Technical Artist Intern Review

On a day-to-day basis, I was required to communicate with artists to learn about pain points and brainstorm ideas for better tools. I followed a lot of tutorials and read documentation to learn software like Houdini required to build tools needed at King. There was also opportunities to code in Python and Qt to implement those tools. These tools specifically help to streamline the artists' pipeline and make their workflows more efficient, making it easier to bring their work from concept into the game.

Yes, I learned a lot of new skills and new things! I learned a lot about how games are made and delivered in Candy Crush and a variety of other games at King. I learned how to organise my own schedules and how to work with others in a team. I also learned a lot of new software such as Houdini, which is a 3D procedural generation software. I was lucky to have been given the opportunity to learn it on the job.

I was given the responsibility of setting my own goals and keeping on top of them during my internship, and then finally giving myself a self evaluation at the end. I was also responsible for reaching out to coworkers as required and for scheduling, preparing and presenting my own work at the end of the internship. Generally, we are expected to be quite self-driven but people are generally very happy to help each other out when we need it.

King pairs you up with both a mentor and a buddy to give support and guidance during the internship so having weekly syncs with them have been nice throughout the internship to help me feel settled into the work! I felt comfortable asking them questions when I needed help or was stuck on anything on a day-to-day basis (they were easy to reach via Slack) and it was not difficult to reach out to them.

Great! Everyone is really friendly here and supportive of the learning process and asking questions. There are quite a few other interns here at the office so we often sit together and work together. There are plenty of intern events and also company events that make coming into the office and working here quite fun. People in general are great to work with and there isn't such a scary sense of an organisational hierarchy compared to other companies.

I really enjoyed it! I feel like I learned a lot throughout it. I really enjoyed learning the new software and although it was quite daunting at first since there was a large learning curve, I was able to work through the problems with other more experienced members of the team to achieve something together. I also felt that the hybrid model suited me quite well since I was able to work from the office or from home whenever was it was most convenient.

Yes

Be yourself and be passionate about what you do! Have projects ready to show and do your research beforehand :) When I was applying, there was a lot of different kinds of roles available so I did my research before applying to too many so I didn't come off as too indecisive and I was able to tailor my CV to the specific role. Be prepared to possibly do an online one way interview and also some sort of test assignment!