I’ve got a friend who’s a frustrated artist. He’s pretty good, imo, and he’s done an arts degree (or design, I’m not sure) but he’s the kind of guy to sit around all day whinging that he’s not getting hired to run a Japanese anime company than actually do anything.
What are the kinds of companies that he could realisticaly get a bottom rung job at that would possibly allow him to climb the corporate ladder and make use of his art skills either at the start or later on?
I realise it’s probably futile, but I don’t have the heart to tell him and I’d like to be able to give him some suggestions…
Oz’s film industry is really building up. If he’s good with his hands and multi-media stuff, he might be handy help to have for an Art Director. Contact your local Director’s Guild and ask for information. He may have to become a member of the guild himself (and the union dues are hefty) in order to get work, but you get to make neat stuff.
I knew osmeone who had to make a rubber prosthetic of a guy’s chest being ripped out by big rats. All carefully handcrafted to look quite real for the very brief shot on camera. Looked like a fun thing to make.
Whoops! I should have said, said friend is in the middle of Canada, though something tells me he’d have to relocate almost anywhere else for a job in an artistic field.
There are always ad agencies.
Ad agencies was the kind of thing I was thinking of – what kind of ground level job would you apply for though?
It depends a lot on what kind of artist he is and what the industry is like where he is, but has he considered a position on the design staff at the local newspaper? This might be a bit more difficult in a large city, of course, but overall it’s a pretty good job. He could start out designing inside pages (putting the stories, headlines and photos on the page), and move up to designing fronts. Depending on the organization of the paper, he might also be able to do some of their graphics (maps, building cutaways, it can get as creative as he can be, as long as there’s demand for it). It will also help him to establish regular and varied additions to his portfolio.
I was going to suggest this. The catch with these jobs is that if he wants one that is art related, he’ll have to know specific programs.
It is hard to suggest jobs without knowing his qualifications. I could suggest model making, but he might be a fabulous 2-d artist and a bad 3-d one.
I don’t know if he’s a good 3-d artist. He’s a very good 2-d artist (IMO, of course). His favourite style is anime, which I personally don’t like but think he’s very technically proficient in. He’s very talented at mimicry, I’ve seen him can reproduce pictures to a professional level. And I’m not sure what kind of degree he’s got, but it’s an art one of some sort and it is from a uni.
I don’t think he’s good enough (yet?) to start working as a professional artist, what I’d really like to know are the kind of places he should look for bottom rung jobs at to get a foothold in an industry that would make use of his art skills. A clerk at an ad agency or the newspaper job suggested are exactly the kind of things I’m looking for.
I just want to say to him, “here’s some choices and some jobs to look into, now stop whinging that you don’t have a job!” 
Same deal, except right now the film industry is a a painful slump (a lot of my friends are out of work), so it wouldn’t be the best time to look for Art Department work in the Vancouver or Toronto film industries.
However, that may be something he’d like to look into.