Struggling to break into the industry? Is your folio helping you?
So following on from my AMA post a while back a lot of Polycounters have contacted me and asked for folio critiques.
Most of those asking for help were students or graduates and there were a lot of similar problems with their current folio.
So, I thought I’d take some time to share some insights here.
The purpose of a folio
Let’s first answer a critical question, one that I think many students haven’t properly considered.
“Why do you make a folio?”
Well, there could be two possibilities:
Art for you is a hobby and you simply like to share your work with the world to get feedback, praise, etc. The folio for you is a gallery of your art.
You want to make this your career. So the folio is there to get you a job.
I’ll assume you are in the #2 camp in that you want to have a career as a game artist.
With that in mind, there are two levels to your folio:
- Quality
- Content
Now obviously quality is an issue. If you can make good game art then clearly this will strengthen your chances. If your art is not up to standard, then you have more practice and learning to do before you’re ready.
The content part though is something that many students and graduates overlook as they don’t seem to fully understand how this comes into play.
This is a really competitive industry now. There are so many students out there all trying to compete for that first job. If you want to achieve success, you need to do all you can to stand out from the crowd.
That means delivering on quality AND content.
You can have amazing artwork in your folio, but if it’s not relevant to the job, or doesn’t answer the right questions when an employer is reviewing it, it won’t matter.
But surely it’s just about good art?
It’s a common misconception. Those with good art will be an instant hire or at least an instant interview. Right?
Wrong!
You can have good art but you still need to show you are the right fit for the role.
Let’s look at this another way.
Would you hire an electrician to fit a tap?
Well, why would someone hire you for a specific role when your folio says otherwise?
Yes, character artists, environment artists, vehicle artists, concept artists and high poly artists are all just artists.
But plumbers and electricians are both just tradesmen.
Who knows, maybe the high poly guy could do good game res art.
And maybe that electrician could fit the tap but are you going to pay to find out?
Are you going to pay to find out when there are other applicants that can show examples of exactly what you are looking for?
In a competitive market, which approach will give you the best chance of success?
What do employers want to know?
Let’s take this from the employer’s point of view.
What is it that they need to know to convince them to hire you above everyone else?
Think about what hiring is...
You are trading money for services or products. You do this yourself all the time, you just might not frame it this way.
For example, you might hire a tradesman like a plumber to fit a tap, a dentist to keep your teeth in order. You might make a purchase at a store.
How do you make those decisions?
Generally, you make them because you have CONFIDENCE that you are making the right choice.
Take for example the dentist.
On one hand you have a shiny dental practice. The waiting room is clean and modern. On the wall you see a board with all the staff names, each with various official sounding letters after them. It all feels genuine and gives you real CONFIDENCE in using them.
Now compare that to some guy in an alley shining shoes with a little hand-written board saying ‘dental work also carried out here’. Have confidence in using this one?
OK, the example is a bit extreme, but in principle its similar. You can’t go applying for a specific job with a folio that doesn’t back you up. That just doesn’t provide the employer with any confidence that you are the best fit for the role.
So if you’re going to put in an application for a game environment art role, your folio better contain actual game environment work. Not a load of characters. Not a series of high poly assets.
Actual GAME environment work.
For employers, your folio is usually the first time they will have seen anything about you so you need to make sure that you do everything possible to quickly build confidence in them to take the application forward.
You also want to eliminate anything that will negatively affect that confidence.
For any advertised role, there will usually be a number of applicants all advertising their services. The employer needs to shortlist these applicants to get to the interview stage where they will ask questions to try and build more confidence and ultimately make a decision.
You want to be on that shortlist.
And here's the really scary bit…
Some employers receive so many applications that they take a slightly different approach. When they look at folios it’s to try and find any reason to quickly ELIMINATE people from their list.
Don't let that be you.
Hiring a Junior Artist
Most of the questions I received regarding folios came from students/graduates and juniors. So what is it that you need to do at this level?
When employers look for a new junior hire, typically they want to add an artist to their team who can come in and do a specific job.
They won’t expect you to know everything but they do want someone that they believe can work on the task assigned without constant supervision. They don’t want to hire someone that will need constant help as this just sucks time off them or other artists on the team who will already be busy with their own work.
So, what is the best way to show you have that capability and give them that confidence in you?
Let’s take an example for a junior environment art role...
As hiring manager, you get a number of folios through to review. These generally fall into 3 categories:
A concise folio showing a couple of full environment scenes. Also includes props, wireframes and texture breakdowns of the work.
A collection of different pieces; one vehicle, one character, a little quad with some texture work on, a prop and few unfinished assets filling out the rest.
A collection of high res weapon assets and a couple of material samples.
You don’t have the time or budget to interview everyone so from these examples, which would you shortlist for interview?
Of course the answer is obviously 1, but I’m amazed at how many students don’t see to make this connection when presenting their folio.
To have a chance of standing out from the crowd you need to provide good quality game art that is relevant to the role.
Think about the questions that would be going through an employer’s head as they review some typical folios...
They have some lovely images here but do they know how to make efficient assets that I can actually put into the game on budget?
Can they use a game engine, all of the stuff in this folio is rendered?
The vehicle model is pretty good, the character is OK but I am looking for someone to make props and buildings. They only have one prop here and that’s not really enough to make a judgement from. Some of the other applicants have shown multiple props and buildings - I think I’ll go with them for now.
They have a load of real world weapons in there. They are decent enough but can they make anything else? I don’t need them to build weapons in this game.
Can they handle work that needs a bit of creativity rather than just copying real world objects? I don’t have time or budget to get them detailed concept art for everything.
Now look at your own folio. What kind of roles are you applying for? Are you building or reducing confidence?
As I said before, you want to do all you can to quickly build confidence and eliminate any reasons for doubt.
Instead of giving them any reason to say NO, make it EASY for them to say YES.
Dealing with lack of content
I get it. It’s tough when you are starting out. There’s so much to learn and it takes time to build up that folio of good work.
Here’s the big problem. Students seem to panic a bit. They know they lack content and many just chuck everything they have into the folio to try and show all the things they can do.
It’s a common misconception that showing more equals better.
Unfortunately, as much as the good pieces help to build confidence, every questionable one helps to take it away.
Remember that some employers may look for any reason to eliminate you from their list.
The Generalist mistake
I don’t know how many times I’ve heard students refer to themselves as ‘a bit of a generalist’.
Look, when you are starting out maybe you just need time to figure out what interests you most, and that’s fine. Experiment, try things out. Learn where your strengths lie.
One thing I can tell you though is that big studios are very unlikely to be looking for junior art generalists. To me this is an oxymoron. You can’t be a generalist and still be a ‘junior’. It takes time to become good at one thing, never mind trying to reach a professional level in several.
It’s also hard to create enough good quality content to build confidence in a single area, without trying to compete in all of them.
If you want a quicker route to success, then I would recommend focusing on one thing and doing it well.
By doing this, you will drastically reduce the amount of things you think you need to learn. It will also define what type jobs you apply for and what you put in your folio to aid your application. You can always build on other areas once you have a job.
Summing Up
So, when putting together your folio, and before you send it out, ask yourself these questions.
Is the work shown relevant to the role?
Will this work make me stand out?
Will all of the work included help build to confidence or is there anything in there that might reduce it?
Happy hunting and best of luck!
And in case you missed it, here's the AMA...
http://polycount.com/discussion/174685/im-a-games-industry-art-director-ask-me-anything/p1
Replies
Your post should serve as a good reminder for all of us looking for the chance to make it, so a thank you for your time and effort to put it up (as well as your Q&A thread)!
Are they so good at sculpting that they only do that, and let someone else do the lowpoly ?
Sometimes it seems almost like someone only do hair planes, and/or only character faces.
I think its just that they dont want to retopo/uv at home. and since they are already established they enjoy doing the fun part.
Question; why do I see a lot of great artists at big game studio doing lots of sculpts but not much game ready characters on their folio ?
When you get more progressed in your career there are other things that affect your ability to get hired and the folio becomes less significant. Reputation and contacts become important. Particular titles that you’ve worked on can also have an influence.
Basically, at that stage, you don’t need to do the same things as someone who is starting out. You don’t have everything to prove.
If you have a good reputation and you’ve been doing this for a while, it’s kind of a given that you understand the basics of making the game res stuff well. Just doing really good art can now be a stronger sell.
Also, when you work in the industry all day, you find less time afterwards to work on personal stuff. For those that do, I’m sure they are more interested in the exciting parts of the work. For character artists that means doing sculpts instead of worrying about retopologizing, UVs and finalising a game ready mesh.
When you are trying to get that first big break, your folio is everything to you. It’s generally the only thing you have to show an employer that you have both talent and an understanding of what is needed to actually do the job.
That is the case of something that @GeorgeCrudo already mentioned, but I can confirm that I heard the same thing. Studio doesn't look that much at the technical side of things, but they want you to have the artistic side nailed down. They can't teach you how to do sculpt/draw, but they can teach you how to UV/Retopo properly quite fast.
Of course, if you can to these things and sculpt extremely well that works for your favor even more
- have a source of income and be a part of the games industry
- prove your work has real value to a potential employer
- get critique and feedback from actual paying customers
- learn what sells and what doesn't sell in the games industry
- get PAID to make new stuff
- write off all of your software purchases through taxes
- separate yourself from the 100,000 other wannabes who sit at home waiting for Blizzard to call
- have employers coming to YOU with job offers instead of you chasing them
If you really want to make a demo reel you can render out some of your assets that you sell.
Don't sit around waiting.
Good to see a little discussion happening around this. I’d like to add some of my opinions to a couple of these.
Jakub
I can’t speak for all studios but I would really caution against this approach. Of course studios can teach you new skills. It can be common for artists to be hired and have to switch game engine or jump from Maya to Max and vice versa, though this is maybe more for experienced artists and seniors than those just starting out.
However, I personally find it unlikely that a studio will hire someone knowing they need to put time and resource against teaching them UV mapping and re-topologizing when they really should have those skills already. I certainly wouldn’t. These are core skills that any game artist, even a junior, should already have.
Ask yourself this. If you apply for a position and are up against other good artists who CAN show that they understand UV mapping and topology already, why would the studio decide to take you on instead?
In a competitive industry you need to do all you can to stand out or you will find yourself missing out again and again.
RyanB
While your points about selling work seem perfectly reasonable, it’s not necessarily that easy to actually make money this way. If you CAN do this then great, go for it. If you can build your folio and make money at the same time, that's a win win.
You are 100% right that people need to take action and stop sitting around waiting. However, I find it highly unlikely that as a student/graduate you will ever ‘have employers coming to YOU with job offers instead of you chasing them’.
You absolutely need to take action to improve your skills, your folio and in being proactive looking for that first job. But please don’t think you can simply put your work out there and they will come.
Even if you just want more exposure for your demo reel it makes sense to stick your assets on an asset store.
Heck, give your demo away for free on an asset store if you don't want to make money.
From what I've seen, I agree with the small polished portfolio vs. a large unfinished one. I will add that it's very important to know why you're doing each project and what skills you will gain and what knowledge it will demonstrate.
For example, if you're going for hard surface, really think about what your employer wants to see.
Let's say you want to go hard surface. You want to show employers that you can model a lot of complex hard surface shapes (especially organic hard surface). You could make an Ak or Ar15; however, most employers have seen those before and all the answers are pretty much online already. Instead, I think a high end film or digital camera or any powertool can be a good idea. It's a small manageable project, it has tons of interesting hard surface shapes, you'll need to figure out proportions from reference, it's a good way to figure out the intricacies of normal map baking, and the textures need to be good but there aren't too many materials. Since it's the first portfolio piece, don't worry about taking super long on it. Just make sure EVERY PART is up to AAA standards. Don't worry that your industry friend said that they can make this camera in 1 week. It doesn't matter. Take two months if you need to. Just make sure that you are learning the hows and whys of every skill so you can apply that knowledge quickly in an art test or studio setting!
After that's finished, it could be a good idea to apply that complex hard surface and normal knowledge to a concept. I believe working from concept should be done afterwards as I've seen a lot of artists simplify concepts because they want to avoid complex shapes. When you have an idea of how more organic hard surface works, you can put that knowledge into making whatever concept you're working on more interesting.
After that's finished, maybe tackle a larger hard surface project or a hard surface project with non-common materials (wood, carbon fiber, etc). Not only do you show a good understanding of hard surface, but you show that you can create materials other than gunmetal and plastic, which art directors love to see.
In general my tips are about being realistic and limiting your scope/focusing. These come from experience, not directly in making portfolios but in terms of doing large projects. I've made stupid decisions, suffered for them and tried to learn from them, maybe you don't have to suffer as much.
Truth is, most advice depends on people's experiences. Take what advice you need and work on your skills.
As you level up your skills you add value to yourself as a potential employee. Then after that it's a case of risk assessment, as you have control, you minimise this as much as possible so employers have no reason not to interview you and then hopefully hire you.
I second this!
When hiring, I'm not just looking at quality, i'm looking at what you can actually, realistically produce within the rush of production. I'm looking at consistency across pieces. I'm looking at whether you make sensible decisions about what you tackle, why you've chosen to tackle those pieces and ultimately what kind of person you are.
Whether your work is high quality is not the deciding factor, imo. It's what gets you on the list. What gets you picked over the next guy is everything else. There's a lot more to a hiring decision than the quality of an asset.
Quick background on me so you know where I have been and my experience:
17 years working in games and Discovery Channel documentary work.
10 years as 3D instructor- trained over 100 students worldwide in Denmark, Prague, London, USA- most are working in industry.
Currently Creative Director/Art Lead in mobile gaming and VR. I'm an Authorized Lynda.com 3D and ZBrush instructor
Personal work: mingrassia.com
First things first: It's not a "struggle" to break in, it's a process that takes time to develop your skills and portfolio. Take your time and don't rush your portfolio or job search until you are really ready. Remember it's NOT a job you're after, it's a career. Before a surgeon gets to operate on patients, they need to hone their skills and know their processes religiously. It's no different working in games.
Here is what a typical portfolio submission needs to look like to get my attention:
1) 5-6 impressive portfolio pieces. Unique, well executed, clean- I will ask to see more work if needed
2) If texturing is not your thing then just show the sculpts or clay renders
3) Keep your portfolio super simple. Mine is just one static page showing a variety of work and process.
4) Don't use WIX or Behance or any other free website that doesnt load fast or won't work on an iPad
5) I will click on a portfolio and if not immediately impressed will delete the submission and move on. You only get 5-10 seconds to impress me because honestly someone in the stack of emails will.
6) Show process and workflow in that you understand the tools (ie: ZBrush, Topogun, dDo, xNormal, etc.)
7) If just starting out I highly recommend you focus more on props and environments. Why? because in a production I will only need (1) really strong character/creature artist, maybe (1) vehicle artist, but environments will usually require 4-5 artists.
8) Have Skype and a good working mic and speaker. I will want to talk to you face to face before I hire you.
Finally...and probably MOST important- Answer your email within 24 hours when you get a reply. I can't begin to tell you how many applicants will take 4-5 days to reply. By then it's usually too late. I've already interviewed several others and hired someone else.
Learn ZBrush:
Sculpting Halloween Scarecrow
Sculpting Pirate Treasure Journal
I have found that when I rush things, there is a tendency to repeat the same mistakes as opposed to learning the right way to do the job. An example would be laying out your UVs properly in a manner that makes sense. For characters, it's easy to just pelt map a bunch of stuff and done! You are off to baking land. Yeah, that was super fast, but...
You can end up wasting a ton of texture resolution only to find out in-game that it needs to be re-unwrapped.
Spending time later in the project painting out seams that could have been easily hidden with smart placement.
Spending time orienting textures in photoshop, that could have been already solved during this stage.
I guess that ties into working fast and efficiently in a production environment. I do feel that it takes time to learn these things, and I am concerned that stressing yourself out with a deadline that you may want to skip these steps.
In a recent interview, the interviewer asked me if I had a site for personal work - is this perhaps code that my portfolio pieces weren't up to snuff or should I be seriously considering creating a dedicated blog or second website for more experimental stuff?
The other thing I strongly suggest against is making your portfolio a place for ALL forms of media. Many times I see very poorly done concepts and sketches and it is a real deterrent from the work I am really looking to see. Another words, less is more. Just create separate web pages that show what a studio is looking for.
Here is a great example: If you go to my site: http://www.mingrassia.com/gallery.html you will see my complete art gallery right? Well...not really. What you don't see is that I have several other galleries online but they are not "public". These pages are designed for specific clientele. Here is one such unique gallery page. So for certain clients or jobs I will provide a link to a dedicated,customized gallery that has work focused on their exact needs.
The type of portfolio that jumps out to me and causes me to respond would be similar to This or This
How long should you spend on creating portfolio pieces?
A good rule of thumb is spend 1 month per piece. 1 week- modeling/uv, 1 week- sculpting/retop/map bakes,
1 week- texturing, 1 week- polish/marmoset/sketchfab.
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Reality check?- Game assets in a real world production will take 1 week or less for the above example. Typically I will model and sculpt in 1-2 days. UV, retop and bake AO/Normal maps in 1-2 days and get it in the game engine at the end of the week.
I can tell you in my experience the personal work of an artist has so much more passion and is typically better all around. Commercial work tends to be too boring and lacking risk. One of the reason I broke away from working at major studios was to have more control over my creativity without management dictation.
Perfect example is your "Isabelle" character compared to your "Hair Sculpt" female. Night and day in terms of look and skill level. If you had a full female done in the latter style you would have a nice, strong portfolio piece.
I really appreciate your insight and feedback. I've had the feeling for some time now that I've been losing perspective on my own work and I've been looking to revamp my portfolio before the next leg of my current job hunt.
By the way, your gallery setup makes great sense - wish I'd thought of that! I need to trim the fat from my website in any case.
What about sending a link to a specific artstation album?
For example, for a hand painted position I might send this: https://www.artstation.com/artist/blaze/albums/10107
Or both main link and the folder link
Cons of this is, the pic order seems messed up and I'm not sure if this can be changed. And of course link itself looks less 'clean'.
Obviously not all projects have the same requirements, but yes as a rule, you get less time than you'd ideally like, and the timescales you mention are definitely valid. Its important to realise that you are not being paid to play around with stuff. You have to learn to be direct.
Also a great insight on how much time you are willing to give to folios (5-10s). In addition to slow sites I also see quite a lot of people including demo reels on their front page but imo this can take too long to review. Fine to include somewhere, but I'd rather have quick access to stills than have to wait for a video to come down. You want to get in front of people hiring as quickly as you can and make the best first impression.
Curious about your reasoning behind this...
"2) If texturing is not your thing then just show the sculpts or clay renders"
By this do you feel its valid for people to simply have sculpts and no texture work, or do you see this as a valid thing to include in addition to full assets?
Personally I agree for character roles. Having some fully finished game assets to show you understand the whole process and then additional quality sculpts just to show more examples of your work is fine in this case.
These textures displayed on your portfolio say to me: average, blah, boring artist- score: 4
-----------------------------------
But when I took several other images from your texture pack (I popped the colors just a tad)
I'm like...damn this kid's got some nice texture skills- clean, well executed, definitely hireable- score: 8-9
So it's all in the presentation. Again less is more. Showing your textures step and repeated gets a bit much, but keeping them tight and focused on your skills as a hand painter tells me you can be polished through art direction. Hope that helps
I guess I'll do it after I'm done with my current commision.
As for textures, like you wrote they lack constrast and in fact I have updated those textures since then.
I think your score is too generous but I'd say the updated versions actually look quite nice I'm not sure what this means since I'm not a native english speaker. But I assume you suggest showing textures in a format that you've used, a single image with smaller square for each texture?
That's an interesting idea and I can see how it could be more convenient for a viewer/recruiter.
As for choice of which texture to use as a thumbnail - I always have a hard time trying to determine which one would be the most attractive. I actually tend to obsess about that.
Perhaps for you it's obvious that some of the ones you used are superior and more interesting - for me it isn't. By boring you mean overdone/too common in portfolios?
As for devil model, it actually has gotten me some freelance work recently so for now it'll stay there - at least until I'm allowed to show new characters that I've done.
Anyway, thanks for feedback! At this point I'm not really 'struggling to get in' but your insights were very helpful.
Quick background on me so you know where I have been and my experience:
17 years working in games and Discovery Channel documentary work.
10 years as 3D instructor- trained over 100 students worldwide in Denmark, Prague, London, USA- most are working in industry.
Currently Creative Director/Art Lead in mobile gaming and VR. I'm an Authorized Lynda.com 3D and ZBrush instructor
Personal work: mingrassia.com
First things first: It's not a "struggle" to break in, it's a process that takes time to develop your skills and portfolio. Take your time and don't rush your portfolio or job search until you are really ready. Remember it's NOT a job you're after, it's a career. Before a surgeon gets to operate on patients, they need to hone their skills and know their processes religiously. It's no different working in games.
Here is what a typical portfolio submission needs to look like to get my attention:
1) 5-6 impressive portfolio pieces. Unique, well executed, clean- I will ask to see more work if needed
2) If texturing is not your thing then just show the sculpts or clay renders
3) Keep your portfolio super simple. Mine is just one static page showing a variety of work and process.
4) Don't use WIX or Behance or any other free website that doesnt load fast or won't work on an iPad
5) I will click on a portfolio and if not immediately impressed will delete the submission and move on. You only get 5-10 seconds to impress me because honestly someone in the stack of emails will.
6) Show process and workflow in that you understand the tools (ie: ZBrush, Topogun, dDo, xNormal, etc.)
7) If just starting out I highly recommend you focus more on props and environments. Why? because in a production I will only need (1) really strong character/creature artist, maybe (1) vehicle artist, but environments will usually require 4-5 artists.
8) Have Skype and a good working mic and speaker. I will want to talk to you face to face before I hire you.
Finally...and probably MOST important- Answer your email within 24 hours when you get a reply. I can't begin to tell you how many applicants will take 4-5 days to reply. By then it's usually too late. I've already interviewed several others and hired someone else.
Learn ZBrush:
Sculpting Halloween Scarecrow
Sculpting Pirate Treasure Journal
The other thing I strongly suggest against is making your portfolio a place for ALL forms of media. Many times I see very poorly done concepts and sketches and it is a real deterrent from the work I am really looking to see. Another words, less is more. Just create separate web pages that show what a studio is looking for.
Here is a great example: If you go to my site: http://www.mingrassia.com/gallery.html you will see my complete art gallery right? Well...not really. What you don't see is that I have several other galleries online but they are not "public". These pages are designed for specific clientele. Here is one such unique gallery page. So for certain clients or jobs I will provide a link to a dedicated,customized gallery that has work focused on their exact needs.
The type of portfolio that jumps out to me and causes me to respond would be similar to This or This
How long should you spend on creating portfolio pieces?
A good rule of thumb is spend 1 month per piece. 1 week- modeling/uv, 1 week- sculpting/retop/map bakes,
1 week- texturing, 1 week- polish/marmoset/sketchfab.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reality check?- Game assets in a real world production will take 1 week or less for the above example. Typically I will model and sculpt in 1-2 days. UV, retop and bake AO/Normal maps in 1-2 days and get it in the game engine at the end of the week.
Curious about your reasoning behind this...
"2) If texturing is not your thing then just show the sculpts or clay renders"
By this do you feel its valid for people to simply have sculpts and no texture work, or do you see this as a valid thing to include in addition to full assets?
Too explain further. Many times I see really awesome models and sculpts but then the texturing destroys the final product. In my studio we often will assign (1) artist to handle all textures to keep the look and feel consistent. Texturing is the one area I have found where you are either great at it or not. I dont mind hiring a talented modeler/sculptor because I'll keep him busy modeling assets all day long and passing them onto the retop and texture dept. anyway.