Is Now A Good Time To Become a 3D Artist?
Spoiler alert...Yup
When I first made the decision to pursue art as a career I received pushback.
"Can’t you just do that and also get a degree in business?" - Dad
"You sure you don't want to try something a little more stable?" - Mom
"Is there any money in that?" - My friend who was getting me a free scoop of ice cream because he was just promoted to assistant manager of the local Baskin Robbins. (Side note…get a friend that works at an ice cream shop.)
So I went into this path not expecting much. Probably low pay and a lot of job hopping but I felt that it was worth it to embark on a career that gave me fulfillment.
Almost 20 years later and I could not have been more wrong. This career has been resilient and more stable than I ever would have anticipated.
My first introduction to this resilience was in 2008 during the financial crisis. The stock market tanked. In the time when I was just the job market, 3.7 million people were losing jobs, many of which were in industries that seemed so stable like real estate and finance. The housing market lost its mind and the country was in turmoil. People didn't have money for vacations or entertainment of any kind...except movies. Movies were still cheap enough for most people to afford so they still went in droves. At the time, no section of the film industry was more bankable than animation. In 2010 alone, 6 of the top 15 grossing films were 3D animated films and most of the others had a large number of VFX shots that required 3D artists (Grown-ups was a rare exception. Very few 3D Artists were harmed in the making of that film.)
When the economy slowly climbed out of that valley, animated films, games, and other forms of entertainment continued to thrive all through the 2010s until 2020 when COVID hit. We were all know what happened. Economy crashed. Thousands were laid off. Countless industries forever changed. I thought film was headed the same way since movie theatres were gone in a flash.
But guess what happened in 3D...we just kept on chugging. Most companies had a transition period for teams to transition to remote setups but after that, things were humming. And even with every movie theatre closed, people still needed entertainment through streaming movies, shows, and games. Once again, 3D was booming.
Even in 2021, I was laid off when Disney shut the doors to Blue Sky Studios, flooding the industry with over 500 skilled artists and there were plenty of work for all of us. And it wasn't just the low-paying Canadian movie studios (I will have to rant about their pay in a different newsletter!!), but great jobs at big companies and many new opportunities in new fields.
One example of an opportunity in a new field was e-commerce and retailers. These companies spent years manufacturing products, taking them into photo studios, and photographing them for marketing and their websites. But with COVID, that went out the window. Manufacturing slowed because no one could go to factories. The supply chains came to a crawl as goods were trapped in ports worldwide. Ships were even getting stuck in the Suez Canal!
Even if you could manufacture your product, getting it into a photo studio was nearly impossible. Photoshoots are a group effort and there was just no way to amass people in an interior space during those years.
So companies turned to another option…3D representations of their products. For years, tech companies and automakers used 3D versions of their products for photoshoots and commercials. Many many many 3D artists have stories of creating spinning cellphones for tv spots.
Now companies in the field of fashion, footwear, industrial design, and packaging are coming around to see the benefits of 3D. You didn’t need to wait for the actual product to be created before generating marketing images. You could create the images remotely with either a single artist or multiple artists working from home. Plus, the results provided more flexibility. If there was a seasonal flavor of your product, just open the old 3D file and swap out the texture and you are good to go. Have a new fabric color for that hat you designed? Quickly update the texture and boom! Instant marketing material!!
Even in today’s economy with big tech companies announcing official hiring freezes and laying off thousands of workers they are still offering jobs. At the same time Meta and Apple were laying off over 11,000 employees, they were still hiring 3D artists. And the work environments and pay are WAY better than many of the entertainment industry jobs (like literally 5x what I was being offered to work in Vancouver or Toronto…I’m telling you…I’m coming for you Canadian VFX companies!!! :)
From my experience, this is only going to grow. You are seeing more and more apparel companies moving toward 3D and they are hungry for talent. If I were entering college now with my knowledge, I would focus on 3D fashion design. Major brands would bring wheelbarrows full of cash to anyone who could design a garment, craft it in a fashion design 3D software like Clo or VStitcher, and make it look amazing in a 3D rendering package. Nail that workflow and you should be set for a long time because not many can do it. It would make you a unicorn in the industry and extremely marketable for all those fashion brands
Do I have delusions that this is the case forever? Of course not. But truthfully, the world of 3D is blossoming with possibilities. Web3 companies are looking to create new games. Even more online retailers looking to create digital duplicates of all their products. And countless other potential 3D use cases we haven’t even begun to imagine in the worlds of AR and VR.
So if you thinking are on the edge wondering if you should with becoming a 3D artist…feel free to jump on in! The water feels great!!
3D News of the Week
A roundup of interesting 3D-related news you may have missed this week.
Japanese town generator in Blender - 80.lv
Asus brings glasses-free 3D to OLED laptops - arstechnica.com
Art subreddit bans artist whose style appears similar to AI-made art - nichegamer.com
Fantastic interview with Bob Iger about managing creatives - a16z.com
Hayao Miyazaki draws Year of the Rabbit illustration for New Year’s card to Studio Ghibli fans - soranews24.com
3D Artist of the Week
Ok…ok…this is technically the 3D artist of the week but this is my newsletter so I can break the rules. This week I’m featuring Oksana Dobrovolska because her concept work is inspiring. Her use of scale is next level and I love everything that she is putting out.
**Oksana has removed all of her images from ArtStation because she is a bad ass
3D Tutorials
Wes McDermott is at it again making an incredible rust effect in Substance 3D Painter.
3D Job Spreadsheet
Link to Google Doc With A TON of Jobs in Animation (not operated by me)
Michael Tanzillo has been a Senior Artist on animated films at Blue Sky Studios/Disney with credits including three Ice Age movies, two Rios, Peanuts, Ferdinand, Spies in Disguise, and Epic. Currently, Michael is a Head of Technical Artists with the Substance 3D team at Adobe.
In addition to his work as an artist, Michael is the Co-Author of the book Lighting for Animation: The Visual Art of Storytelling and the Co-Founder of The Academy of Animated Art, an online school that has helped hundreds of artists around the world begin careers in Animation, Visual Effects, and Digital Imaging.
www.michaeltanzillo.com
Free 3D Tutorials on the Michael Tanzillo YouTube Channel
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