Good luck, we always needed a BMS operative inside Valve
No offense, but you seem to be running away with your fantasy. You haven’t finished your BA yet. You have no industry experience. You haven’t built up a network of clients and people in the industry.
The average time frame for a BA grad leaving Uni and getting an art job is FOUR YEARS. Yeah, it usually takes most graduates four years to get a job in the industry (unless of course they are very good. But I haven’t seen any of your work, so can’t comment)
Slow down Speed Racer.
It’s great to be enthusiastic and chase after your dream, but just keep in mind that you still have a long long long long painful horrible rejection filled way to go. You don’t become a Jedi over night.
Here is a portrait I did a while back, its one of the few things I have a digital image of, its a sumi ink wash.
‘https://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e326/drakey83/DSC00053copy.jpg’
I know I’m in for a long hard road, and I plan on just interning for at least the first year or two to get to know the people and network. I do think I need to go balls to the walls tho or nothing is ever going to happen.
also im going to buy this in the next couple moth to give me a edge once I get there.
https://www.wacom.com/en/Products/Cintiq/Cintiq24HD.aspx
Very nice.
I wish I had the money to get myself a graphics tablet. 
I also hope that internships are better than they are here. Here the design internships are a complete joke. I went for an interview with one a month ago (it was a company which publishes Facebook games) and they wanted someone fully qualified with several years experience (which somewhat defeats the point of an internship) to work 42 hours a week for $500 per month. The fact that they were paying anything at all was pretty impressive. But that’s Germany for you, they legalized slavery and nobody seems to mind. Amazing…I just worked out that this results in them paying $2.38 per hour. Of course, I mention this to my German friends and they don’t see a problem in it. Apparently I am just ‘hating’ the German system because I’m a foreigner.
Most internships here require you to essentially be a professional already. They just want cheap labour. My girlfriend had a short internship with a company which ONLY employed interns and never paid them a thing. They would hire the interns for 4-6 months and then get new ones in. All the profits go to the owner. A pretty genius idea really. AND IT’S LEGAL!
Anyway, sorry for going off on a rant. I wish you luck and I hope things go well for you. You obviously have skill in sketching and I hope that you can continue to improve on it and get where you want to go.
For the price of that I could build myself about three nice gaming rigs.
Fucking 1%…
I’m finishing up a course at university of Industrial Transport Design, but after that I wanna take some time out, just draw, get my skills up, and eventually I’d like a similar job in a games company, somewhere down the line. Good luck to ya I say! 
What did you expect from someone with no experience and low productivity, 60k salary with benefits? Nobody wants to take risks with new guys like us, and you can’t blame them (especially during this fucking annoying crisis). Everyone starts in the shit, you should know that. Get it over with, grab the experience, increase your skills/productivity. Do some stuff on the side, prove yourself. Average salaries go up once you’ve got the first years behind you.
Rather than complaining about that which is obviously going to happen either way, stay motivated and set some goals like OP did.
Good luck!
A friend of mine just got a job as Technical Character Artist at Lockwood Studios (a company that specializes in creating virtual worlds and have worked on Dead Island, Killzone 3, Assassin’s Creed2, etc) after spending years in a cruddy Belgian studio.
Live the dream!
Shameless plug of my friend’s site: https://www.maphart.com/
I really can’t afford that wacom tablet but me and my wife talked about it and if I want to seriously make it as a professional digital artist than I need the industry standard tools. No one would go to a car repair man that didn’t own a car lift and other way more expensive tools or even a carpenter with no power tools. Maxey I am far from the 1 percent and this is going to be put on credit and don’t you think I haven’t realised what kinda computer/computers I could get for that money. I’d rather spend that money on something like that or possibly even bills but like I said this is going to be a tool to me and hopefully it will end up paying for itself in the long run.
Who said anything about no experience? My gf has 3 years experience in her line of work and yet she still has to take internships because companies just don’t want to pay people money. These interns are doing an actual job. A job which could be given to a real employee for real money. I’m not entirely sure how you can defend companies which employ only interns simply to avoid paying wages. Are you German by any chance?
I have 4 years experience as a teacher and I still can’t get shit here and believe me I have tried. I don’t think there is a place I haven’t yet handed in a CV and tried to meet the boss in person.
But things are indeed looking up, but it’s taken around 8 months to get this far.
I wanted to say something along the lines of “surely the minimum wage in Germany isn’t €500, as it’s like €1200 over here…”. But apparently Germany doesn’t even have minimum wages for like 80% of the German workforce.
Sucks to be you, bro.
Yeah, Germany doesn’t have a minimum wage, but there is kind of an un-official one which most companies wont pay less than. But for internships they can pay what they like. Getting something like 500-600€ is actually really good as most don’t pay you at all. Unfortunately if you are unemployed and you do an internship you can only do it for 4 (or maybe 6) weeks before you lose your unemployment benefits.
I’m a foreigner, so of course I don’t get benefits anyway and nor should I.
Ahhh, every country has shit like this. There is a system and it is exploited and as long as the exploit doesn’t hinder the countries economy then the government is cool with it. That’s just life; but it’s fucking frustrating.
In Japan 900 Tokyo based companies were found to have broken numerous employment laws over unpayed overtime, refusal to allow holidays and forcing employees to work inhumane hours. But the government turns a blind eye to these things because it’s really good for the economy.
I had a client when I worked in Tokyo who once came to me half asleep. I asked him what the problem was and he told me that he hadn’t left his office in 4 days. He was working 17-18 hour shifts and was just sleeping in the office. I joked that he would at least get good overtime, but he shook his head and said that he would get no pay for anything over his contracted 8 hours. So he was working 10 hours a day for free!
I was really worried about him, he really didn’t look well after that. I’ve never really thought about suicide or things like that, but he was the first person I have ever been worried about in that way. He looked genuinely desperate. A college of mine was walking to work one day and a guy went SPLAT right next to him. April and May is suicide season in Japan.
Anyway, I have gone way off topic. I could just go back to China where I can get paid excellent money for sitting on my ass and just being white. But I miss Europe too much, so I’ll fight it out.:pirate:
I hope OP will do the same and get to suck on Gabe Newell’s dick.
If you can’t get a job now, what makes you think they would hire you if there’s a minimum wage that’s even higher? They would just skip over you. Which is exactly what corporations have done since minimum wages came into existence (reflected by higher unemployment among younger people). The illusion that minimum wage laws magically increase wages is fantasy, after all businesses hire you only if your labor increases their profits otherwise your job would have no reason to exist.
Since you claim that most interns don’t pay at all, I’d say 500 euros is better than nothing. It ain’t paradise, but hey I’m in a similar situation and so are many others. Just understand how businesses operate and why they hire people, then use that to your advantage. Supply and demand, productivity, industry experience, work ethic etc.
Anyway good luck to both of you, tough times ahead for sure.
Is the 24 really worth it? My housemate has the entry level Cintiq, does the job admirably. I’d start there, then upgrade if you really get into your stride.
My wife says that she doesn’t want to buy the 12 inch that’s already 1000 USD and have to go upgrade in a few years once I am ready to tackle the bigger one. Plus we both decided if we were really going to do this that we were going to go all out and do it for real “make it or break it” style. Also I’ve learned in my 6 years of marriage they it’s best to choose your arguments wisely and this isn’t one I’m willing to fight especially since even though I don’t want to have to pay that much I obviously want the best tablet available.
[i]…nevermind…
Please disregard.[/i]
I hope what you had to say wasn’t negative and/or telling me not to bother because that would be totally going against the quote in your sig lol.
Nope, that wasn’t a post to you, Drakey.
Hey Karamazov. First of all don’t give up. Even the Christian Conservatives are considering the introduction of a minimum wage already. Chances are, it’ll be here by next year. Where exactly are you in Germany? I am in Munich. One way to get a decent job, you will laugh, is to do some voluntary work for a society/club. Maybe something with children etc. The people you meet there are usually very motivated people with a firm standing in companies and their field of work, who do voluntary work out of conviction. It’s usually 2-4 hours a week. But: it will allow you to network with people. I “landed” a pretty decent job as a literary critic teaching children, while writing my PhD in the afternoon.
As for Jeannotvb: There is no free market. So do us all a favor and stop hiding your ideology behind claims of the alleged scientifically proven value of such a free market. I know you did not mention “the free market” but it ALWAYS boils down to this shitty mantra. A market is defined by a set of rules. These rules are based on ideology defined by the ruling elites, rather than on scientific facts.
You are against a minimum wage: Are you against immigration control as well? Because it’s a similar thing. If you accept the fact that cheap workforce is in the long run “good” for the economy (fuck the people anyway) then you need to unrestrict access to the labour market for foreign workers as well, because it would even more decrease overall wages.
The thing is: wages always have been and always will be an ideological debate. There is a plethora of research suggesting that minimum wages do both increase and decrease unemployment numbers. So please do not act like you know shit, especially when it comes European legislation and economy. Because you don’t.
I’m just bringing you the message. This is reality. You can deal with it, or you can take to the streets and join your occupy friends. The fact is that the guy needs a job, and sitting here complaining about minimum wages isn’t going to change anything, stop blaming others for your own problems. Look into a mirror for once, as I mentioned earlier I am in a similar situation but I don’t blame others for my problems.
Free market or no free market, if your labor is no net benefit to a business, you’re not going to get hired. It’s that simple. So you either do something about it such as increasing your skills and productivity, or you stay here bitching against me about how life is unfair and the free market is evil.