1. Be Good.
You don't have to be good at everything, of course, but your career will not take off until you get really good at something. You need to show professional level skills in at least one area, such as modeling, character rigging, effects, character animation, shader development, texture painting, lighting, or compositing. Several skills are better than just one, but you need at least one to be hired as a pro. The best way to learn is to start by going through the whole process, and then go back and focus more on the areas where you feel most confident or have the most fun.
Studios hire a diverse range of people, with a lot of different backgrounds: degrees in Illustration, Film, Fine Art, Architecture, Philosophy, Physics, of course lots of people with Computer Science degrees, and people with combination of useful degrees and previous job experience. The only thing tying them together is that somehow they each became really good at something that feeds into the production pipeline.
Being good at what you do is my number one piece of career advice to anyone, and in the end it's the only one that really matters.
2.
Computer Graphics is actually a very small industry; you keep running into the same people over and over in different contexts, companies, courses, and conventions. It's actually fairly easy to make a reputation for yourself (good or bad) that will precede you at any company where you are seeking work.
Focus first on your reputation with the people around you, in school or your current job. The people who have actually worked with you are your most important contacts and references, they can let you know about jobs or help you get into different companies. Make a website for yourself, first with obvious elements such as work samples, but expand it with information for other 3D artists. When you are able, make helpful posts on internet discussion groups, do some speaking, writing, teaching, or other constructive things to get your name out into larger channels.
If you are speaking a second language, focus on language skills as a higher priority than 3D. If you can't communicate well with your boss or director, then all the artistic and technical skills in the world would be worthless, because you still wouldn't be producing the graphics that the director wanted.
3. Fully Explain your 3D Skills on your Resume
As companies cut back on things like on-the-job training (which has always been something of a myth anyway), explaining your specific software skills becomes more and more important. A lot of students seem to type a block of program titles into their resume, including some that they have used little or rarely, and perhaps one or two in which they are experts. Without professional experience using any of those packages, those little software lists are almost meaningless. Instead of just listing program titles, you should document what you've actually done with each program. For example:
For each program, the main things you want to explain are: how much you've used it, what you've done with it, and what you're good at doing with it. Alternately, you could also flip this format around, and list your skills in boldface, with the software and techniques outlined underneath. For example:
Either way, you are being clear and specific about exactly what you can do, not just providing a vague list of skills or software titles. This kind of skills description is vital if you are a student or just got out of school, and you don't have a lot of professional experience to list on your resume yet. After you have worked on more productions and have more professional experience, you might want to shorten this section of your resume and make more room for descriptions of the specific jobs you've done.
4. Do Some Research.
Learn about the companies you apply to, so that you can customize your resume and cover letter to highlight the most relevant of your skills. You want to print small quantities of resumes at a time, and edit them to highlight game-related skills on an application to a game company, echo language from an advertised job description, or customize them for a situation such as adding your local contact information while you are at the SIGGRAPH conference.
If you are invited in for an interview, study everything you can about the company beforehand, so that you can ask intelligent questions at the interview, or mention specific examples of the company's work that you admire or feel that you could contribute to.
Find out as much about the industry as you can, so that you can find opportunities others might have overlooked. It pays to apply to smaller and less well-known companies, instead of just the biggest and most famous companies that everyone applies to. Read the credits of movies, TV shows, and video games to find out who is doing work on projects that you might be interested in. Read magazines like Cinefex and Computer Graphics World, and go to conferences like SIGGRAPH and the Game Developers Conference, to meet more people in the industry. Stay in touch with old friends and co-workers who can be the source of job tips. Quite often, the key to getting a job is finding out about it.5.
A lot of the words you need to spell will not be in your word processor's automatic spell-checker, so also check company websites or software documentation for the correct spellings of program names and technical terms.
People hurt themselves when they spell badly. When someone said she knew "Stradda Studio," but spelled it wrong on her resume, it made me wonder how often she had even seen the splash screen.
A guy claimed that he worked with "precision," which undermined his own point. If you want to look like a pro, proof-read your work carefully.
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