I never considered that the Graduate Fair would be of any use to me, there were no games studios there so what would be the point of going?
I'm so glad I did go however as it turned out to be one of the best decisions I could have made.
After wandering around for a while taking as many free things as I could I got talking to a man from the DSTL who do science and technology for the military. The one thing that attracted me towards the stand was actually an Arma style simulation they had running on a laptop. The man was talking about various science projects that I could work on before he mentioned the laptop simulation he had running which was when I brought up my real interest in it. He mirrored my enthusiasm and told me that there were lots of jobs creating simulations as most of the models they would have to build are classified and therefore obviously can't be out sourced. This is an avenue that I had considered but never really took seriously but honestly on reflection I'm really surprised I haven't as creating classified vehicles for military simulations sounds like somewhat a dream job for me and speaking to the representative has really give me pause for thought.
Another place that gave me a lot to think about was Teesside University. We started off speaking about criminology but once I was asked about my course we had an extremely interesting talk about using my 3D modeling for more scientific things which again was something I had never considered. He told me about the large opportunities to work with various researchers for different areas such as physiotherapy and we spent over half an hour talking about it.
He also talked about a fair that Teesside hosts called Expotease where graduates of the course set up a small booth with a TV screen and they invite all their contacts from the industry who come round to look at your work. The way he described it seemed like a face to face portfolio where the employers come up to you, ask what can you do and you describe what you have done and how you did it all the while the model is being shown behind you and I think it is a really, really good idea and I personally believe Derby should do something similar. This could be a huge opportunity to not only get contacts within the industry but it would also give a personal touch to your work by allowing employers to put a face to the work they're looking at and I believe that is something that would prove very useful.
One final thing he mentioned was Ubisoft soon to be opening a Customer Contact Center in the north east and while this doesn't involve modeling but they do want people who are interested in games, enjoy playing games and are knowledgeable about them but that is beside the point. What it represents is a way into the industry. Work at the contact center and get noticed by people and work my way up the chain. This would be a lot easier than trying to muscle in half way up the ladder and would also give me job experience that I don't currently have so this is an idea I would be interested in researching and possibly following up along with the DSTL.
I also managed to get some professional head shots taken by a small company called The Headshot Guy which I will use for my LinkedIn page once they have been emailed to me.
On the whole I found the fair to be much more interesting and useful than I first thought. I got lots of new information into areas I had never even considered or even realised we available to me and it has given me a lot to think about and many more options for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment