Introduction

Firstly, I just want to say thanks for giving me the chance to share some thoughts, I appreciate the opportunity.

My name is Jaco Herbst. I am a self-taught freelance character artist, living in South Africa. I’ve been working mostly in the video games industry for the past 10 years, during which I’ve had a part in games like Dota 2, Counter-Strike, the Batman series and most recently the Total War: Warhammer series.

I got my start in the industry at a fairly young age, starting work pretty much straight after high-school. I have an online community, Polycount.com, to thank for that. I discovered the forum as I was trying to learn about modding. It was mostly dedicated to creating and sharing custom skins for games like Quake and Half-Life at the time. Discovering what this community was about blew my 15-year-old mind, and pretty soon I started posting my own work and participating in art challenges such as Dominance War, all the while getting excellent feedback and advice from generous industry pros.

The invaluable experience and exposure I got from that community led to me having somewhat of a portfolio by the time I finished high-school. An indie developer saw my work on the forum and got in touch; this was right around the time I was thinking about applying for university. Luckily I never got as far as actually applying, as the freelance was steady enough for me to take the plunge. I was very fortunate that my parents were so supportive of this strange career path!