This is Part #2 of my interview series on How to Become a Creative Technologist or Creative Tech professional.
I hope for this to be on going and to bring value to the community. So far it’s not been straightforward with defining a learning path as a Creative Technologist (CT) in training.
I’m going to do my best to include creative tech professionals from a variety of industries so you and I can see the commonalities that make these creative professionals so special.
Many questions and many answers to be found!
Our next guest is…
Alessandro Lolli
At time of writing, Alessandro Lolli↗ is the Creative Technology Director at Future Colossal↗, an award-winning innovation lab for experiential technologies in advertising, entertainment, & art.
Since 2012, their team comprised of designers, creative technologists, fabricators, and engineers, has been working together to craft unique and playful experiences. They have expertise ranging from architecture and installation art to software development and hardware design.
Allesandro has titles such as: 3D Generalist, VFX Artist, IT Technician, Unity Developer, 3D Artist/Unity Developer, Creative Technologist, Senior Creative Technologist and now Creative Technology Director.
Industries include: advertising, entertainment, and art.
Trever:
What difficulties did you have as you grew in creative tech and how did you get around them?
Alessandro:
The hardest part of being a CT is always making sure you are flexing the “C” in CT (Creative Technologist). Budgets and timelines are always tight so you have to really get creative on how you concept and produce your project. Most times you are going to be working with tech and tools that dont go togheter and you’re left to figure it out. In my opinion thats also the fun part of the job, its never the same and def never boring.
I’ve had a lot of jobs in my life, in a lot of different fields, I belive the secret to being a great CT is to just train to be a generalist. You can be the best in the world at a specific thing or software, but that also means all your projects are gonna end up looking the same or at least very similar. If you build a team of generalists where each of them has different skillsets and backgrounds, every time you are in a brainstorm concepts will be very different and it will always feel fresh. The additional plus side to that is that there are always opportunities to learn and sharpen your skills through projects with someone else that just knows slightly more then you, leading to the entire team growing and your company’s capabilities increasing.
Trever:
Did you focus on a core skill and become T shaped or are you more of an M shape? Or did you not think about that at all? What was your strategy to skill up technically into the multidisciplinary self you’ve become today?
Alessandro:
As I said my background is very diverse, I did some courses and school programs here and there, but i spent many years just locked in my room making 3D models, animating, learning vfx workflows and tools, developing in many different languages. I’ve always had a passion for games and for as long as I can remember my goal was to make my own games. So i learned all the skills needed to do so and i made a lot of simple/indie games throughout the years in a lot of different dev environments. The first game I made was a pong clone in pascal in 2003, i kept developing games all the way up to the mobile market with Unity3D just until i jumped on the CT train.
Trever:
Was creative technologist as a role on your radar early on? How did you know what to put in your portfolio early on and also now?
Alessandro:
So no CT wasnt something i even know existed when i started. I was still on the path to get into AAA game development. At the time I was going in hard on gamejams and hackathons. I had a group of friends whom I was regularly making mobile games. My visa clock was ticking so I had to get a job to stay in the country. I stumbled upon a company that was looking for a Unity dev, that turned out to be my first CT job and the first time i realized you could use game engines to not make games. I also realized that I was really good at it. While at that job I was still applying to game studios but slowly realized that compared to CT signing up to a AAA studio meant doing the same job over and over until a game released and then you had to figure out if you had to get another job or just support something forever. I just fell in love with the CT world right there.
At the time CT wasnt really a popular position, there were not many out there and they where basically the mad scientists of developers. I never really had a CT portfolio, a paper resume was really what you needed and an occasional email. I would show up to a job interview with my phone with the apps I built and just walked the interviewer through my idea around them and how I built it. All my games were quirky mobile games with a spin. I was commuting a lot at the time and it was hard to find a seat in the subway, so I had a phase where I was only designing and building games you could play with just your thumb so I could use my other hand to hold on to the rail. I think more than being a good dev, creativity, critical thinking and attitude is really the key to a good CT.
Im the one that interviews and hires people at Future Colossal and i can tell you that what I look for is mainly the weird personal/college projects people make. Sure if your resume has a lot of impressive projects and games you worked with with a bunch of other people it means you have experience but i feel like its harder for you to prove exactly what your role in there was and what you contributed to the project. A project doesnt really need to be flashy or world renowned to be impressive.
I think being a CT for entertainment projects is a great middle ground between game and traditional developement. Art and museum projects to me are really dull. Personally, I like to gamify my projects and watch people have fun with them.
The best advice i can give you is to:
- not to fear being scrappy and not to compare yourself to others.
- Anyone can learn to be a developer, they have literaly trained monkeys to code.
- The creative side of CT is the hard part. Its just like any onther art form, its subjective and everyone has their own kind of it.
- Focus on finding your style, your niche.
For me for example, I’m very good at gamifying and making things fun, I’m also great and working with others and surrounding myself with the right people. I’m an OK developer, I can handle projects solo, but I feel like I could still do what I do if I wasn’t as good.
Oh there is one more thing.
When you get good enough at something, stop trying to improve and only work at getting faster at it. Cause as you use your skill, improvement is a given. You’ll always get better, but speed you have to actually go for. I would take a fast just OK developer over an uber dev that takes a month for each feature any day of the week. Fast devs can do more stuff. And most times CT projects are shown publicly for days or weeks so they dont need to live forever, so you dont need to build them like tanks. Thats something no one ever tells you. Game jams are a great tool to learn speed.
Trever
Amazing responses!! I super appreciate the detail. Definitely think you shared the deep cuts lol. Kind of liberating to hear someone say to go make cool shit and find your style. It’s also very affirming with how you described CT and what you look for. Glad you were able to make your visa deadline ❤️
Read the next post in this series here↗
Read the previous post in this series here↗
Check out my other blog posts here↗