It takes a great number of individuals working together in various disciplines to make any commercial enterprise function.

The mobile games industry is certainly no exception, offering dynamic and diverse roles to thousands the world over.

As such, PocketGamer.biz has decided to celebrate this with a regular series of interviews where each week we chat to a mobile games industry professional from a different field - be it game design, art, or PR - to learn about how they bagged that job in games.

Obviously every career path is different, but the goal is to give a picture of the sorts of skills, qualifications and ambition one might need to find themselves in such a role - and how we can all learn from it.

This time, the spotlight is on Vincent Coupal, Senior Technical Artist at Gameloft Montreal, Canada.

PocketGamer.biz: Tell us a little about your current role and what it entails.

Vincent Coupal: The biggest part of my job is essentially to act as a bridge between artists and programmers, as they tend not to speak the same “language”.

This can take many forms, but most often it entails understanding the technical constraints of a project and establishing guidelines for the artists, creating and maintaining the art production pipeline, and training artists on how to use the various production tools and software.

In other words, I try to provide the best environment for artists to be creative by providing the tools they need and by shielding them from all the technical “mumbo jumbo”.

How did you first get into this job?

I was hired at Gameloft a little over nine years ago as a general 3D artist, fresh out of university. At first, I did everything from 3D modeling, texturing, lighting and particle effects since the production teams were pretty small at the time.

Over the years, as the projects became more ambitious and the teams grew, I took on the role of Lead Artist, where I would manage the art team but also have some technical responsibilities.

However, mobile devices kept getting more powerful over the years and the games became more complicated to develop as well, so about four years ago I took on the role of Technical Artist.

At first it was a bit tough, as I had to learn a lot of new things, like coding for instance, but fortunately I had some very patient co-workers who taught me a lot.

Is it something you ever imagined yourself doing?

That's a really interesting question. Thinking about it now, I can say that it's not really something I imagined myself doing, but looking back over the years it makes perfect sense that I ended up where I am.

I guess I had the “Artist” part down for a while. And even after a couple years as a 3D artist, I would never have thought that I would ever become a “TechArt” as we call them, but here I am!

I believe that my experience as an artist allowed me to become a good technical artist, as I know the pitfalls we're likely to encounter and the solutions required to avoid them.

And while I sometimes miss the opportunity to create artwork myself, I get a lot of satisfaction by enabling artists and seeing the crazy things they come up with using the tools I develop.

What did you study to get your role? What courses would you advise for aspiring professionals in the area?

I majored in a program called “Interactive Multimedia Creation” in university, where I studied a wide range of subjects. We had classes in photography, video, animation, web design as well as some scripting and writing classes.

However, since I've always wanted to work in the video games industry, I minored in 3D Creation and took a lot of classes where we practised 3D modeling and animation, as well as some video games-related classes.

Nowadays, I would say that there are a lot more options if you want to pursue a career in video games. You can even find schools dedicated to teaching video game creation, which I think is great. However, if such a school isn't available in your area, don't worry.

Programming and 3D classes are common and are usually a very good entry point to a career in video games. There are a lot of online classes you can take as well. However, I have found that the more fundamental aspects of video game creation are learned on the job.

Is there anything about the job/industry you wish you would have known when first joining?

I think what has surprised me the most over the years is the speed at which everything changes. New hardware and software are constantly popping up and creation methods are always evolving. If you want to keep progressing in this industry, you definitely have to stay up to speed.

While I personally enjoy this part of the job, I think it's still worth mentioning that you can't simply “surf” on what you know for very long and expect to be successful.

What other advice do you have for someone looking for a job in this profession?
Dedication is key, I would say. There are a lot of resources to learn the skills required to work in the video games industry; however, there is no other way to improve but to practice a lot.

But I guess this is true for everything. If creating video games is something you really want to do, there's no reason you can't do it. You simply have to put your mind to it.