Sebastian 'Class of 2009' Schauman at Housemarque Games

Some of you may have received comments from 'BaZe' on your blogs. 'BaZe' is none other than alumus Sebastian Schauman, who graduated from CGAA as part of the class of 2009. 

Many of you will be familiar with the work he produced during his time with us, including My Twin and that firm favourite with all open day visitors, Flying High. Since graduating, Sebastian has been working at Housemarque Games in Finland, accomplishing that rare thing of going straight from his degree studies into a job in the CG industry. 

One year on - give or take - here's Sebastian with a few words from the inside track... 

"At work I'm now closing in on my one year mark of working for Housemarque. I still feel really lucky about landing the position I did as most of my classmates are still struggling to land their full-time job in the industry. It is all about contacts and I urge students to start getting in contact with possible employers as soon as possible. Send a few mails even while still doing your degree. I went on my first job-interview in-between my minor and major project and even if I didn't get the job then, it's what got me my job a few months later.

I was first hired as a "modeler" responsible for modeling low-poly enemies. But as I'm working on a secondary project in an otherwise small studio, my responsibilities have gone quite rapidly from modeling and texturing enemies to modeling, texturing, rigging, skinning, animating all enemies as well as modelling on all main characters, doing all particle-effects, working on the UI and creating other 3d and dynamic objects as well. This is, I guess, the single, biggest difference between small and large studios. You get to do a lot of different things compared to concentrating on one specific task ...for better or worse...

It is a lot of work and I have little to no time left for any personal projects - and at this point, doing something personal is becoming an ever-growing urge that I plan on getting to sooner or later. So even if your projects are feeling overwhelming currently, be sure to enjoy them as it's what I really miss about uni - and perhaps why I'm stalking students on their blogs ;)

Anyways, at work we're currently hard at work trying to deliver our current game-project on time. As it's still unannounced it's very shys-shys and I can't say a lot about it let alone show anything I've done for it. All I can say is that this "should" be finished this year and that HouseMarque makes downloadable games for PSN and XBLA..."

You can follow Sebastian's blog here. Don't be shy - go introduce yourselves: he knows what you need, and his blog features a number of interesting links to useful cg resources and industry insights.