all seem to be looking for 3+ years experience with multiple shipped titles. Alot of people i know have worked their way up starting with Quality Assurance and taking jobs that are offered internally. Even then its hard to land a QA job without knowing people or being lucky, due to the amount of people that apply for them.

serex nailed it, its very difficult to get into a business game programming, and its a harder skill to advertise. You can show someone a beautifully rendered scene, that has no programming to it, and everyone is impressed, but if you have amazing tech skills its very difficult to get an ooo or ahh out of it, so what i have done is work on my art skills, and now im to the point were i can build and sell prototype games to people who want a quick start since i have the screens to pull them in.

If you can beat competition then you will get a job. It is just as easy as that. But on the other hand there is a lot of competition. Almost every youngster today dreams of getting a multimedia job. So only the best of the best will survive.

If you take the programming route then you will get a job in certain areas like AI programming, shader programming, tools programming.

If you decide for the shader route then it is not enough to create a shader from NVidia exsamples or with tools like Rendermonkey. You should understand the 3d math the lighting theory and you should be able to apply that with the programming languages like CG or HLSL. If you can do that then you get a job easily.

If you want to take the art route then it will be tough as well. Yes, you can show nice screenshots and portfolios but please have a look at 3dtotal or cg-society. You will realize that an artist is only a little light on the huge firmament of the cg sky. There are so much talented people out there and so much people with such a big amount of passion that they never stop, they will always work, even for free and love their job as much as they love their own lives. If you dont have only a little sparkle of this passion then you cannot compete.

I know a few people made up to 3 internships, for free, no payment and full-time (12 hours a day) just to get into the game industry. And this is reality here in Europe. This works because there are so many young and talented people with a big urge to get into it. Many work for free and the big publishers are the winner at the end.

Level designing is a tough job also. Did you ever listen to the commentary mode in HL2 games or Riddick? They tell you how they observed playtesters and changed their maps again and again to make them perfect, to create good lighting, game-play, learning-curves, much fun and minimal frustration.

And yes, there are passionated level-designers working for free in the modding scene. Many of them are very good and it will be hard to beat them especially if you want to earn much more money with less experience.

So what can you do? First you have to learn, to read, to work and you have to do that for free a few years until you are a well-known person with good references. Then you can start to make money but you need to find other potential customers than the hobby and indie devs.

I think this would be a good sticky post for those who frequently ask about "what it takes"

A little math:

Someone who pays for a job is most probably someone who is representing a company.
This company can either:
-employ someone to do the job inhouse
-hire freelancers to do the job
-purchasee readymade stuff from other companies (works not always)


If an inhouse worker is working on a 2200€ monthly basis, and can produce 2 quality levels, the company has to pay
(roughly) 1100€ per level.


So the company knows that it has to employ someone full time,
to make a level for 1100€, or purchase it from a freelancer,
for 1100€.

ALTHOUGH: the freelance has the disadvantage to work from the distance. Small changes take a longer time to get implemented,
since the communication is not as good, as working in the office.
Also for balancing the level later during development,
the freelancer must agree to do additional touchups later.

Frank is correct. I had this conversation with a lecturer / developer the other day. There are so many people working for free these days, even over here in Australia just to get into the industry. And the companies are loving it, why pay someone to do the work, when you don't have to. The trick is to go out and make contacts, get a good reputation for quality work, weather it be visual or programming.

I just got hired as a junior level designer (contract starts on my B-day, 1st of July, yay!). I get 9.50 Euro per Hour, makes a total of 1652 Euro per month (for a 40-hour workweek), in dollars that'd be ~15$ per hour and ~2600$ per month...
Imagine, im still junior, only 19-years old, so this is the basic of basics i can get probably... it can only get more and more (i am at a $30.000 per year amount already then).

Again, this is Professional work, i Think as Freelancer you'll be a bit below that (or above, depending on how many contracts you have running at the same time).

But in the end, Serex and Frank definatly are right, get your contacts down, then youre a long way already!

regards,

Its gonna boil down to a very simple formula, You get what you pay for. If your skill sets are that of a professional, for example having talents of a Massive Black artist, you can expect top dollar for your work. If your skills match that even some of the more talented people in this community then your expectations should be a great deal lower. Its like going from the NCAA to Pro football, the talent level jumps from good to the elite status. My advice to everyone(including myself) get your skill sets up. I work as an Art Lead and even I strive to improve on a daily basis. Learn Max, Maya or Xsi Which are industry standards. Learn how to model proficiently for games taking account for poly limits, rigging and animation aspects and type of game. Learn to model anything and if you can Characters are a real plus. Rigging and Animation can only bring more $$ to your bank account. Texturing will also do this for you. PS skills are a must.. and if you really want to be noticed get Zbrush and learn to sculpt. Its really the ultimate tool for all your modeling needs. Great for normal mapping too. Master these skills and you can charge what you want. Average means nothing in this business... Greatness is all that counts cause its what pays the bills. Nobody wants half arse artwork in their game. Hope this sheds some light from the real world... its brutal out here so keep modeling and texturing and you will get those contracts or that dream job your looking for. I did... GS out.