For instance, when an artist with a lot of experience from San Diego moved here to WB Games in Kirkland, he already had a ton of work creating terrain and natural geographical elements. I remember talking to him when he was first hired and he commented: "this project is so big that I am excited to be able to work on a lot of different aspects of the game, not just terrain." At the time he was working on terrain and he figured he'd be able to transition into something more varied once that line of work was completed. Well, it has been more than a half of year now and guess what? He's still doing terrain! I hate to say that I saw that one coming the moment I was talking to him, but didn't want to kill the mood. He is just so proficient and knowledgeable in creating convincing and high quality looking terrains that it was obvious that the Lead Artist hired him to be able to make the terrain in the game to a better quality level.
A few years ago I was looking at the portfolio of some artists in the credit of the Alone in the Dark game (which was about the fourth or fifth in the series but used the same name as the original. Tomb Raider, anyone? Seriously, why do companies do this to confuse people?). I had noticed one portfolio in particular which was a character or technical artist who showcased some bruising and tearing skin models to show that they were well equipped with creating zombie-like creatures that had a bunch of torn flesh. Well, as you can imagine by now that it was a big factor in the game to have the monsters have real-time wounds based on the area of your attack. It was like they must have hired the guy just because he had something that they wanted and that they did not want to take the time to learn, so it was cheaper to pay for his salary than training someone or building new technology for it. This is the same as Hollywood: they would rather pay an actual ballerina and have them in dancing shots instead of taking the time to train the actress into how to dance Ballet. This is not the case in Black Swan, as Natalie Portmen actual did train herself. Most projects don't go through this much effort so they would rather pay a stunt driver that specializes in doing barrel rolls for a scene that would call for a barrel roll, instead of paying a professional skydiver who just happens to do some stunt driving on the side.
The lesson here is that once you are in a project and time is of the essence, you are not going to have a lot of time to learn new tricks and skills, so you will almost undoubtedly work on the same type of work that you have in your portfolio. Do you create a lot of sci fi spaceships? You will be most desirable to a sci fi space-themed project. Are you designs for fantasy MMORPG's? You probably won't have much luck applying to a studio that does first person shooters, even if you have a couple of designs for first person levels but it is not your focus or you are not the strongest in it.
So if you are tired of always working on the same thing on different projects then make sure to go back to the "lab" and create some impressive showpieces in your portfolio that are the type of work that you would like to transition to. You can even put them as the priority, at the top of your site, and eventually phase out your old work if you do enough new stuff.
Trust me, at least being able to work on the type of work you interest you at home, even if you don't immediately get hired at a studio for that work, will make you a happier employee all around. If you indeed land a new job then that's icing on the cake. So, instead of complaining at your current job and hoping for something better, take some action at home and control your own destiny instead of letting someone else control it for you.
-Ken
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