While a job in game development or film is the ultimate goal for most of you, many industries utilize the same skill set. These could be your dream location or a good stepping stone on your way to games. Either way, remember to be open to those opportunities.

Here are a couple places to start (but there are SO MANY MORE THAN THIS…this is just a beginning!)

Government jobs: These can be military contractors, Department of Defense, etc.

The main location to find these jobs is at the following site. It can be a little tricky to find the kind of job that utilizes your skills and interests, so search under different terms

https://www.usajobs.gov/

for instance, when I looked up animation, it came up with a student jobs list of 8 different locations looking for interns, some of which are for illustrators and animators. Because of the broad scale and large number of positions in the federal government, you may have to spend some time digging a little deeper.

Another location for government contract work is a company called SAIC. http://www.saic.com/about/careers/

They have several companies that do different types of government IT and Technology jobs, currently they have 1300 jobs listed in the US. One of their studios is America’s Army, a company in Huntsville, AL that makes the official Army Game. I know the creative director at this studio, so if you apply for any openings, let me know and I will pass on your name.

 

Also look into industries that you know use your skills: Advertising, Simulation, Production Studios, Toy companies, Shoe companies…this list can become very long once you realize how many places use 3d art and animation as well as game programming. Many companies are moving to VR for their training, so they will have openings for developers to create this training.

3D printing is it’s own industry as companies use these studios for prototyping and small batch production. Whiteclouds is a company in Utah, for instance, that does a wide range of design work https://ss.whiteclouds.com/#home

Toy companies have both production and design jobs as well as often having a game development division. The large companies have internships every summer as well as periodically posting full time positions.

Mattel: http://careers.mattel.com/

Hasbro: https://jobs.hasbro.com/

Lego: https://www.lego.com/en-us/careers

Tomy toys: https://tomy.com/careers

Wham-O: https://wham-o.com/careers/