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Online talk: Personal Branding Tips for Game Artists

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Jeff Parrott polycounter lvl 19
I gave this talk a while back at when I was still teaching/freelancing. It talks about creating an online portfolio and having a presence online. I was talking with some people starting out last night and kept coming back to a few of these points. Figured it might help posting this on here. Any feedback or improvements I would love to hear them as well. Love to give a similar talk in the future somewhere.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzYC-0giKc4"]Personal Branding Tips for Game Artists - YouTube[/ame]

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  • stevston89
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    stevston89 interpolator
    Great stuff Jeff. Really good listen. No feedback really. You were very clear and easy to listen to.
  • Pancakes
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    Pancakes polycounter lvl 10
    I can't watch the vid atm, but in the thumbnail you look like Wesley Crusher with part of your face covered by the you tube logo. Hey he was one of my favorite characters!
  • mediochrea
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    mediochrea polycounter lvl 10
    The Ben Mathis part cracked me up. All great advice, will definitely come in handy.
  • stevston89
  • skylebones
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    skylebones polycounter lvl 10
    Pretty great tips here! I certainly picked up some new stuff. Be sure to put my info in the filenames in all my images. Great idea!
  • rogelio
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    rogelio greentooth
    Great tips well said :)
  • beefaroni
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    beefaroni sublime tool
    Great talk! Looks like I have a few things to change now.
  • Jeff Parrott
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    Jeff Parrott polycounter lvl 19
    Thanks everyone! I get super nervous about posting stuff on the internet. So much cynicism that I figure it sucks and people hate it. Glad it's not total crap and some of you are finding it useful.

    ahmed: LOLOLOL! Ben Mathis is the superstar I mentioned. http://poopinmymouth.com

    stevston89: Awesome. I felt like there was a lot of ums. Very different doing this stuff and watching this. Nice work too btw! Do some more of the Mob Guy style stuff. Maybe some likeness work maybe? Or boots??? :D

    Hermit: Thanks! Nice to read someone's take that's in a design role. Tbh I have no idea how to showcase design portfolios but I imagine it's similar. Maybe load a level design into sketchfab and embed? Playable in brower?

    Pancakes: LOL! I will also accept for likeness

    liam-payne-grandfather-passes-away.png

    mediochrea: Glad to hear it makes sense and is helpful.

    skylebones: Thanks man! Yeah file names in your images is another level of making sure people know who made what. Do some more stuff man! Love your texture work.

    rogelio: Thanks man! Means a lot coming from you. Mark helped me figure out a lot of these over the years.

    beefaroni: Nice use of artstation as a folio. Never really occurred to me. Only downside I could potentially see would be employers looking at your work then finding something better, similar (and closer), etc. But still a pretty slick idea.
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Definitely one of the topics that gets rehashed a lot, there's a ton of good advice out there already about this topic. Your portfolio repels jobs and 100 things every game student should now (it's not just about branding, but there's a ton of good related general advice). A lot of things in this video are a bit too general for my liking, but I'm just being picky.

    http://www.jonjones.com/2005/10/07/your-portfolio-repels-jobs/
    http://k0k0k0.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/100-things-every-game-student-should-know.pdf
  • beefaroni
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    beefaroni sublime tool

    beefaroni: Nice use of artstation as a folio. Never really occurred to me. Only downside I could potentially see would be employers looking at your work then finding something better, similar (and closer), etc. But still a pretty slick idea.

    Oh ArtStation is just temporary. I still have a year before I graduate but wanted to upload some new work quickly without going through FTP and everything.

    This was my site that I used to apply for my internship.
    http://chrisstone3d.com/index.html

    I'd love any suggestions you have for the site above though. Going to update it once I get closer to graduation and am confident with my portfolio.
  • stevston89
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    stevston89 interpolator

    stevston89: Awesome. I felt like there was a lot of ums. Very different doing this stuff and watching this. Nice work too btw! Do some more of the Mob Guy style stuff. Maybe some likeness work maybe? Or boots??? :D

    Thanks! I really need to go back and pose out that mob guy and make his little monkey side kick. Gonna start a new very stylized piece today. I will put a thread up for that in the couple of weeks.
  • mats effect
    Thanks for posting this Jeff I found it really useful :)
  • Rockley Bonner
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    Rockley Bonner polycounter lvl 12
  • Jeff Parrott
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    Jeff Parrott polycounter lvl 19
    ZacD: Yes there is a lot of info about this sort of topic. Nothing really on branding and being consistent. But general portfolio tips, dos and don'ts. Jon Jones thread is really great. He's definitely one of the first people to really tackle this subject for Game Artists.

    Anything in particular that was too general? My thought was getting too specific would alienate some people. I was speaking to future Animators, Char Artists, Texture Artists, Environment Artists, FX Artists, etc. Just seemed like honing it for Environment Artists only would be too specific. But again if you have areas that could use a more detailed pass I would totally revisit that in case I did this talk (or a modified version) again.

    mats effect: Thanks! The wall is a great reference too. I need to add that one at the end.

    RJBonner: Thanks!
  • Suba
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    Suba polycounter lvl 5
    I love that kind of videos. Super useful. Thanks for making it and sharing.
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Anything in particular that was too general? My thought was getting too specific would alienate some people.

    Just a few things I would of touched on, What should you expect to pay to host your own portfolio? What are the free/cheap options? a bit about don't always trust the most advertised hosting site to be the best option (GoDaddy really comes to mind). You don't have to give solid numbers or name sites, but just some more advise to prevent people from getting screwed over.

    Some talk about how to handle video and large files, you could be an animator, vfx guy, host tutorials, or have a stand alone game on your site.

    Making good tutorials, work in progress videos, and streaming can make you stand out even more, but they should be focused as something helpful for the community, and not a product you are trying to push on people. There's a lot of artists I remember mostly because of their videos, Virtuosic/Ryan Smith, Snefer, Bobo the Seal, Racer445, Jon Jones, Chris Holden, Gausswerks, etc. But if you a student or new to the field, don't make content for something old and fundamental like modeling, focus on newer stuff like UE4, PBR, DDO, Substance Designer/Painter.
  • JacqueChoi
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    JacqueChoi polycounter
    Great talk! Will definitely share!

    Your books are my favourite books ever too!


    Lizard Brain, and Purple Cow are my 2x favourite talks of Godins,
    http://vimeo.com/5895898

    Purple Cow is pretty much an entire TED Talk by Seth Godin, on being the BEST "boot" guy.
    http://www.ted.com/talks/seth_godin_on_sliced_bread

    This is an awesome one too:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhxcFGuKOys



    :D
  • Jeff Parrott
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    Jeff Parrott polycounter lvl 19
    Suba: Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.

    ZacD: Good suggestions. I didn't want to get too into specifics like webhosting since that changes a lot. But you're right though. I did answer questions like that after the talk though. Btw bluehost member for 10+ years here. Can't recommend them enough.

    As far as video files I would ask an animator. Youtube or vimeo embeds seem smart. Other than Animators and FX Artists though people static images work great.

    For students I'd say if you have little to no experience and want to make videos then I'd say do a twitch channel or something to get attention. If your work is awesome enough to get people tuning in then you're on to something. DOTA2 item creators get some great free PR that way for their stuff. Plus you don't have to worry about your content being correct. You can just focus on improving that portfolio.

    Again I'll work these points in the slides if I ever give the talk again. Thanks man!

    JacqueChoi: Thanks! Means a lot coming from you. Those talks are awesome too! Thanks for sharing. "You're growing if you're green, if you're ripe you're rotting". Awesome quotes and motivation!
  • deohboeh
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    deohboeh polycounter lvl 5
    Thanks Jeff! This was super useful! A lot of my doubts got cleared!

    @JacqueChoi: Thanks for the links man! Very enlightening! :)
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