quote:
ik post hem dan wel in zijn geheeld, omdat ik denk dat dit wel relevant voor iedereen is.
even voor de duidelijkheid, dit is van streamline studios, niet van mij.
'''Dare to stick out of the crowd – Your successful Portfolio
So you just graduated, or you decided to get back into the race to find a new job? Congratulations! You have an exciting time ahead of you, and eventually plenty of work, especially when you are just as many of us who don’t keep their portfolios up to date. ;-)
Thinking of your portfolio you might ask yourself: “What should I show?”, “What is the best way to present my work?”, “What makes my portfolio stand out of the crowd?” Those and many other questions might arise. With this tutorial we want to give you the tools you need in order to create a good portfolio.
Dare to cherry pick
No matter if you are a 2D or 3D artist: Start going through all your work and make a long list of works that you think are worth showing off. You should base your selection on quality not quantity. Out of this long list you can make a short list if you feel it is too much, or you can prioritize and focus first on the “Must be inside portfolio” and another part into the “nice to have inside portfolio”. Be sure to think about what you want to achieve in your demo. Doing so makes it easier to stay focused.
It is good to impress with insane artwork, complex meshes, plenty of details in concept, etc. However, it is also good to have e.g. simple props in your portfolio. As long as the quality is on a high level, even simple assets will reflect a skill: that you can also do less complex work and make it look good. Especially when you are a graduate you will most likely not be hired to do the real high level stuff, and it is good to show that you can do the simple things, whilst the more complex things show more where you specifically stand with your art skills. Try to have a nice and healthy balanced selection of assets in your portfolio.
Dare to be creative
So what if you just graduated and don’t have enough to show, that would reflect your skills well enough? Well, then we’d say it’s time you start getting creative. You can pick and model e.g. items of your surrounding area, or you get your inspiration from another game, or a movie, or a piece of music, a paragraph in a book to inspire you and try to model it, and create it in a way how you think it should be. Sky is not a limit, but you have to sit down and create something.
Dare to be diverse
A good portfolio also covers a variety of different art styles. Show that you can do realistic, but also cartoony, or stylized art. You should show that you are capable of creating technical (robots, environments, vehicles, etc.) and organic work (characters, monsters, etc.).
So what if you are not good in creating e.g. organic art? Our advice is to not try to make something that you cannot do. If you don’t have e.g. any organic art in your portfolio, then it means that you are not interested in it, and ultimately that is not the position you are looking for. You are definitely better off when showing only the best of the best, and leave the less good work out of your portfolio.
Dare to show the process
Show the different steps and how you got to the final result. Dare to include scribbles and sketches into your presentation, show the concept art, or the references you used. If you are a 3D artist you want to show the meshes and the steps from high poly model to low poly model of your asset from, and that from various different angles (side, front, back, etc.). Show your model without texture. In case you textured your model, show the final result as a render and show the different textures such as normal, spec, and diffuse maps. If you stick to this advice you show that you know how to do game models.
Dare to mention you can
When you present your art work be sure to mention all specs that are important. You want to list the software that you used to create the art.
When you show off 3D work it is good to also list e.g. the amount of polys you were using in order to create the model. For High Poly models it shows with how many polys you can work, for low poly models it shows that you can also work within limitations and with poly budgets. Specify Game Art from e.g. ZBrush work.
Also make sure to list resolutions of textures, and lay them out so that everyone can see that you know how to use your space effectively.
Dare to give credit
You don’t need to be able to do everything, but you also shouldn’t show artwork that you did not complete entirely autonomous. Make sure to communicate that you give credit where credit is due and explain exactly what you did. It doesn’t leave a good impression, and the Art Director who thought you can do all these other things, too, won’t be too happy when hiring you just to find out that you can’t complete specific tasks you were hired to do. Specify what you did and what others did.
Dare to make your work stand out – and nothing else
The best way to show off your work is by creating your own website. If you can’t create your own site try to ask a friend who might just have the required skills to create one for you.
There are also other ways in how to showcase a portfolio, e.g. a demo reel that you can distribute as download from your website. Try to stay away from making CDs. Generally it is always better to have your portfolio online and accessible. Save the time and money with burning disks and sending it to studios.
If possible don’t use Flash to create your website. People always tend to create flashy buttons, and integrate sounds and overall your attempt of getting hired does not benefit from doing so. You ultimately want your work to stand out, not the website. A well designed website compliments your work and doesn’t distract from it.
Also try to stay away from adding music players, and other personal things such as the photos of the last birthday party on your site. This is your portfolio site, a tool that you are using to get hired.
Dare to be functional and put it all together
Keep your site simple, and make sure that site visitors DON’T have to pass a so called “splash-page” first. There is no reason to hide your work behind a splash page. Ultimately you want people to get directly to the content of your website: artwork created by you!
Make sure that everything can be reached within maximally 3 clicks, and that thumbnails are large enough to give a good impression of the image that you will see when clicking on it.
Make sure that the navigation is easy and simple. You want to show your work that you can categorize in different sections. There should be one button to send a direct email to you, have your CV online and also provide download-able PDF or Word versions. When providing PDF files make sure to also provide a link to the direct download of a PDF reader. The same goes for any animations, demo reel that you are providing: make sure to not only embed them but to offer download-able version in different file formats such as Quick Time, or AVI, etc. In case that you are using different codecs you should make sure to also provide a link to a direct download for it. Inform your site visitors what they are downloading and what the file size is.
Dare to optimize your content
In these days people never have time, don’t make them wait unnecessarily. Create your images for the web with a maximum size of 1024 x 768, it is also good to have larger files to show, but a JPG with about 3 MB shouldn’t be online. Demo Reels should be optimized, too, even when you decide to deliver them on CD: e.g. a three minute demo reel with 700 MB is too excessive and shows that you are technically not too capable or that you simply didn’t care.
Dare to fight bugs
Make sure that all links are working. Nothing is worse than having a website containing links that are broken, or even worse: a website that is not running on other browsers or browser versions and crashes machines! Again, if you have a hard time making a barrier free website, try to ask around in your network and try finding someone who can help you out. Be sure to give them credit for it. You should ultimately test your website or CD on other computers, with other user profiles, and other browsers or browser versions installed. Your website doesn’t necessarily have to run in the latest browser software or on super computers. The best you can do is finding an old machine with the main browsers installed. Try to run your website or portfolio CD on it. Assure yourself that all links are working, that everything is displayed correctly, that the page is loading fast enough, and doesn’t get your PC to crash. When you are sure that everything is safe, then it is time to move on to the next step.
Dare to demo your portfolio to others
This is the final test you want to go through. Grab your friend, your professor, friend, and another artist … whoever you think works best, and start demoing your portfolio to them. Guide them through your work, and talk about it, what you did, why you did it, and how. Let them ask you questions and try to answer them. You are doing it in order to find out if it is easy to navigate through your website. If you notice that you run into issues finding the way back to pictures you want to revise your navigation, if you have issues explaining a process, then you want to consider adding the missing steps in between. Last but not least it is a good practice in talking in front of others about your work and getting feedback that you can implement in a revised version.
Dare to send it out
Well now that you worked so hard you deserve to show off your portfolio to the world. Bring it online, if you haven’t done so already, and send it together with your CV and cover letter to the companies you wish to work for.
We hope these tips were helpful and that you enjoyed this newsletter.
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