GCG: 'From Intern to Artist: How Diane Stevenson Broke Into The Industry'

Author: by Staff

One day, budding art student Diane Stevenson found herself at an internship fair talking to a representative from Large Animal Games, and more than a year later, she’s a permanent fixture on the team -- in the latest GameCareerGuide feature, find out how she made the jump from intern to employed artist, and what she’s up to now. In this excerpt, Stevenson notes that organization and time budgeting were two of the things that school left her somewhat unprepared to properly tackle as she landed her first industry job: “GCG: What's one thing you wish you had known about the game industry before you started working it in? DS: I kind of wish I knew to prepare myself for being more organized. Organization is a huge thing in working with other people on a project. With computer files, you have to make sure all those files are organized correctly and clearly, using the right names for files so that when someone else needs to take over something that you're doing, they can just look and understand exactly what they need to start doing. GCG: What about time management and budgeting time, knowing how many hours it will take to complete certain tasks? DS: That's a big thing. That's something I definitely wish I knew about before I came here, but the only way to get better at it is through time, making mistakes and doing it. Estimating your time is really huge in a video game project because you need to be able to see basically what you can get into a project, tasking out and estimating your time for anything. For example, how long is it going to take you to design a screen? ” You can now read the complete feature, with more from Stevenson on the path from intern to artist (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from external websites).