Hi folks, and welcome to my course for getting your first job in the video game industry. For those who don't know me personally, let me introduce myself to you, as I'll be your instructor for the entire course.

My name is Timothée Mathon, and I'm a french concept artist and illustrator. I've been in the industry since early 2017 and have worked for companies like Ubisoft, Netflix UK, Quantic Dream, and NetEase games. I've also worked in the music and tabletop RPG industry on several indie albums and games.

I'm also a teacher in a few different schools in France, including Bellecour in Lyon and New Edge in Paris.

Aside from doing art, I'm also becoming a certified hypnotist specializing in the mental struggles the art industry generally encounters. I hope to help as many artists as possible to relieve stress, anxiety, impostor syndrome, lack of focus, the burden of performance, and other issues crippling their work because a happy artist makes happy art.

I decided to teach myself art in 2013 when I dropped out of university. I didn't know what to do with my life back then, so I decided to work toward what I've always liked since I was a kid: movies and video games. 

I entered art school studying 3D for a year and then took a concept art class. Oh boy, was it difficult! I'd never practiced traditional drawing, and I had only been working on digital art and 3D modeling for a year, yet I was up against 20-something-year-olds who had been drawing every day since they were six. This first year was super hard, and I was a terrible student...probably the worst in my class. Even in my best discipline, digital painting, the other students' skills were far beyond mine. 

It was clear that I needed to find a solution to have decent grades but still learn how to draw; otherwise, I wouldn't be able to graduate to the following year. 

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In the end, my solution was this: 

For the entire year, I finished almost every homework assignment by creating things in 3D, laying my monitor on the table, sticking a sheet of paper over it, and tracing what I had designed. I did all of this to compensate for the fact that I didn't know how to draw. 

I wanted to draw; it was just that our school was directly asking us to provide high-quality results, yet never cared about teaching us the fundamentals of how to draw.

In the end, I barely managed to graduate to the second year. My only motivation was knowing that the following year was entirely digital art. I was the only one with 3D experience; I finally had the edge over my classmates. My master plan seemed perfect...except it wasn't.

I was able to create excellent pieces thanks to a combination of 3D, digital painting, and photobashing. Keep in mind that it was 2014-2015, so these techniques were still uncommon at the time. This was the problem - almost all the teachers except one claimed I was "cheating" because I used these techniques. As a result, my entire second year consisted of my teachers trying to bring me back to traditional drawing. 

But again, they failed to understand that I was in a dilemma, as they had never taught us how to draw properly. I always had the pressure of getting good results in order to graduate, so my only chance was to find ways to get results with the resources I had.

My only way to get good results and differentiate myself was to put all my energy into what I was good at - 3D, photobashing, and digital painting. Naturally, I decided to focus entirely on realistic environment design. It was a choice by default, but in my head, I thought

"Hey, I'd rather be the best in my class at ONE thing and be awful at everything else rather than try to be good at everything."

AND THE SCHOOL HATED THAT.

By the first half of the year, the teachers were so harsh and desperate with me that I decided to stop going to school. The school also kicked me out, but let's say it was mutual consent from both sides to separate. They didn't like me specializing in realistic environments and props. Art schools want their students to be good at everything - pure generalists with a cute stylized type of rendering, all to print cute and fancy posters for the school's marketing. I didn't care - I just wanted to be noticed for one thing and find a job as a realistic environment designer, mainly because I had no choice and didn't have time to learn anything else.

It was absolute hell! I was a school dropout with $15k of student loans to pay off. I was alone in my apartment, feeling like a loser - all of my friends were enjoying school and crushing it, and my mom told me that I had until the end of the year to find a way to pay my own bills. Otherwise, I would have to move back home, so I had six months to figure my life out.

I was only good at creating realistic environments, so I focused all of my time on getting better at the one thing I could. And one day, a friend of mine sent me a job offer for Ubisoft; they were looking for junior environment concept artists for their Annecy office. They told me to apply despite my lack of confidence. I allowed myself a few days to finalize the few pieces I was working on but was still terrified by the idea of sending my portfolio to a notable video game studio. My mom offered for me to come back home to work on it for an additional week. And with her motivating me to work as much as possible, we sent my portfolio off together.

The next day, I got an email from Ubisoft telling me they liked my work and wanted a phone interview in a few days. It was December 21st, 2016...days before my cutoff to give up on my dreams.

On December 23rd, while preparing for Christmas with my family, I got a phone call from the Ubisoft recruiter. You can imagine how stressed I was! The first question she asked after introducing herself was, "So, did you graduate from your school?"

Daaaaaaymn...

I felt like such a loser, responding, "Well, no. I quit school and started learning on my own and..." immediately, she interrupted me! "Oh, that's perfect, don't worry. To be completely honest, we really prefer self-taught artists!"

I was blown away! I asked the recruiter why they preferred self-taught artists because it made no sense to me at the time. She answered,

"We prefer your kind of profile because schools teach you to be proficient at every type of art. You have been wise enough to acknowledge that it's not possible to be great at everything when starting out, so it's more efficient to focus on one thing and master it. Your portfolio shows us that you are a great environment designer; it shows that you understand how production works, and that's why we would like to work with you."

I was blown away! It was as if my entire path was finally making sense. Since the beginning, I was right about the choices I'd made, and my school was wrong. It was the best Christmas I've ever had; they offered me the chance to perform an art test right after my birthday.

So on January 4th, still filled with chocolate cake from my party, I started the art test, and oh damn, it was hard. But I was ready; I had packed enough food and water to stay inside for four days and spend no time on anything other than the most important art test of my life. I was turning down every possible distraction around me...like my friends wanting to go see a movie or the girl I was in love with at the time asking to come to see me for a few days...

NO! The art test was far more important!

With only two hours until the deadline, I finally delivered the art test on January 8th. Then afterward, I slept a lot. My friend spoiled the movie for me; the girl barely talked to me for not prioritizing her. When I felt at my lowest, I received a call from Ubisoft a few days later - the art test was good, but someone else was chosen.

Daaaaaaymn...

I felt defeated and didn't draw for weeks, eventually retreating back to my mom's home to play Doom and Overwatch for weeks. Then one day, I got a phone call from an unknown number - it was Ubisoft again! They were establishing a team for a new project and wanted me to come in for an interview at the Ubisoft office in Annecy, France!

OH MY GOD!!!

I went to the interview filled with stress, but I prepared for at least 50 different interview questions. In the end, I felt that it went really well. 

A few days later, I received one last phone call - I was hired! It finally paid off, and I was finally right. Right for betting on what I knew. Right for specializing in realistic environment design right from the beginning. Right for working on what I wanted instead of blindly following what the school was asking me to do. Right for working on my skills alone for countless hours in my room...I was right, and all of them were wrong. 

I had done everything that was needed to get a job despite not knowing how it worked at the time. The irony is, pretty quickly after my old school heard I was starting at Ubisoft, they called me and asked me to teach the students the very techniques that got me called a "cheater" and kicked out of school. The methods that got me hired at Ubisoft while all of my classmates were still at school. 

My story became a meme at this school, and every year I teach new students about my story and how I got my first big-time job.

I've been teaching dozens of students this technique, and the ones who follow my steps get incredible results. Some students now work for Ubisoft, Games Workshop, and various indie game companies. I even had one student who got an internship at Riot Games (despite being yelled at by the school for three years for doing what she wanted to do.) I'm so proud of all of them!

I've been working as a freelancer for a while, and I want to teach more people how to achieve their dreams, hence why I created this course. I will teach you everything about optimizing your chances of getting your first job at a video game studio. With my own experience in the industry and with my previous students, I've started to notice issues that keep reoccurring again and again over the years. Many people need to be more informed about how it works within a gaming company. They must understand that their portfolio needs to reflect their abilities to fit a production process. And that's precisely what you're going to learn.

This course will be a long, instructive journey. So please make yourself comfortable, and let's get started!