Navee Mentee Interview – Nancy
What’s your current job or area of study?
I currently work as a UI artist at a company called Electric Manta. And I’ve been there just over a month.
Why did you want to join Navee?
So I could get a job, so that worked out!
What’s your area of interest that you wanted to use Navee for?
I wanted to become a UI artist in games. But I wanted to learn more about making UI art and games art in general. And to improve my portfolio in the hopes that I would have a better
chance of getting a job in games.
How did you find out about Navee?
I did an internship a year ago now, maybe less than that. And somebody that worked at the place where I was interning, told me about Navee. I guess you could say I found out through a
job.
What has Navee helped you with, other than getting a job?
I’ve learned a lot about the subject. There’s definitely a lot that I didn’t know before that I feel like I’ve been able to use to help grow my portfolio and stuff.
Has anything changed as a result of the mentorship?
I’ve been in touch with the people that are interested in the fact that I’m doing UI and that I’m a woman. Basically, there’s not that many people doing UI, let alone women doing UI. That’s what
I’ve been told, so a few people were interested in me, maybe going to events and doing talks about how I managed to get into doing UI as a job.
Why did you choose UI?
It was sort of trial and error. I tried lots of different things and nothing else was really working for me. I have quite strong illustration skills. I like drawing. I do a lot of digital art. And I wanted to
have some kind of career that involved that and I tried different things. Concept art is a job that’s in quite high demand. But hard to get into because there’s a lot of people going for that. And I was struggling to kind of keep up. So concept artists will churn out lots and lots of work really, really fast. I can work fast, but I felt like that didn’t really suit me so much, so I was trying to find other ways I could be creative in games, and then ended up finding out about UI art, and that worked for me a lot better.
How have you and your mentor worked together to achieve your goals?
We’ve had Google meetings. He will send me a brief and then the following week, I’ll show him what I’ve made on that, in response to that brief, and then he’ll give me feedback, and then I’ll
act on that feedback. That’s kind of how it’s been working.
So you can add those briefs to your portfolio?
That was the plan, I haven’t added anything to my portfolio yet. He’ll give me advice on how I can improve something I made with one of his briefs. And then I’m improving more and more on
it so that I think eventually I’ll be able to have something that will be portfolio ready.
Are there any other points you want to add or talk about about the Navee mentorship?
I think it’s been really good. I hope that I can keep chatting to my mentor because he knows a lot about that subject.
How long have you been chatting to him so far?
Since the beginning of the Navee programme.
