Going for outsourcing jobs - good idea y/n?

So right, I'm coming up to graduating from an animation degree, I'm half Malaysian, and I've noticed a few companies in the UK are out sourcing art over there.

I'm thinking; go to Malaysia, get a job, level up, go back to the UK with experience, hit dragons.

I'm already in discussion with one company over there that's willing to train me (with expenses!) with the hope of having me for a further year if I train well. I'm not worried about pay initially, but when I get back UK-side I hope to have options that'll make me enough to live.

Is this a good idea? Has anyone tried this way into industry? Does anyone have experience with outsourcing? When westerners go colonial are they really as cruel as they say? If I accidentally step on a picture of the Queen, will a Red Coat strap me to a cannon and blow my guts across the Straits of Malacca?

 

Sadly, Chrome and Firefox eat the linebreaks when you preview your post.

I've got to say, if you're happy to live and work in Malaysia, then that's certainly a valid route. I know that places like India and China have issues where they train staff and they then immediately jump ship elsewhere (either to another outsourcer at a higher rate, or presumably move to the West like you suggest), so watch out for lock-in periods in your contract that tie you to the place you go.

I think most places here would treat experience learned in an outsourcing environment to be as good as or better than education experience here. You'll be working to tight deadlines, producing production quality art to spec. You might have a job proving that though, unless you can get clearance to put some of the production work you've done in a portfolio (not sure what the situation is like for that in outsourcing places).

There's probably a quality of life question though: as I understand it, conditions in outsourcing studios tend to be hard, like, real hard. Not a sweatshop, but certainly a tough, relentless environment. Although that's probably balanced by the cheaper cost of living in Malaysia. If you can stomach the environment, and survive the dragons, then it's probably a decent plan.

 

Thanks Cranky! I'm pretty sure the year contract is a lock-in style contract, I'll keep an eye on it. There's two contracts involved, a small one for training and a big one for employment. Hopefully the training one gives me time to get an idea of the environment before jumping in - if all is good, then I'm not too worried about being locked in (at least not for anything over a year), wages aren't the main concern and I'm fortunate to have family in Malaysia if things really hit the fan.

Also yeah, working hours is a bit of a concern. I'm researching that now. Hopefully the hours are reasonable and give time in the evening to work on your own projects (the projects they're dealing with look dry as). Otherwise yeah, I'll have to look for portfolio permissions - I'm told the outsourcing place I'm looking at has strong ties to the main studios so it shouldn't be too much hassel getting word from the higher ups.

I'll keep these in mind, thanks!

 

Oh yeah, one more thing. When I come back to the UK I'm also interested in trying film houses (I've freelanced in motion graphics), how does game art experience interact with film?

I'm noticing there was a big gap in requirements during 2000 between film and games, but these days with all the shaders and motion capture whatnot, you can pretty much get film quality in games if you put the resolution high enough. Is this really the case or am I missing something?

 

.