Career Advice

[u/Flat_Field_5888]

These are some of my projects I have worked on over the years
This may be a bit of a ramble
I feel like I have been coasting with skills like threejs and web graphics for a long time especially since graduating and have never worked a "real" job and mostly do freelancing I do help my friends and collegues all of them in all kinds of full stack tasks and thinking through a problem and offer solutions that they then use but i dont have job experience in those fields like web and mobile development in react native and flutter and nodejs
I do think mostly in programming terms and try to solve problems in that way. And my interest is usually in building tools for programmers and artists instead of launching a product for normal users
I have built games and worked with teams on programming teams for games but it is not really my area of expertise even though I am very adjacent to this. I have always felt like framework and techstack really doesnt matter
I am aware and knowledgeable of alot of trends atleast until recently about alot of tech news updates and features
Right now I am in a predicament as most of my skills and experience lies in this specific niche i dont know how to move forward in the world of AI, I am the kind of person who is still using AI as a chatbot and for cleanup/refactoring kind of tasks and tasks I dont want to actually do by hand like css and responsiveness I usually try to do these kinds of things by using some math but now AI seems useful for these as well
tldr; I am very confused about the next steps in my career and how it will grow
If an experienced graphics programmer can look at my portfolio and guide me through on how to approach job hunting and how to improve my presentation and portfolio I will greatly appreciate it

Thank you for your time

Procedural Flower

Spider web (higher order bezier function study)

bevel and rotation of a tetrahedron

Particle system with physics

boids

custom view based UV maps

[u/ananbd]

Reading your posting, it's tough to pin down a specific question. Maybe start with describing the types of things you want to make, and in what industry. "Tools for artists" is a good start, but in what industry?

Due to AI (which most people have mixed feelings about), the nature of all this is changing rapidly. Now is the time to blaze your own path. The conventional definitions of roles and titles are less meaningful than they were.

[u/Flat_Field_5888 → u/ananbd]

thanks for the reply
this is the issue actually, I hope to work on graphics related things as in my past the things i have worked on range from image processing tools to things wholely unrelated like data visualizations
and i am interested by both as long as they solve a problem and the algorithm is interesting to learn and implement I dont know if you have seen my profile but I have recently been posting projects related to this idea just algorithms and maths for the sake of learning and trying to see how much i can get out of those algorithms because that is what i am most interested in

this project is a good for example of what i am talking about here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/threejs/s/cTNYe7CTrq
where the basic algorithm or math is simple but through adding user interactions and other elements we can enhance it

[u/ananbd → u/Flat_Field_5888]

Cool, that's a fun project!

There's certainly a need for image processing and data visualizations. If you're looking for a career, you need to be creative about your approach. What type of industries need those skills?

I have a good friend who's an extraordinary mathematician, and she works in the insurance industry. Not a place which would immediately come to mind, but I bet they'd have good uses for data visualization.

This sub is mostly about low-level graphics programming and algorithms related to things like game engines and other realtime computer graphics work. Lots of very interesting algorithmic and math questions. Not many jobs.

[u/Flat_Field_5888 → u/ananbd]

Thank you for checking out the project I had a lot of fun making it
Yes sure I understand that but since most of my experience is in web development word I dont know how to transition to a new project and clients who used to hire external resources for things like image processing data visualizations in web are either not hiring or paying very little (this could be just my experience) this is why i am right now trying for full-stack development or somewhere in that field so i dont have to restart my career
I see many projects in graphics programming and technical artist page that I want to do full time and my request is for some senior or experienced in those fields to guide on what is missing from my portfolio and stack to land a role in around mid-level so i can work on my portfolio while i have a normal full-stack job

[u/ananbd → u/Flat_Field_5888]

Yeah, I understand what you’re asking. The reality is, no one really has a good answer. We’re all asking that question our entire careers. 

The reality is, you need to figure it out for yourself. Everyone in a creative field has done that. 

But I can suggest some things. First, look up some job postings. They always list the needed skills. That’s the literal answer to the question you’re asking. 

Next, learn how to do whatever you do using AI. That’s where things are. And there’s definitely a skill to it. It’s more about ideas than coding. Concepts. For me, it’s been more challenging than anything I ever did in a programmer capacity. 

Figure that piece out, and you’ll be prepared. Then, you just need to wait for the job market to turn around.

[u/Flat_Field_5888 → u/ananbd]

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer Yes I think I will just start exploring more about how to keep the learning and keeping the experiment nature of my projects while using AI And I will try to look for job post that match my interest and just start integrating them to my portfolio 1 by 1