Mock Interviews

This week our lesson was cancelled because we had mock interviews on the tuesday. The idea was we get our 15 minute time slots and then we have an interview with Dave and Andy Gahan. Andy works for evolution studios and also is the founder of 3D for games were i post most of my work for good crit. We were told that we would be interviewed and we must be proffesional and anwser all questions asked and show our work to both people. I wont lie at first i thought this was daunting because Dave has told us how Andy is when it comes to interviews and we have been told he rips your work apart.

Anyhow my interview was at 4.15 which was good because it gave me more time to get things ready and also I could ask other students how they got on and they could tell me what not to do in the interview. When my time came I was pretty confident that my work was up to standard to show both my tutor and Andy. The interview started with Dave expalining what they do and that that they had seen some of my work but now they wanted to see more and see if i would be good enough for the job.

I started by showing my children of men scene and instead of just talking about the shots on screen I expalined how i ended up with them shots. I did a walkthrough of how myself and Danny did that specific scene and also the problems we had and overcame. I also had shots of what I had specifically done in that scene which Andy said he liked because it showed what was mine. They did both agree that some of the shots were nice but on some shots I show too much of Dans work and not enough of mine, so this will be the first thing I will be changing on the website.

The second piece I showed them was my western scene which also had some props sheets. I went on to explain that after doing the children of men scene I wanted to do something that would be a personal challenge. I explanied that I knew my weaknesses were ZBrush, High Poly Modelling, and realistic lighting. I said that in the western I feel I got the western looking pretty close to how it should look in real life. The other two I currently working at to get better at. Both Dave and Andy appreciated honesty in the interview but they said sometimes your too honest. They said only be honest if the question is asked, dont them if they dont ask.

There main crit was the props sheets, the both agreed they didnt look right and needed redoing with a different layout. This is what I wanted from the interview, I didnt want them just to say yea everything looks good. I wanted harshness so that I can amend the work to make it better than it is and then make it easier to find a job.

The 3 main crits were

Make the western a little brighter
More shots of my stuff in the Children Of Men Scene
Re do props sheets so they look a lot more proffesional

These are on my list to do and I will be defintaly doing this in the upcoming weeks. To have 2 people who have been there and done that crit your work is what I wanted. You cant ask any more than 2 industry proffesionals telling you how to make your work better. I have taken a lot from these interviews and if another was to make itself avaibale I would jump at the oppurtunity, because you always come out of the room knowing a lot more than you did about your own work