I got that perspective from hiring an artist (and being hired as an artist). What's the secret? Have what the client wants.

I was looking to get a dog tattoo. So, I looked for a tattoo artist with dogs in the style I wanted in their portfolio.

As a visual effects artist I happened to make some dust in my early features. Since then, after looking at my demo reel, I've gotten hired to make more dust in movies.

What dust have you worked on? Has your dust evolved over time?

Dozens of hollywood movies from Hellboy (2004), Constantine, to R.I.P.D.

Absolutely, and it tracked along with technology and my ability to just cram more particles in the simulation or use new structures entirely like VDBs or Sparse Volumes. But the basic use of many (many many) layers of sculpted Perlin noise never changed.