Job title: Character artist

Companies that hire them: Videogame makers and publishers such as Monolith Productions, Electronic Arts, THQ, and Activision.

How to find out about openings: Scour the credits of your favorite games for the names of art directors and executive producers, then address your portfolio directly to them.

How much you might earn: Salaries start at $40,000 and can reach up to $60,000, especially in competitive markets like San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, and Austin.

Useful skills: Experience with 3ds Max or Maya, the two major software packages used in the game industry, is a must. Also helpful is a degree or certificate from one of the industry’s feeder schools such as Full Sail, a media arts college in Orlando, Florida; DigiPen Institute of Technology, in Seattle; or the Guildhall, a digital-game development program at the Plano, Texas, campus of Southern Methodist University.

Number of jobs in the U.S.: There are between 30,000 and 50,000 production and creative roles in the videogame business, according to the International Game Developers Association (I.G.D.A.), a professional society for videogame developers. Character artists probably account for “a few thousand” of those roles, though neither I.G.D.A. nor any other trade organization tracks the official number.

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Breathing life into sewer-dwelling maniacs and flesh-eating zombies is the stuff of nightmares for most people. But it’s a dream job for Chris Alderson, a 24-year-old character artist at Monolith Productions, a Warner Bros.-owned computer-game developer in Kirkland, Washington. He spends his 10-hour days digitally designing costumes, imparting facial expressions, and applying realistic textures to virtual worlds.

No detail is too small to render in the $12.5 billion videogame industry, where a single $50 to $60 game can sell 3 million copies and typically takes two to three years to develop. “I want my characters to be realistic,” says Alderson. “If they aren’t believable to the player, they won’t be scary.” For the hit game Condemned: Criminal Origins, Alderson painstakingly applied a layer of sheeny skin to characters called Rejects, who attack players with pipes and two-by-fours. Alderson also deserves the credit for the unnerving stare of the game’s Gut Eaters, brainwashed creatures that subsist on human remains.
 
Alderson fed his own design ambitions at the Art Institute of Seattle, from which he graduated in 2004. Growing up, when Alderson wasn’t playing videogames he was drawing. He was particularly compelled by people—their proportions, features, and eccentricities—and carries a sketchbook with him to jot down ideas. He eventually morphed some of those drawings into a portfolio that helped land his current job at Monolith.

Recently, Alderson has been working on a metal-plated villain for a new project. To design this “giant robotic samurai,” he trolled Google and Flickr for a day, searching for junkyard images of car parts, metal plates, and walls. Thanks to Alderson, his character will look the part.

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Typical Day

10:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. Arrive at work, usually in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. Over a cup of coffee, read emails and check online “addiction”—a.k.a. MySpace page.

11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Using a toolkit of software programs, including Maya and Mudbox, chisel away at a 3-D head that’s been in the works for weeks. With a mouse pen and graphics tablet, lay on colors, textures, and sheen.

12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Lunch: foot-long tuna on honey oat.

1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Back at desk. Work out design flaws with the character’s 3-D head.

2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. If it’s Friday, it’s demo day, a show-and-tell of the latest work.

4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Continue plugging away and previewing the 3-D design inside the game’s environment.

5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. It’s time for more coffee and to start coloring the character. Using Photoshop, apply several layers of color and tone to what will eventually be another creepy creation.

8:30 p.m. Head home.