# Glossary — ARTV 2335 Terms used in this course, grouped by where you'll meet them. If a term shows up on an assignment page and you're not sure of it, it's probably here. --- ## 1. Portfolio & Presentation **Beauty shot** — The finished, best-looking image or frame of a piece. Goes **first** on a project page, above all process and breakdown material. Reversing this order is the most common student website mistake. **Breakdown** — The supporting images that show how a piece was built and what you actually did: wireframe/topology, UV layout, texture sets, lighting passes, turntable, in-engine capture, progression shots. Breakdowns are what let a reviewer distinguish your contribution from your team's. **Cut list** — The pieces you've decided in advance to drop first if you fall behind schedule. Written in Week 3, while you're calm. Everyone falls behind somewhere; the students who recover are the ones who already knew what they were willing to lose. **Entry standard** — The craft level a studio expects from someone with no professional experience for a specific role. Not "good for a student." The comparison set is every other applicant, including career-changers with ten years of adjacent experience. **Gap piece** — A new piece made specifically because your target role requires a skill nothing in your existing work demonstrates. One of the four triage buckets. **Hero piece / hero prop** — The single strongest piece in a portfolio (or the featured asset in a scene). Your hero piece goes in the first position on your landing page. There is no reward for building to a climax; nobody scrolls that far. **In-engine capture** — Video recorded from inside a game engine showing an asset in its actual context — real lighting, real materials, real performance. Usually more convincing than a rendered turntable for game art roles, because it proves the asset works. **Playable build** — A downloadable or browser-runnable version of a game or prototype. The hiring rule of thumb: if a reviewer can't see it working within about three minutes of opening your page, it doesn't count. **Reel** — A short edited video (60–90 seconds) showing your best moving work. Best material in the first eight seconds; assume the viewer stops at fifteen. **Role statement** — The two-to-four sentences accompanying every portfolio piece: what the goal was, exactly what your role was, what constraint you worked under, what tools, and one thing you'd change now. On team pieces, precision here protects you — inflated credit comes apart in the interview. **Shot list** — A one-page document accompanying a reel: every shot, its timecode, what it is, **your specific role in it**, software used, and whether it was personal or coursework. Required in this course. **Triage** — The Week 1–2 method of sorting every piece you've made into SHIP, FIX, RETIRE, or GAP. The organizing idea of the course. **Turntable** — A 360° rotating render of a 3D asset, usually with a wireframe pass and lighting variations. Standard presentation format for modeling and texturing work. **WIP (work in progress)** — Unfinished work. Fine in a conference, fine in a Discord, **not** fine in a portfolio. Nothing labeled WIP belongs in the final set. --- ## 2. Production & Pipeline **Asset** — Any discrete piece of content produced for a project: a model, texture, animation, sound, UI element. "Asset handoff" is the process of passing them between disciplines. **Constraint** — A production limit you worked inside: triangle or polygon budget, texel density target, file size cap, sprint length, shot count, memory budget, deadline. **Constraint is the credibility signal** on a resume — juniors describe activity, hires describe constraints met. **Crunch** — Extended mandatory overtime near a deadline. Widespread in games and animation, increasingly (but unevenly) pushed back on. A reasonable thing to ask about in an interview: "what does a crunch week look like here?" **Look dev (look development)** — The process of establishing how something appears on screen — materials, shading, lighting — as distinct from modeling it. **Milestone** — A dated checkpoint with a defined deliverable. Your production schedule is a list of these. "Work on the character" is not a milestone; "character blocked out and lit, Oct 23" is. **Pipeline** — The ordered sequence of steps and handoffs by which work moves from concept to finished product, and the tools that connect them. Studios hire people who can slot into a pipeline, which is why demonstrating you've worked inside one matters. **Previs (previsualization)** — Rough animated sequences worked out before full production, to establish staging, timing, and camera. **Retopo (retopology)** — Rebuilding a high-resolution sculpt with clean, efficient geometry suitable for animation or real-time rendering. **Scope** — How much you've committed to make. "Scope creep" is scope growing without the schedule growing. The most common reason a student portfolio piece doesn't get finished. **Sprint** — A fixed short work cycle (commonly one or two weeks) ending in a review. Naming your sprint cadence on a resume signals you've worked in a structured process. **Tech art** — The discipline bridging art and engineering: tools, shaders, rigs, pipelines, optimization. Consistently in demand and consistently under-supplied. **Texel density** — Texture resolution relative to surface area, kept consistent so assets match visually. A texel density target is a constraint worth naming. **T-shape** — The recommended skill profile: one specialization deep enough that someone can hire you *for it*, plus adjacent literacy that makes you useful on a small team. The alternative — five disciplines at intermediate depth — is the generalist trap: hireable for none of them. --- ## 3. Job Search & Hiring **Art test** — A scoped exercise a studio asks a candidate to complete. **Reasonable:** clearly not shippable, with a stated time budget, ideally paid. **Unreasonable:** open-ended, unpaid, production-usable work on a tight turnaround. It's normal and not rude to ask: "is this paid, what's the time budget, and will the work be used?" **ATS (applicant tracking system)** — Software studios use to receive, parse, score, and rank applications. Workday, Greenhouse, iCIMS and similar. Two things to unlearn: it does **not** auto-reject most resumes (it ranks and surfaces; a human still chooses), and keyword stuffing no longer works because modern systems use semantic matching. **Cold outreach** — Contacting someone you have no connection to. Works only when it's specific to *them* — the sentence proving you're not mass-mailing is the whole message. **Hard skills** — Concretely verifiable capabilities: software, engines, techniques, languages. The most searchable terms in a recruiter's query. As opposed to soft skills (communication, collaboration), which are real but not searchable. **Informational interview** — A short conversation (fifteen minutes) asking about someone's work and path, **explicitly not** asking for a job. The core networking move in this course. Specificity is what gets it answered. **Job req (requisition)** — An approved, budgeted open position. A studio can be "hiring" in general while having no open req for your role. Worth understanding, because it explains why enthusiasm alone never opens a door. **Referral** — An internal employee recommending you. Referrals are how most junior roles in this region actually get filled, which is why networking is a course requirement and not an elective personality trait. **Semantic matching** — How modern ATS software scores meaning rather than exact strings — "cross-functional coordination" already matches "project management" at some confidence. The reason keyword stuffing now reads as noise. **Shortlist** — The small set of candidates a hiring manager seriously considers. It frequently exists *before* the posting goes public. The entire practical goal of networking is to be on it. **Tailoring** — Adapting a resume to a specific posting: mirroring its job title, harvesting hard-skill vocabulary you genuinely have, reordering your strongest matching work to the top, and **cutting** what's irrelevant. Tailoring is subtraction as much as addition. **Target list** — Your ten prospective employers, five aspirational and five realistic-adjacent, each with a **named human being** attached. Companies don't answer email; people occasionally do. --- ## 4. Employment, Money & Career **Adjacent role / adjacent employer** — Work using your skills outside your dream sector: simulation and training, motion graphics and advertising, architectural visualization, medical and technical animation, location-based entertainment, e-learning, XR. In North Texas these hire far more juniors than AAA games does. **An adjacent first job is a strategy, not a failure** — it buys shipped credits, production discipline, and rent while the portfolio matures. **At-will employment** — The default in Texas: either party may end employment at any time, for almost any reason, without notice. Worth understanding before you need to. **Co-dev (co-development)** — A studio working alongside another studio's team on their project. Along with outsourcing, one of the most common realistic entry points into games. **Contract / project-based** — Employment for a fixed term or project. Accumulates credits quickly and teaches you to onboard fast; costs you benefits, continuity, and usually mentorship. **Contract-to-hire** — A contract role nominally leading to staff employment. Ask what the conversion criteria and timeline are. Indefinite contract-to-hire with no stated criteria is a red flag. **Day rate** — A flat rate for a day's work, common in freelance and production. Understand how yours converts to hourly and annual before you quote it. **Freelance** — Self-employment, contract to contract. It is a **business, not a job**: rates and scope in writing before work starts, 30–50% deposit, defined revision rounds, kill fee, net-30 terms, 1099 income, quarterly estimated taxes, and tracking your unbilled hours. The heuristic that your freelance hourly should be roughly **double** the equivalent staff hourly is approximately right — self-employment tax, no PTO, no employer insurance, and the unbilled time spent finding the next job. **Kill fee** — A pre-agreed payment if a client cancels a project mid-stream. Put it in the contract before you need it. **LBE (location-based entertainment)** — Theme park media, immersive attractions, projection and dome work, museum installations. A real and often overlooked employer of animation and real-time skills. **NDA (non-disclosure agreement)** — A contract restricting what you may show or discuss. Know what yours permits **before** you need to update your portfolio, and keep permitted personal copies of your work as you go — access disappears the day access disappears. **Net-30** — Payment due thirty days after invoicing. Standard in freelance, and the reason you need a cash runway even when you're fully booked. **Outsourcing studio** — A studio producing assets on contract for other studios' projects. A high-volume entry point, and a fast education in production standards. **Rate floor** — The number below which you say no. Decide it before the conversation, not during it. Required in your 90-Day Plan. **Runway** — How many months you can cover expenses without new income. Relevant when freelancing, between contracts, and after a layoff. **Salary band / range** — The budgeted pay range for a role. When asked "what are your expectations," defer once ("what range is budgeted for this?"), and if pressed give a **researched range**, never a single number, and never one below your floor. **Staff** — Salaried employment with benefits. Usually the best first job if you can get it — mentorship, a pipeline education, and a stable review cycle — at the cost of slower credit accumulation. **XR** — Umbrella term covering VR, AR, and mixed reality. In DFW, heavily concentrated in training, simulation, aviation, and enterprise applications rather than entertainment. --- ## 5. Web & Platform **Above the fold** — What's visible before scrolling. Your strongest work and a contact route both belong here. **Alt text** — Text describing an image for screen readers and search engines. Accessibility requirement and a small findability win. **Custom domain** — A web address you own (`firstnamelastname.com`, about $12/year). Point it at your platform profile even if you never build a site of your own. It survives every platform you'll outgrow. **Favicon** — The small icon in a browser tab. Trivial, thirty seconds, and its absence reads as unfinished. **Landing page** — The first page a visitor sees. Should be your work, immediately. No splash screen, no intro animation, no "Enter Site." **Responsive** — Adapting correctly to screen size. **Test your site on a phone** — a real share of first views happen on a phone in a hallway. **Sitemap** — The list of your pages and how they connect. For most portfolios: Home → Project pages → About/Contact. Anything more complicated needs a justification. **Unlisted (video)** — Hosted publicly but not indexed or searchable; anyone with the link can view. The right setting for a reel you're embedding and sending, but not broadcasting. **Wireframe** — A rough layout diagram — boxes and labels, no visual design. Used to test structure before committing to build. --- ## 6. Local & Community **Discord** — Where referrals actually get passed in practice: studio-adjacent, tool-specific, and regional servers. Lurking is not networking; answering someone else's technical question is. **DSVC / AIGA DFW** — Dallas Society of Visual Communications and the AIGA Dallas–Fort Worth chapter. Professional design communities with monthly programming, relevant if you're motion, illustration, or design-adjacent. **Game jam** — A time-boxed event (24–72 hours typically) where teams build a game from scratch. The fastest way to turn strangers into people who have **shipped something with you**, which is a far stronger relationship than having met someone. Also the fastest proof that you finish under a clock. **Guest Speaker Series** — Collin's departmental speaker program. Fall 2026 sessions in September, October, and November at Frisco or Wylie, with **Portfolio Review speakers in December, likely at Wylie.** One fall session is required for your Networking Log. **IGDA** — International Game Developers Association. The **Dallas chapter** runs regular meetups and social events and is entry-level friendly by design. **Society of Play** *(formerly Dallas Society of Play)* — A 501(c) non-profit game developer community based in North Dallas, running for about a decade. Twice-monthly meetups, game jams, tournaments, and mini-conventions, explicitly open to every experience level from "considering game dev" to full-time AAA. Also operates a **touring arcade cabinet** of member-made indie games — free to submit to. Often the least intimidating first event available to a student in this course. **Tech Arts Meetup (TAM)** — DFW's technical art community, founded by Nelson Lim (Professor of VFX and Games at UT Dallas ATEC; previously ILM). Meets the **third Thursday of each month**, free, and welcomes "tech artists in-the-making" alongside working riggers, simulation artists, shader artists, and pipeline developers. Recurring topics: Houdini, Maya, Python, Unreal, Unity, simulation, scripting, shading. **A Bunch of Short Guys (ABOSG)** — Dallas-based non-profit animation guild for professionals, educators, and students. Produces both **Industry Giants** and **Industry Insights**; events are ticketed and announced through Humanitix and their Facebook group. Collin College is a listed sponsor. **Industry Giants** — ABOSG's annual conference and the only animation/VFX/game development conference of its kind in Texas. **20th annual: Saturday, October 3, 2026, 9 a.m.–6 p.m., Edith O'Donnell Arts & Technology Building, UT Dallas.** 400+ artists, five main speakers, figure drawing, **portfolio reviews**, artist alley. Ticketed; register with your **.edu email**. The highest-density single day in the region for this exact cohort — and it falls the day after our Week 6 class. **Industry Insights** — ABOSG's free monthly talk series, typically Saturday 11 a.m.–1 p.m. at Dallas College Brookhaven, occasionally Collin College Plano. RSVP through Humanitix. Working professionals walking through real project pipelines. Free, two hours, and it counts for your Networking Log. **The three circles** — The networking model used in this course. **Peers** (your cohort — highest value over ten years, most underinvested in). **Practitioners two to six years ahead** (the workhorse circle; they answer messages and there's no power imbalance). **Decision-makers** (leads, ADs, recruiters — lowest response rate, highest leverage, reached *through* the other two). **90-day touch** — The second contact after someone helps you: a finished piece that exists because of their advice. Where the relationship actually forms, and where almost everyone quits.