The-State-of-the-Art--What-ArtStation-Da

Well, hello everyone and welcome. My name is Justin. I lead the product and business team for ArtStation here at Epic Games. And this presentation here is a bit of a sneak peek to our first state-of-the-art report from ArtStation. Now, I want to just quickly check. I'll be very surprised if there's a number of folks in here who don't know ArtStation. Raise your hand if you do know ArtStation. Everyone? Oh, good. Not one person didn't raise their hand. Good. That makes my life a whole heck of a lot easier. But with you guys already knowing ArtStation, since 2014, when we launched, ArtStation really has planted itself as the premier portfolio platform for artists in the space. It's that fantastic place that we all get to enjoy, contribute to, as artists to showcase their work, our work, and for studios to find them and hire them. And in that time, we have amassed a whole ton of users on the platform, a whole host of content on the platform. Since then, we've grown to a little over 10.5 million registered users that are commenting, engaging, liking, following artists. And they're contributing and being a part of a community of 1.2 million artist portfolios, professional artist portfolios on the platform. those artists have shared 16.7 million projects to date. And I think, you know, you've all been to ArtStation. Those projects have tons of images and videos and 3D models and a host of really, really cool content. So the number of assets is kind of exponential from there. It's too big of a number for us to really put on the screen. And every single month, we have people that are enjoying about 200 million page views of content by about five to six million on average every single month in terms of unique folks coming. And with that, some people may not know, we also have a digital asset marketplace and a physical prints marketplace that aids artists, gives them opportunity to make extra living as an artist. And we've paid out over $26 million to those artists in that time frame. So some metrics that we're really proud of and really, again, I think really firmly plant ArtStation as that premier place for artists. And also wanted to kind of just share a breakdown of kind of the geography of ArtStation, who's coming to the platform. And I don't necessarily want to call out any specific country on this list, but really just to share the fact that we've got people from all over the world, right? And there's obviously some obvious population centers, right, that are higher up on this list. But again, it's people and artists from around the world that have come to the platform. And with that, and with all those users, with all of those projects, portfolios, resumes, we really discovered that maybe we have an opportunity to share what people are putting on their profiles. What are their skills? What are the tools that they're using? We really wanted to kind of share some of that. And a small little anecdote here is we've actually shared some of these data points at various different events or with customers with various different people over the years And when we do they pull out their phones and they take pictures of these charts like almost every single time And people are asking us can I get a PDF of that chart? I want to share it with my class or I want to show it to my colleagues. And so I think between those two things, it was like, you know what? Maybe we just make a whole presentation and report on that. And so again, to reiterate, we want to share a preview of kind of the full report that we're going to be releasing in a few weeks. So there are two main data sources that we have for our state-of-the-art report. So one, we did a survey out to our user base. Some of you may have participated on that. There was a little pop-up on ArtStation to take our survey. and we had about 4,400 people that participated in the survey and about 2,000 completions. And we really focused on those folks who spent the time to go through the whole survey. So that's a majority of the data that will be in the report. It was a combination, multiple choice questions throughout. We didn't do open text just due to some various privacy concerns around it, but we do want to look at that possibly in the future for future state-of-the-art reports. About 73% of the folks that completed that survey were artists, so a large portion of that. But we also had folks from studios, we had recruiters from studios, and also faculty members from various educational institutions as well. And then we paired that with, again, all of that rich stuff we see on ArtStation every single day, right? Public profile information on the skills people are proclaiming, the software tools that they use. Also, the demonstrated project information, or the software, the medium, and various other pieces of information. And then a lot of the jobs that people advertise in the platform who are trying to hire. In terms of the geography breakdown of the survey results, it was predominantly folks from Europe, but we did get, again, a spectrum of users from around the world. So to set the stage for some of the insights that we want to share with you today, you know, some of the things that we really wanted to convey were, you know, what are the changing skills and tools and workflows that artists at various different stages in their career are using or not using? We wanted to look at the changing career landscape. What are some of the challenges that artists and studios are facing in terms of finding work or hiring artists? And talk about, you know, maybe some of the gaps that might exist, either in expectation, tools, or even some divisive topics like generative AI. All right. So let's jump in and look at a few insights directly about artists. So what we see here is an overview of the location of those 1.2 million artists that are on the platform. Right? So predominantly, again, just like we saw with the traffic. See, I see phones taking pictures. Yeah. See, I knew it was going to happen. we again have artists represented from around the world. There's not one part of the world that's overrepresented from another. It's really showing, again, the global community that exists on the platform. And what we showing here is an overview of the proclaimed skills of users on the platform and we broken it out in what we saw at the beginning of 2024 and the beginning of 2025 Now, if you've been on ArtStation a long time, you probably know that we really started heavily focused on the concept art community, illustration community. But over time, it's really grown to accommodate artists of every type in our industry and in our space. And it's really, I was actually talking to someone earlier today, what we see today is a mix of, you know, dominantly 3D, but also dominantly 2D as well. So it's a great mix. But what we are seeing is that 3D modeling has been a skill that's been growing quite rapidly. Artists are adding this to their skills, adding this to their repertoire. But concept art illustration at its core is still a key piece to artists on the platform. And an overview, just kind of looking at just kind of the past year, would have been the more popular skills that artists have been working on and adding to their repertoire is, you know, again, 3D modeling. It's the biggest thing that's on here. But again, concept art, illustration, some of those 2D skills are still very, very valuable and obviously in demand. On the student side of it, it's honestly not too different other than 3D modeling is kind of at the core with students. Now, our student population on ArtStation is not the biggest. We're working to grow that and create some more opportunities for students to proclaim kind of where they're at in their career. But these are at least the students that are attached to the educational institutions that participate on ArtStation. now in terms of software skills on the platform photoshop kind of overshadows literally everything so you'll see that a couple times here and it continually you know kind of matches the kind of the growth rate that we see every single year on art station but one of the the changes that we've started to see is really on the kind of the following kind of five or six software tools, as there's been some kind of changes in places in terms of kind of dominance. Blender last year kind of kind of took the top spot as far as the top 3D tool and one of the faster growing 3D tools on the platform. Substance Painter is another one that's really grown in its dominance as well on our platform. And Unreal Engine has continued to grow at about 20% every single year for the past few years. So it's one of the faster growing tools that users are adding to their profiles. Now, I want to take a different look at that same data. So what we were showing before was kind of the proclaimed, right? Like I am this individual and I have this skill. This is more on the demonstrated side of it, right? So we also have all the projects that people are uploading. Again, I think it's not fair with Photoshop. Like sometimes when we share this, we just say excluding Photoshop because it's like far and above the most dominant piece on here. But definitely in the last year, Blender was a huge piece of the projects that were posted. Same with Substance and Maya not far behind. I also want to call out some of the 2D tools as well. So Clip Studio Paint and Procreate really have always kind of been neck and neck for the past few years, but still a core piece to the toolset that artists are using. And then here a similar view but really just looking at kind of students Again Photoshop is way up there but I think something that is interesting is illustrator placement here versus where it was for the broader set of mid and senior artists that are on the platform. So with this, one of the questions that we asked in our survey is why are you changing the tools that you're using? What are the top reasons for it? And throughout this presentation, we'll kind of show some of these types of questions of kind of priority. For this one specifically, we did want to kind of share kind of the waiting on this and not just something ordered because of the large delta that existed. Cost and pricing or pricing changes by far and above are the number one reasons why we're seeing, or at least what artists have told us, they're changing the tools that they're using. Some of the other top reasons are going to be just trying to find a better alternative. We all know tools change or upgrade over time. Licensing issues, right? I think we've all kind of seen a lot of that in the market, right? But also trying to find tools from companies that align with their, you know, their principles and, and, or might be changing because of some of the ethical concerns they may have with a company. All right. So that was kind of a, again, a sneak peek. There will be more in our full report, but wanted to share some of those, some of those kind of highlights, at least for artists in their portfolios. But we also went in and asked some questions about kind of where they're at in their career and a few pieces to it. So one of the questions we asked is, you know, what type of work or what is your current kind of career status? Like what are you either looking for or, you know, what's that current status? And actually, I was a little surprised by one of the items on here. I mean, I knew freelance and full-time were going to be pretty neck and neck as I've engaged with artists over the years. But contract was actually very, very small. I think this is an area that we're going to kind of try to dig into a little bit more into the future and kind of understand kind of some of the why behind this. But personal projects definitely makes up some of that as well, as there are some folks who are not necessarily in artist roles or trying to find artist roles, like my own profile in ArtStation, which, by the way, it's not under my actual name, so good luck. We also asked some questions about what were some of the biggest challenges in your career and growth for your career. I'm not going to read off all these on every single slide, but I will just call out some of those top ones around inconsistent income. Some of these things kind of click and make sense and are obvious. But some of the other struggles are going to be how do you market yourself? What are the things you need to do to kind of set yourself apart? But then also, how do you get discovered? So one is pushing yourself out there, but then how do people find you? And are you doing the right things? in terms of folks that are looking for full-time work and some of the the struggles that they they have right now and some of their top concerns when I look at these responses here they're not so different from what I think we hear or maybe some of us hear about other industries as well, right? Lack of responses from application submissions. Not the right jobs, or sorry, not enough jobs in my particular region. Not getting feedback or being ghosted after interviews is is a problem for artists. And I think especially if, you know, there's probably many artists here in the room, when you don't have proper feedback, it's hard to really know how to do better. And that's kind of a core piece to being a professional artist. And on the freelance side of things, we also wanted to kind of understand how freelancers are finding work as well and some of the dominant ways. The top ones here, I think, are probably not too much of a surprise, But, you know, personal and professional referrals, right? Your network, events like this are going to be key to that. But I was a little bit surprised by just direct outreach. And some of those cold emails actually are a big piece to people actually finding work. I found that a little bit interesting. I thought that was going to be a bit lower. we also wanted to understand um and have artists have the opportunity to convey to the studios that are hopefully going to be um and some maybe hiring managers that might be reading this report but you know what was what's what uh what do artists wish that recruiters better understood about hiring artists and what's frustrating about it. You know, the first one here I've heard from artists quite a bit, that, you know, portfolios are more important than a CV, right? Just a list of, you know, where you worked your titles and what you've achieved is one thing, but showing what you did and how you got there are definitely the most important. As we saw in some of the earlier ones, you know, getting clearer feedback on why they're being rejected or why they weren't selected. for the opportunity. And I think this is something we see definitely in the games industry a lot, but formal education or big AAA names on your resume isn't everything, right? So you can be just as qualified without a lot of that history. All right, so let's shift gears here a little bit. We want to kind of also look at what are studio saying about some of their hiring needs and some of their pieces. We went out and asked our studio leads, our hiring managers at studios and art directors, but also dedicated recruiters, what were the types of roles they are hiring for and have been hiring for in the past year? Just to kind of get a sense if the skill changes that we're seeing on the platform, how that might correlate or how that might match up to the top jobs on there. And I think they do start to kind of start to make a little bit of sense. You know, the top ones here being, you know, 3D character artists, general concept art, 3D environment artists, material artists, and again, environment. I think that it does start to make sense with some of the things that we see in terms of the changes in artist portfolios, projects they're posting as well. In terms of what studios are hiring for, I think this is one, as I mentioned before, we also asked about what artists are, what their status is, what they're kind of looking for. And there is a bit of a delta here. And again, that is an area we want to kind of look into a little bit further and maybe try to understand a bit better and convey that back out. But there's kind of an even split between, you know, full-time freelance and contract. But again, contract is pretty dominant here versus what we're seeing from artists and what they're really open to and interested in looking at. We also wanted to ask studios what makes a candidate portfolio stand out And by far and above quality and polish of the work Second is originality and creative voice Relevance to the job that is trying to be filled. And then a key one here, a breakdown of workflows and processes. In terms of some of the gaps, we asked that question of Studio, when you don't select some, what are some of the top reasons why? The main one is just missing technical skills or workflows. Not enough professional polish on that portfolio. Some weak fundamentals, and actually I want you to remember that one because I think there's some key things later on in this presentation. presentation that will have that make a little bit more sense. And then just ultimately, unrealistic scope or focus in their portfolio. Another piece of data that we pulled from our ArtStation platform, and what we're seeing here are the popular job titles from job ads that we had on ArtStation going back to 2023. And again, once again, we do see some change versus what recruiters are hiring for right now versus what we've seen over the long term. Animation, character art, concept art, environment art were the kind of the top job titles of studios that have been recruiting, at least on ArtStation. And this will be another one we'll dive into a little bit more in our full report. In terms of the industries that we see hiring on ArtStation, I mean, games by far and above is the number one industry that people are coming to ArtStation to hire for. But we have seen some shifts in that. Things with games has gone down in the past couple years. But we've also seen some of those gaps filled by some other areas. Animation being a key one that's starting to grow quite a bit. With various other ones kind of staying relatively flat. in terms of the top software skills that are represented and the job postings that have been on art station there's been some fluctuation in the top tools but you know not not a ton noteworthy blender has really been on the rise lately also unreal engine is has also continued to grow during that time frame. Photoshop, not as high on this list. Just note for any artists in the rooms. It's not the biggest one. Also, with the folks that are coming to ArtStation to hire, and actually more specifically, the folks that are actually posting jobs on the platform, We've got a good mix of, you know, kind of the countries represented, though the United States has been kind of the top of the companies that have been hiring or at least been posting jobs on the platform. Another, you know, metric that I wanted to add here was what we see in terms of remote versus onsite. There been a lot of companies more broadly just globally that are know are eliminating remote work or they going back to on And in terms of what we seen with our job postings and the companies that are doing recruiting on ArtStation, they actually haven't deviated really, you know, back to being on-site. And the trend continues of more remote work versus on-site, but it's really kind of started to stay pretty steady in terms of that. At least, again, we're high on the game side of things, but in our industry, that's what we see. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about generative AI. I love this image. Thank you, Sierra. All right. So there's a few insights we'll share today on generative AI, but one of them we wanted to share was at least the projects that people are posting on ArtStation. Now, earlier on in the presentation, we talked about, you know, what were some of the top skills, but also some of the top projects that were posted. Generative AI doesn't even really make it on to that list because it is still a very small subset of what does get shared on the platform. At the beginning of January 2024, we had just under 100,000 projects on the platform that were tagged with Generative AI tools. Now, it is growing pretty rapidly, but it's still not on a trajectory to kind of hit some of those top either tags or skills or projects for quite some time. But it did grow almost 70% in a year's time frame. So there are more artists that are starting to use them. And in terms of what tools, what generative AI tools that we're seeing tagged currently, and we're constantly monitoring this, but Mid Journey and Stable Diffusion are definitely the top ones. You know, Dolly pretty far behind that. And then in the other category, there's about 15 other generative AI tools that kind of make up that mix. But in our survey, we also wanted to ask our artists, we wanted to ask our art directors, how do you see AI and are you using AI tools in your artist workflows? And I'll kind of let most of this data kind of speak for itself, but I think there's a little bit of softening here. I think a few years ago it was a staunch no. I think there was a lot of angst about it. But what we see here is that there's folks that are starting to use it regularly, occasionally, or they're very interested in using it in their workflows. And about kind of the other half are not using it, not allowed to in their workflows. So I think this one's pretty interesting. Now, obviously, there's issues with it, for sure. There's concerns about generative AI. I mean, I'm sure we could probably spend days and days and weeks and weeks discussing, debating this topic, and we should. We should absolutely discuss it. But the top issues were pretty clear and they were all pretty close. You know, copyright and ownership issues. I think that's very obvious. The devaluation of human-made art, right? I think that's really close to, you know, something that's probably on our minds. Misuse. I think we saw a lot of misuse in the especially the earlier days of it But it still is a big topic of discussion Potential job displacement and especially one that really close to you know ArtStation and some of the things we think about around lack of transparency and disclosure. But we also didn't want to ask just artists. We also wanted to find out from schools and educators how they're seeing this. What is the next generation of artists that are going to be in our space or just coming into the industry? You know, what does that world start to look like? So we asked questions of educators, you know, what their institution stance is of generative AI tools by their students. And, you know, again, we have some, you know, it's kind of mixed. It's not definitely leaning one way or another at this point. With, you know, in some institutions allowing it for exploration or allowed with disclosure versus not allowed or, you know, there's not a policy to allow it. And in terms of, you know, the folks, or in terms of it being in curriculum, you know, it's still dominantly, it's not necessarily part of the curriculum, but it is starting to for some, where it's part of coursework or they've got it in some of their workshops. But educators also have some concerns about this. Now, back on the studio slides, there was something about, you know, weak fundamentals, right? And one of the top concerns of educators is students relying too heavily on AI instead of building core skills. So I think this is definitely something that we're going to be watching, but I think is definitely something as any of us are mentoring junior artists for them to make sure that they've got really good core skills. AI doesn't displace creativity. And at the core, you've still got to be a good artist. But like we saw from the other artists, ethical concerns around copyright and data usage, difficulty assessing original work versus AI work, and then a lack of clear guidelines or policies for responsible use. All right. So again, hopefully you guys, hopefully everyone here found some of these data points interesting. I've seen a lot of cameras, which totally okay with that. Keep doing it. But this is just a taste of the insights. We had a very full survey with a lot of questions. We've got a lot of additional data points that our team are compiling and refining now to integrate into our report. So we'll have more on artist challenges, more on workflow and other tools outside of creation tools. We'll also talk about other sources of income. income. I mentioned in the beginning of presentation, we're proud of our $26 million that we've paid out to artists in our marketplaces. So we want to talk a little bit about other work. A little bit about hardware. We'll talk more about hiring trends, school insights, and a few more tidbits on AI and generative AI. So with that, thank you all for joining. And we will open it up for some questions, if you guys have some. And if you don't, I'll be at the art station slash fab booth and happy to answer questions that I can or have some discussions on any of these points or even hear some of your own experiences in some of these. Thanks, everyone. Appreciate it. Thank you.