THE ARCH-VIZ JOB APPLICATION GUIDE
So you want a job in arch-viz? Maybe for the first time, fresh out of uni? Maybe you’re an industry veteran but you’ve not moved positions in some years? What do you need to do? Have expectations changed? How can you target your preferred studio(s) effectively and make sure your application is noticed? Naturally every studio will want to see something slightly different depending on what kind of work they’re doing and what their particular workflow looks like, so this is just from our perspective here at Recent Spaces, but hopefully this will serve as a comprehensive guide that will help you land a job at an epic arch-viz studio. Let’s dive in…
Networking - Get Noticed!
Here in London we are lucky enough to have an excellent monthly user-group meeting called 3DSLondon, and there are sister events in NYC and elsewhere, of course along with many other key industry events such as State of Art Academy Days, 3December, Total Chaos, D2 Conferences and more. These events are populated by many industry pros, and many of them will be the founders of various studios, and some of them will be there for the main purpose of finding talent. What better way to get to know people, and potentially make some key contacts? Many people have landed jobs at events like these, or at least interviews. Be sure to bring lots of business cards and possibly small printed portfolios if you can - at the very least have your best work easily viewable on your phone or a tablet.
In addition, you should post your work on social channels as much as possible (but only your very best work!) including the usual suspects like Instagram, Facebook (including well-known CG-related pages) and Behance, but also channels such as the Corona and Vray forums. We all very regularly browse those forums for new tips, bug-fixing news, new release announcements and so on, and of course to keep an eye out on people’s work in their various galleries.
The mission is to get noticed! It’s a competitive industry and difficult to stand out from the crowd. It’s not difficult to render a realistic space these days thanks to major improvements in rendering engines and vast, affordable 3D model libraries. But doing something special, with a unique twist, and above all else doing it with beautiful, detailed execution will set you apart.
The Email:
Get personal! When you email the studio with your job application you should make every effort to try to address the owners/partners/head of 3D of the studio if you can find out who they are, rather than just “Dear Sirs” or “Dear Hiring Manager”, which is very impersonal. Make the effort to look into the studio and who the key people are - it’s people you’re talking to and will be working with. Applying to a large architects practice is probably going to mean applying directly to a hiring manager, so this wouldn’t be quite so important - but the arch viz world is a lot smaller - the studios are generally run by fewer people. The personal touch is essential.
Attention to detail: Spell the name of the studio and it’s people correctly! We occasionally get applications to join “Recent Space” and unsurprisingly those ones generally don’t get read at all as a result. Attention to detail is critical in the work we do, so if your email is full of errors it doesn’t reflect well.
Don’t email the wrong studio by mistake: This one seems common sense, but we get application emails addressed in a generic way to multiple different studios quite often! It’s fine to be applying to several at the same time, but don’t just write a generic email and change the name of the studio and think that’s enough - we’ll know! (especially if you call us by the wrong studio name!). Also, above all else, never, ever send out the same email to multiple studios at the same time, either in the BCC: field or, heaven forbid, in the TO: field…
Keep it really brief. We want to know, in as succinct a way as possible:
Who you are
Where you’re working now or have just left, and what level of experience you consider yourself to have at the moment
What you’re capable of (your PDF portfolio)
Why you’re coming to us - is there something about us you think you’d be a good fit for specifically? This is a great opportunity to get your personality across before an interview.
Do you work with the major software packages the studio you’re applying to works with (find this out first!)? If you’ve no experience at all with 3ds max you’re almost definitely going to find it impossible to get a job in arch-viz, at least here in the UK. It’s basically essential at this point. Corona or Vray? Not an issue - either is fine - most studios won’t care. Skills in software are of course transferable but not every studio will be willing to accommodate a length training period to get you up-and-running in their preferred packages. The idea is to make yourself the ideal candidate, so being able to fit in to a studio’s pipeline seamlessly is a huge bonus. The arch-viz pipeline is probably the most minimal and straightforward of all digital content creation pipelines. Max, Photoshop, Corona/Vray, ForestPackPro/CoronaScatter are all essential in most studios, with AE/Premiere/Nuke and RailClone being a huge bonus and packages/plugins like Marvellous, PhoenixFD and efficiency plugins like SiNi too. It’s fairly easy to get up-to-scratch to a basic level with all of these, and they’ll set you apart from the competition if you can bring some additional expertise to the studio you’re applying to.
Did we mention to keep it brief? The reality is that studios like ours get hundreds of applications a year and having time to read through every email/cover letter/attachment is unlikely, so short and sweet emails that are clear and strong are far more likely to be looked at in detail and shortlisted. Your work will speak far louder than your words (hopefully!).
Attach your portfolio as a PDF: Please always attach a PDF as well as linking to your website or Behance etc. if you have one, and make sure that PDF is properly compressed and under 10mb (to ensure it makes it through to all inboxes ok - some email clients/services reject anything above 10mb). A random looking dropbox/wetransfer/drive link to a portfolio probably won’t get clicked on.
The Portfolio PDF:
As mentioned earlier, a PDF is absolutely essential as most employers will save out promising looking applications into an offline folder for sorting and shortlisting later. If your portfolio is only a website, or some kind of download link, it will probably not get very far. The very best of all is to have a solid, small PDF portfolio along with a fantastic website or Behance page etc.
Just as with your email, keep the PDF brief and only show your absolute top work! If the last image in the PDF is weak, drop it. It’s better to have a folio with only 5 killer images in it than one with 15 images where the last half are kind of weak. If you know someone with a discerning eye, especially someone in the industry, ask them to tell you which of your works is weakest and remove them. Put your absolute strongest images at the start and end of the document.
Try to compress the file efficiently so it loads and scrolls quickly. Studio partners often review applications on-the-go using mobile and a fast, compressed PDF will be much more likely to get a thorough review.
The type of work you show in this PDF, and on your website, is critical. You should be aware that different arch-viz studios do very different types of work. Some studios specialise in planning images, so there will be lots of exterior photomontages on their website - if you’re applying to a studio like this, that’s what they want to see in your portfolio too - can you do what they will need you to do? Studios like ours do a lot of interiors and exteriors, but entirely for marketing - not planning - and there’s a significant difference, so we’ll respond much better to more artistic and creative work. Some studios are very well known for residential work, some for much more esoteric/experimental work, some for one-off hero images, some for animation etc. There’s a huge variety - know the studio you’re applying to and target them carefully.
It’s fairly well known these days that the essential requirements for an arch-viz artist are different than they used to be in the earlier days of the industry. Being able to model a piece of furniture in enormous detail is a great bonus for most studios, but by no means essential. Being able to model a space or building is still essential, but for us at least, what we really want to see more than anything else in your portfolio is a demonstration of a fantastic eye for composition, intense attention to detail, quality of light and some kind of visual narrative. Those are the things that it’s very hard if not impossible to teach someone, whereas it’s possible to train an artist in a technical approach or software application quite easily. It’s always fairly obvious when an applicant has downloaded a number of 3D models from a stock 3D website and rendered them realistically, but they’re perhaps not saying anything special with their choice of composition or light, or perhaps the image just feels a bit static and lifeless. All high-end arch-viz studios will value these skills more than your ability to render a hyper-real piece of fruit or a car paint shader. Those things come in handy, for sure, but they’re not at the core of what happens at most arch-viz studios on a daily basis.
Be sure to mention exactly what you contributed to an image - in many studios as an artist you’ll collaborate with others on a single image, for example you might have just done the materials, lighting and rendering but someone else did all the modelling and layout, or perhaps visa versa. Be honest and clear about what your role was in the work.
Include personal non-commissioned work too, if you have it - it’s great to see what an artist enjoys creating when they have no brief but their own imagination. But keep it relevant! You’re applying to an arch-viz studio, so tailor the content appropriately. Photography and video is an excellent one to add - a lot of arch-viz studios, ours very much included, value photography enormously - it’s at the heart of what we do.
As above, if you think you’d make a good fit in a variety of different types of studio then you might want to consider making 2 or 3 different versions of your portfolio PDF, each one geared up for a different type of studio. Have one mainly containing awesome interiors, another one with a mixture of interiors and exteriors, and another with mainly exterior photomontages, for example. Most arch-viz studios will have multiple versions of their client portfolio that they show to specific clients - for example when we pitch to an interior designer we have a portfolio almost entirely made up of interior visuals - there’s little point in showing such a client page after page of exterior photomontages when that’s not what they’re interested in, and this works exactly the same between artist and arch-viz studio.
THE CV:
Your educational background, hobbies and favourite TV show aren’t that relevant at this early stage of a job application - they’ll all be discussed during the next steps. What’s critical in the CV is to have a clear breakdown, in chronological order (most recent at the top), of where you’ve worked in recent years, and ideally your whole career so far. It tells us a lot about what you’re capable of and what you’re aiming for. We also need to know where you’re based and what language(s) you speak, including how good your English is (in the case of applying to a UK-based studio). Try to provide references for your previous places of employment.
All employers will mention whether or not applicants from abroad should or should not be applying for a particular role, so be sure to be clear about this, and your eligibility to work in the target country as well, which is critical of course.
There will be more thorough guides to writing a killer CV elsewhere - this guide is more about getting noticed and reaching the right people in the right way, so we’d suggest reading further on the specifics of CV creation.
One last thing: Please don’t be offended if you don’t get a reply. Yes, it kind of stings when your potential employer, especially a studio you really admire and would love to work for, doesn’t acknowledge your email, but know that they probably have 100s of them to sift through every year, among 1000s of other emails. If the studio is interested they will definitely be in touch! Perhaps not right away, but next time they’re hiring your details will be on their shortlist and you’ll hear from them. You should also follow-up perhaps 3-6 months later, if you’re still looking to change - keep on the studio’s radar!
We hope you find this helpful, no matter what level of experience you have or how long you’ve been in the industry, or if you’re still at school and you’re wondering how to approach this process. Good luck!
Recent Spaces is an industry-leading London-based 3D rendering studio, producing beautiful, accurate and engaging still 3D visualization CGI rendered images, animations, VR & AR experiences and Fluid Images for developers, architects, branding agencies, interior designers, product designers and artists, worldwide.