I read & watch a lot of gamedev related news / articles, and all over the place I hear that VFX artists in Unity or Unreal Engine are in great demand, sort of “hot-product”. Yet everytime I scour through job listing sites, there is only like 2 or 3 job openings, and all usually for Senior / Lead positions.
Could someone more informed / experienced than me shine some light on the topic?
What do you guys think about the current job market situation for VFX game artists?
Hey
I ask myself the same question, I’ve been told that this position (real time VFX artist) is needed in a lot of studios but I don’t stumble upon a lot of job offers…
What is the “real” situation?
Hey there,
I hope I can offer some of my past experience here.
I’ve been in the industry for almost 20 years now and have been a VFX Artist since the day I joined, and have been ever since, please bear with me here as this might sound like I’m going way off topic, but I have a point:
The environment in which being a VFX Artist has changed over the years:
I started in 2005, most people didn’t know what as VFX Artist even was, let alone had one in their studio, if anyone asked what my role was back then, they would reply with ‘…what do they do’? You could pick and choose a studio to a certain extent, and feel pretty confident that they would hire you as they likely had no other applicants, or just thought, hey that sounds really handy why don’t we get ourselves one of these people.
But I’d say I felt a shift around 2008-2010 onwards, that’s when I noticed some studios were actually offering VFX roles, whilst others were still not doing this, so it was strange, at this time still not everyone was aware of what we did, we were still like Unicorns in the games industry, but studios even had teams of us by this point.
Over the last 10 years the role awareness has grown significantly! But I’d say this has particularly been the case in the last few years, and there are now many people (nothing compared to character artists of course) wanting to get into VFX.
So yes I believe there are roles out there, and there is demand, but it’s a lot more competitive now than even just a few years ago.
Some studios don’t help:
What a lot of people are really looking for is a one stop shop VFX Artist to fix many of a studios needs, and a lot of the time that comes down to a very experienced one, I have seen VFX roles that are clearly TA roles, but some studios, I feel, don’t fully understand what VFX artists do, or where we fall in the hierarchy of a studio, of their studio perhaps? I don’t know.
Larger studios can cater for less experienced Artists as they have larger teams that juniors can slot into and be mentored (hopefully but not always the case), and smaller studios can only afford of a very small number of VFX Artists, so they need to be able to do many things and be all encompassing, unfortunately this tends to rule out less experienced artists, unless you are incredibly gifted at riding the line between TA and FX, that goes very far in indie studios, or if perhaps a Lead/Principal or senior has time to take you under their wing, most of the time, these experienced FX Artists are split ten different ways and won’t have time for that, I always tried but it wasn’t easy, because most of the time studios want VFX Artists want them to do everything with everyone 
I don’t mind that as it’s nice to feel wanted and not redundant!
Everyone has their own version of VFX:
But with that said, VFX is a crazy strange role that not many people other than a VFX Artist quite understands, so I think studios find it hard to know what they’re looking for, I sometimes think they want a TA not a VFX Artist, but of course they can’t afford a TA so go hunting for a VFX Artist anway, and they end up in vicious cycle that burns not only them but many younger people trying to get in, or they hire someone for a role who has very little experience, but they put them somewhere on the team that doesn’t make sense, so again they both get burned and the studio says, right no more juniors, when they just put them on the wrong part of the team!!
Each studios has their own version of what a VFX Artist is, huge studios want people focussing on small aspects of a large technical system, small studios want you to be involved in every aspect of a system, and most likely drive it and disseminate the information to the rest of the team, if you find the right studio that works for you then great, you could probably stay there forever, or until they go bust 
I’m sorry if that all sounded like a lot of cobblers, but I’m just trying to say out loud what I’ve seen and been through in my 19+ years being in the industry, that has hired VFX artists for multiple teams and been applying for roles myself.
I hope my ramblings have shone even the faintest of light on anything, I had noone to learn from when I started out and had to make it all up as I went along lol
Again sorry for the long post 
I’ve seen many roles being advertised in Asia and Eastern Europe recently, a few from the UK, but those have been for senior or Lead roles.
Remote is likely your best way to find a role right now as that broadens your horizons
But studios may feel a little put off hiring a junior on a remote only basis, so that’s tough, you’d have to show initiative and self motivation and all those things etc
I personally prefer to work in a studio, I learned far more sitting next to a GFX coder than I did sitting at home working trying to have calls with people! But getting the job is the most important start to any of it!
I’m not sure where you’re looking.
I just did a quick search on Linkedin and stopped counting there are so many (I got to 20 on page two of 12 pages)
If you’re asking about demand for a junior artist role… then maybe that’s more accurate?
I don’t know.
If you’re a junior and you’re having a hard time finding something then you probably need to get a better reel. Or if you have a great reel you should post it on Linkedin and Artstation(or whatever other sites you feel appropriate).
I, like Aaron, have been doing this for a long while so my perspective will be different than someone just starting.
But I can say that when I started I wasn’t “in demand.” Back then there were very few specialized roles so you were considered a “generalist.” Meaning you did FX, animation, modeling, lighting, texturing… and on occasion compositing (I started in film)
No one was looking to hire a guy with no experience. And yes it sucks because it’s the catch 22. You need experience to get hired, but you need to get hired to get experience.
But back then there were really no avenues to entry like there are now.
Now if you have a great portfolio on ArtStation, or here, or other places, someone will likely notice.
And if they don’t you can certainly apply MUCH easier now than before.
So if you’re in the position of being junior and not in demand… yeah that’s just life… sorry
I see LOADS of reels and portfolios on here and elsewhere with “League of Legends” style FX. I don’t see as many reels from folks with more realistic FX. Remember there’s a HUGE array of needs out there.
If you want to work for Riot that’s great, but not everyone is making the same game so have some variety in your work. Show that you can do more than one thing.
Get better, make a great reel, be willing to learn, be willing to do projects you might not think are awesome, be easy to work with, don’t be arrogant, and you’ll find your way.
Thank you sooo very much, you indeed shone a lot of light, also your post gave me some perspective, so thank you <3
Thank you, yeah I guess there is no way out of hell than through it, will keep on getting better ^^