I don't use tables. And even B1ll's site that I've used as an example doesn't use tables. I'm talking about divs, I literally mentioned them when I said "One image, and you 'crop' it to the right size using background offsets and div sizes in the CSS." And yes B1lls site could be much more optimized. I thought I'd made that quite clear when I said that filesize of the site wasn't an issue but the amount of requests etc. are.
To side with Justin for a moment, I think that right now there's a bit too much focus on the technical side of websites and not enough on the should-be-common-sense-but-aren't things like putting your wanted position and your current address/region on the site. Technical stuff is hella interesting, but I do agree that the way I look at website optimization isn't feasible and necessary for every general prop artist. So ladies and gentlemen, shall we get back to generics like: Resume tip #7: Clickable email and portfolio links in your PDF resume is a great thing to do!
P.S. B1ll, I hone you're not insulted or anything by me deconstructing your site. It's nothing personal but it was just the site that was mentioned previously in the thread. It's hardly the worst website in the world. In fact, I have made less usable (ordered to make the whole thing as a flash file, ugh) designs myself.
ahaha, Dont worry about it, that site as brought me so many clients over the last 13-14 years. Bad html or not i dont mind ^^ and since i retired from game a while ago, It will just live on the way it is ^_^
I don't use tables. And even B1ll's site that I've used as an example doesn't use tables. I'm talking about divs, I literally mentioned them when I said "One image, and you 'crop' it to the right size using background offsets and div sizes in the CSS." And yes B1lls site could be much more optimized. I thought I'd made that quite clear when I said that filesize of the site wasn't an issue but the amount of requests etc. are.
To side with Justin for a moment, I think that right now there's a bit too much focus on the technical side of websites and not enough on the should-be-common-sense-but-aren't things like putting your wanted position and your current address/region on the site. Technical stuff is hella interesting, but I do agree that the way I look at website optimization isn't feasible and necessary for every general prop artist. So ladies and gentlemen, shall we get back to generics like: Resume tip #7: Clickable email and portfolio links in your PDF resume is a great thing to do!
P.S. B1ll, I hone you're not insulted or anything by me deconstructing your site. It's nothing personal but it was just the site that was mentioned previously in the thread. It's hardly the worst website in the world. In fact, I have made less usable (ordered to make the whole thing as a flash file, ugh) designs myself.
The reasons may be technical, but the implementation is not. HTML/CSS is not that hard, especially for people that are smart enough to edit a Maxscript. It just takes a little extra preparation and possibly a short tutorial, but it will pay off when your portfolio goes up in page ranks. Your portfolio is supposed to show off your content and get you noticed, why not make that content as accessible and easy to index as possible? I think there should be another portfolio tip:
Portfolio Tip #15: Make your portfolio as easy to find as possible. Give those search engines what they like and your page ranks will go up. This doesn't directly improve the interviewer's perception of your portfolio, but it does increase the chances that they'll see it. A well structured web portfolio will find job interviews for you, reducing your workload a bit. Obscurity is your enemy.
And in a similar vein:
Portfolio Tip #16: Create a tutorial, or several, and add them as a separate page on your website. Tutorials will get others to link to you and more links to you increases your rank on search engines, especially Google. Drop links for your tutorials on various art communities (*cough* polycount *cough*) so that people can find and link to them. People love free knowledge and it promotes your value as an artist.
Seth has a point, if you are so serious about networking and getting your name out there, having your portfolio link on Polycount is more important than SEO. Even just uploading a custom avatar is a good idea. I'm not going to find you by googling "environment artist" after all.
It doesn't matter how strongly I agree with my position, that doesn't imply a requirement that I should have a portfolio. I am not the topic of this thread. So I don't see how my portfolio, or lack thereof, is relevant other than an appeal to hypocrisy (i.e. a tu quoque fallacy). I don't have one because I don't have anything worthy of publishing yet. I came here to offer relevant suggestions and now I'm getting asked to "practice what you preach". By putting such questions to me personally is not only unfair, but illogical.
There is a point at which spending time on optimizing your portfolio site is counter productive to creating a successful portfolio. Meaning, if you're spending more time on the site itself than creating work to put on it, you're doing it wrong.
I may be wrong, but I don't think it's common practice for a good recruiter to type "environment artist" into google when looking to fill positions. There are much better ways to find the people you want.
It's good advice for people to keep their sites simple and functioning well, but bad advice to steer newbs into being anal about seo, etc.
There is a point at which spending time on optimizing your portfolio site is counter productive to creating a successful portfolio. Meaning, if you're spending more time on the site itself than creating work to put on it, you're doing it wrong.
I may be wrong, but I don't think it's common practice for a good recruiter to type "environment artist" into google when looking to fill positions. There are much better ways to find the people you want.
It's good advice for people to keep their sites simple and functioning well, but bad advice to steer newbs into being anal about seo, etc.
Well, I'm not talking about going into excruciating detail, just the practices of following standards. Just following good markup practices is all the SEO you need to bother with. All I'm talking about is good structure.
Just for reference, has anyone noticed who shows up on the first page of results when you Google "environment artist"? Adam is the 8th one down. You also find Tim Spanger, David Lesperance, David Brumley, and Jeff Parrot is the #1 listed link. Add the term portfolio and you're inundated with relevant artists. I think it's worth considering.
I don't get why SEO would matter unless you are hoping to get a job through a search engine.
My site comes up if you use certain game related keywords. I don't know why it comes up over other sites, because I don't do or know how to do any SEO, but frankly I wish it didn't.
The only thing you will get from SEO and people finding you through search are recruiters who have taken to googling 'character art person who is good like halo people'.
Seriously.
My portfolio is built on indexhibit, and includes a section where I can see how people found me, whether they followed a link from polycount or someone posted it on facebook, or if they searched google to find me it gives me the search string. Every time a company does a major hiring drive, I will get emails from 4 or 5 recruiters at a time. I'll go into that section of the site, and I will see searches that have found me that are the most ridiculous things ever. 'game person work with polygons', 'zbrush master halo destiny', 'race cars artist characters anatomy'.
And frankly recruiters are worth very little. In the beginning I would call because, hey, a jobs a job right, but after ten conversations like the following, I realized what was happening.
"Hi, you sent me the email about the production position."
"Oh yes Yuri. I found your portfolio and think you'd be perfect for this job. Your characters are so nice."
"Thanks, what's the position?"
"Senior concept environment artist."
______________
Now despite being findable by the recruiters, I have never gotten any freelance work out of google. Freelance comes from posting to forums, and actually searching for it, and I imagine that there is no art director in the world not completely saturated with applications. You'll know the industry is in a good state (or maybe not), when art directors start googling 'games artists' to fill positions.
Personally, if you want to be discoverable, I'd suggest spending your time on industry specific forums, being a decent person and learning best you can.
To be fair, I wouldn't say that all recruiters are leeches, just a really nice majority of them. The ones that don't know what they are doing.
I'm sure there are a good number of very effective recruiters that are able to size a candidate's portfolio and experience, and have the contracts to place them in suitable positions.
Most people, me included, just never hear from these recruiters because we're looking for junior positions and that type of recruiter would be more likely dealing in senior or higher roles, and when he sees our work he doesn't contact us. It's selection bias or confirmation bias or some sort to say that all recruiters are shit because the ones we've dealt with are shit. We probably just don't get the best.
It doesn't matter how strongly I agree with my position, that doesn't imply a requirement that I should have a portfolio. I am not the topic of this thread. So I don't see how my portfolio, or lack thereof, is relevant other than an appeal to hypocrisy (i.e. a tu quoque fallacy). I don't have one because I don't have anything worthy of publishing yet. I came here to offer relevant suggestions and now I'm getting asked to "practice what you preach". By putting such questions to me personally is not only unfair, but illogical.
You don't currently have a portfolio or you've never had one? I know you took a jab at mine, I actually didn't offer it up for review but I don't mind, it's down because it's being revamped. I've owned that domain for 10 years and I bounced around free hosting sites for about 5 years prior to that. I'm speaking from experience, I assumed you where too.
You don't currently have a portfolio or you've never had one? I know you took a jab at mine, I actually didn't offer it up for review but I don't mind, it's down because it's being revamped. I've owned that domain for 10 years and I bounced around free hosting sites for about 5 years prior to that. I'm speaking from experience, I assumed you where too.
I never have had one for game art, but I have some experience in web design and my brother-in-law is a web developer. It shouldn't matter regardless, a true statement is true no matter who is saying it. It's unfair to think otherwise. I said a good use of well-structured markup and style sheets are good and worthy tools for your portfolio, just as a strong foundation is good for a strong building. If people think I'm wrong because I don't have a portfolio to confirm my authority to speak on the subject, then I don't know why we're having this discussion.
I wanted to simply offer some helpful contributions to the thread and I find myself in an ad hominem inquiry about my credentials on the matter. That rubs me the wrong way.
I said a good use of well-structured markup and style sheets are good and worthy tools for your portfolio, just as a strong foundation is good for a strong building.
Yep, but only as much as it allows potential employers/clients to see your artwork. All the rest is just window-dressing. If you're going for a web dev job, sure, make it clean and neat. But for a game dev job, no need.
Also, no one I know has ever gotten work from a Google search. It's all word-of-mouth, or via forum exposure, or posting content like tutorials/articles/whitepapers.
Yep, but only as much as it allows potential employers/clients to see your artwork. All the rest is just window-dressing. If you're going for a web dev job, sure, make it clean and neat. But for a game dev job, no need.
Also, no one I know has ever gotten work from a Google search. It's all word-of-mouth, or via forum exposure, or posting content like tutorials/articles/whitepapers.
Sure, remembering that there are more browsers/devices out there that can view web pages and you're going to want it to perform consistently on each of them. Your portfolio needs to work on FF, IE(7, 8, 9, 10, etc.), Opera, Safari, smartphones, tablets, you name it. It wouldn't be good if things didn't work on a prospective employer's device.
Wow, big back-and-forth there about technical stuff.
From my perspective, as long as stuff loads quickly and well, that's great. SEO and clear branding are good too, and I'd never look down on someone for using tables vs CSS. But for my purposes, being technically sound through-and-through with your website isn't as important as simply being good at what you do and making it easy for me to see your art.
The most technical I'll get on that subject is that I like seeing websites that create their own Google XML sitemap so that when you Google for their name, their portfolio will come up and all the site's sub-menus (about, resume, portfolio) are already clickable links from the Google search page. It's not a dealbreaker not to see it but it is nice.
Also, yeesh, namedropping logical fallacies in a convo is a fast way to being That Guy.
I don't think you should focus too heavily on the technical aspect of a website. As long as the art loads quickly and is readily accessible, nobody cares about what's going on behind the hood.
Its the same deal with nobody cares what method or program you use to achieve the results. They wouldn't go like "oh they used 3ds Max". I'm sure someone would argue against my point, but the general idea is there isn't a need to look at the nuances of website design.
yes, I almost just considered locking the whole thing with a password - it's a tool that I send to potential employers when I want them to see it. Worrying about SEO and proper CSS & HTML is just web designer stuff... if it's a web design portfolio, of course worry about it. This isn't a public facing corperate website or social media page, it's a portfolio that's meant to be looked at by a handfull of people that you send it to.
In all the years Jon & Chris have been complaining about shitty portfolio sites they have never once mentioned viewing the source and recoiling in horror at the lack of CSS.
I don't particularly feel like becoming well versed in something that I only use once every 5 or so years.
sorry, I just here the same arguments on an annual basis and it's how a good friend of mine ended up with a CSS webpage he can't figure out how to update.
I agree, I'm not sure SEO really works for portfolios. No one goes "we need an environment artist, quick, google 'environment art portfolio' and lets hire the first result". That said, I built it with good searchability in mind - just once - and haven't had to change it since.
However, my site's not been updated in a good while (the content hasn't been updated in far longer than that). The core HTML hasn't changed substantially in 3 revisions, just the CSS around it - but it's the second result in a google for "game character artist"* - which seems to get about 2000 unique visitors a month.
It's probably worth keeping an eye towards if you're making a new folio site. But if you're really wanting visitors to your site, I think the key is to be either outstandingly good or to put up good tutorials and resources that people want to use. That's where most of my visitors go, at least...
* With a straight up search for "character artist" it's just the dudes who are really, really good in there and I'm nowhere to be seen. Which pretty much illustrates the fact that it's your skill that's going to get you noticed, not where your folio appears in google.
But if you're really wanting visitors to your site, I think the key is to be either outstandingly good or to put up good tutorials and resources that people want to use. That's where most of my visitors go, at least...
What about this -- everyone should have a links page that links to their artist friends. I've found and contracted people that way.
What about this -- everyone should have a links page that links to their artist friends. I've found and contracted people that way.
Yeah, I used to have one of those. I took it out in order to reduce the number of different pages on my site... perhaps I should add it back in somewhere.
I really like convenient design in website. from both side . not just the audience, but also for me to upload the things. thumbnail should be automatically created. easy to update and maintain.
this is why I stick with heavily modified blog platform. ( plugin based blog)
feature that upload and publish images/thumbnail by bulk is quite useful also
I would think putting tutorials as an additional page on your site would go a long way in getting you noticed by the industry. If you put up good tutorials that people link to often, you're going to show up higher in search results. People in the industry might even link to you and pass your portfolio on to others. It's a low probability, I admit. However, putting up tuts gives you a unique opportunity to showcase your knowledge and skills in a format beyond texture flats, turnarounds, and beauty shots.
Just a quick question, how much does linkedIn actually matter?
I got a number of cold calls from prospective employers though Linkedin, some big ones too. I would definitely recommend keeping it up to date. PLUS, if you format it the the right way you can use this resume builder that draws directly from your Linkedin profile. It provides a printable and online pdf link for you, but I recommend you just keep the pdf linked to somewhere like dropbox as they sometimes go down.
Lastly, Linkedin ties very nicely with BeHance, so people can get a teaser right off your profile page (still have to set mine up).
From my perspective, as long as stuff loads quickly and well, that's great. SEO and clear branding are good too, and I'd never look down on someone for using tables vs CSS.
haha, yeah. I would seriously question the sanity of a game art recruiter if they judge a game artist by that. The only thing I care about is polish. I like well presented art - and that's why simplistic folios are great. It's just easy to polish a simple site and make sure everything is correct and works.
Polish is so important. It shows me that people care. And if you don't care how you present your own art, how little will you care for the art my company produces?
While I also like CGHub, one thing to note is that someone unfamiliar with the site may get tricked by thinking that your favorite images are actually part of your portfolio.
Also, some more tips:
- Do not include long lists of previous jobs in unrelated fields. Not even sysadmin stuff.
- Do not include irrelevant artwork in the portfolio, like arch viz stuff or web design.
A single piece of art can get you hired if it's good enough, there's no need to add images the potential employer wouldn't care about just to have a bigger portfolio.
- If you have a long work history, there's no need to list everything. You don't have to include all the 20+ mobile games you've worked on, only the most important ones.
- Not sure about others but I don't really care about stuff like "objectives" or "goals" and such...
Yeah, irrelevant work history isn't needed. And regardless of your experience level, resumes shouldn't be more than two pages at the most. If you're breaking into games or have less than five years' experience, keep it to one page. I recall seeing a 5-page-long resume from an art school grad once. I don't even remember how that person filled up that many pages, but it stands in my mind as being misguided and mildly annoying. You're new at this, I don't want to read a novel!
Random question on #1b, since there is a lot of ways to spell "Zac" I was thinking about picking a new domain. I was thinking something like zdonald but then I'd be worried spoken aloud zdonald.com might sound like the-donald-dot-com. I'll probably just come up with something else.
could buy zacdonald.com, zakdonald.com, zackdonald.com, and zachdonald.com, and have them all route to zacdonald.com with a page saying "rerouting to zacdonald.com"
Only other suggestion would be repetition, and to spell it out when people ask for it. When you include your domain in signatures, email footers, etc, always spell it out and not hyperlink it to "my portfolio" or something. As someone who frequently has to spell my name out and say "yes, like Maury Povich" I can relate.
i think zdonald.com sounds cool, its catchy, humerous, memorable, and short. I wouldn't worry about how it's said aloud or how it sounds (unless its theRAPISTs.com). Some would think "zee germans" others may think "zed donald." I wouldn't stress it, and just go for it & own it
I'll probably play with it when I have to renew everything, I'll probably come up with something easy to remember and spell like polypunk, ExtrudeEdges, PolyPusher.
I think branding and nick names are slightly different. If it's related to game art, I wouldn't worry about it. If it was something generic like DemonHunter or a generic alias, I'd avoid using it.
I think branding and nick names are slightly different. If it's related to game art, I wouldn't worry about it. If it was something generic like DemonHunter or a generic alias, I'd avoid using it.
ZacD is fine though dude, people know who you are. :thumbup:
Replies
Well, I've seen the web design hardcore pop up during this discussion for the last 10 or so years now.
I don't use tables. And even B1ll's site that I've used as an example doesn't use tables. I'm talking about divs, I literally mentioned them when I said "One image, and you 'crop' it to the right size using background offsets and div sizes in the CSS." And yes B1lls site could be much more optimized. I thought I'd made that quite clear when I said that filesize of the site wasn't an issue but the amount of requests etc. are.
To side with Justin for a moment, I think that right now there's a bit too much focus on the technical side of websites and not enough on the should-be-common-sense-but-aren't things like putting your wanted position and your current address/region on the site. Technical stuff is hella interesting, but I do agree that the way I look at website optimization isn't feasible and necessary for every general prop artist. So ladies and gentlemen, shall we get back to generics like: Resume tip #7: Clickable email and portfolio links in your PDF resume is a great thing to do!
P.S. B1ll, I hone you're not insulted or anything by me deconstructing your site. It's nothing personal but it was just the site that was mentioned previously in the thread. It's hardly the worst website in the world. In fact, I have made less usable (ordered to make the whole thing as a flash file, ugh) designs myself.
The reasons may be technical, but the implementation is not. HTML/CSS is not that hard, especially for people that are smart enough to edit a Maxscript. It just takes a little extra preparation and possibly a short tutorial, but it will pay off when your portfolio goes up in page ranks. Your portfolio is supposed to show off your content and get you noticed, why not make that content as accessible and easy to index as possible? I think there should be another portfolio tip:
Portfolio Tip #15: Make your portfolio as easy to find as possible. Give those search engines what they like and your page ranks will go up. This doesn't directly improve the interviewer's perception of your portfolio, but it does increase the chances that they'll see it. A well structured web portfolio will find job interviews for you, reducing your workload a bit. Obscurity is your enemy.
And in a similar vein:
Portfolio Tip #16: Create a tutorial, or several, and add them as a separate page on your website. Tutorials will get others to link to you and more links to you increases your rank on search engines, especially Google. Drop links for your tutorials on various art communities (*cough* polycount *cough*) so that people can find and link to them. People love free knowledge and it promotes your value as an artist.
B1ll new game-stuffs from you will be missed
Tu Quoque.
Seth has a point, if you are so serious about networking and getting your name out there, having your portfolio link on Polycount is more important than SEO. Even just uploading a custom avatar is a good idea. I'm not going to find you by googling "environment artist" after all.
Facias ipse quod faciamus suades
Fac me cocleario vomere!
It doesn't matter how strongly I agree with my position, that doesn't imply a requirement that I should have a portfolio. I am not the topic of this thread. So I don't see how my portfolio, or lack thereof, is relevant other than an appeal to hypocrisy (i.e. a tu quoque fallacy). I don't have one because I don't have anything worthy of publishing yet. I came here to offer relevant suggestions and now I'm getting asked to "practice what you preach". By putting such questions to me personally is not only unfair, but illogical.
I may be wrong, but I don't think it's common practice for a good recruiter to type "environment artist" into google when looking to fill positions. There are much better ways to find the people you want.
It's good advice for people to keep their sites simple and functioning well, but bad advice to steer newbs into being anal about seo, etc.
Well, I'm not talking about going into excruciating detail, just the practices of following standards. Just following good markup practices is all the SEO you need to bother with. All I'm talking about is good structure.
Just for reference, has anyone noticed who shows up on the first page of results when you Google "environment artist"? Adam is the 8th one down. You also find Tim Spanger, David Lesperance, David Brumley, and Jeff Parrot is the #1 listed link. Add the term portfolio and you're inundated with relevant artists. I think it's worth considering.
My site comes up if you use certain game related keywords. I don't know why it comes up over other sites, because I don't do or know how to do any SEO, but frankly I wish it didn't.
The only thing you will get from SEO and people finding you through search are recruiters who have taken to googling 'character art person who is good like halo people'.
Seriously.
My portfolio is built on indexhibit, and includes a section where I can see how people found me, whether they followed a link from polycount or someone posted it on facebook, or if they searched google to find me it gives me the search string. Every time a company does a major hiring drive, I will get emails from 4 or 5 recruiters at a time. I'll go into that section of the site, and I will see searches that have found me that are the most ridiculous things ever. 'game person work with polygons', 'zbrush master halo destiny', 'race cars artist characters anatomy'.
And frankly recruiters are worth very little. In the beginning I would call because, hey, a jobs a job right, but after ten conversations like the following, I realized what was happening.
"Hi, you sent me the email about the production position."
"Oh yes Yuri. I found your portfolio and think you'd be perfect for this job. Your characters are so nice."
"Thanks, what's the position?"
"Senior concept environment artist."
______________
Now despite being findable by the recruiters, I have never gotten any freelance work out of google. Freelance comes from posting to forums, and actually searching for it, and I imagine that there is no art director in the world not completely saturated with applications. You'll know the industry is in a good state (or maybe not), when art directors start googling 'games artists' to fill positions.
Personally, if you want to be discoverable, I'd suggest spending your time on industry specific forums, being a decent person and learning best you can.
I'm sure there are a good number of very effective recruiters that are able to size a candidate's portfolio and experience, and have the contracts to place them in suitable positions.
Most people, me included, just never hear from these recruiters because we're looking for junior positions and that type of recruiter would be more likely dealing in senior or higher roles, and when he sees our work he doesn't contact us. It's selection bias or confirmation bias or some sort to say that all recruiters are shit because the ones we've dealt with are shit. We probably just don't get the best.
This settles it, then. We should all make our portfolios on Blogspot.
You don't currently have a portfolio or you've never had one? I know you took a jab at mine, I actually didn't offer it up for review but I don't mind, it's down because it's being revamped. I've owned that domain for 10 years and I bounced around free hosting sites for about 5 years prior to that. I'm speaking from experience, I assumed you where too.
I never have had one for game art, but I have some experience in web design and my brother-in-law is a web developer. It shouldn't matter regardless, a true statement is true no matter who is saying it. It's unfair to think otherwise. I said a good use of well-structured markup and style sheets are good and worthy tools for your portfolio, just as a strong foundation is good for a strong building. If people think I'm wrong because I don't have a portfolio to confirm my authority to speak on the subject, then I don't know why we're having this discussion.
I wanted to simply offer some helpful contributions to the thread and I find myself in an ad hominem inquiry about my credentials on the matter. That rubs me the wrong way.
Just a quick question, how much does linkedIn actually matter?
It kind of seems to me everything on there can be shown in a portfolio/resum
Also, no one I know has ever gotten work from a Google search. It's all word-of-mouth, or via forum exposure, or posting content like tutorials/articles/whitepapers.
Sure, remembering that there are more browsers/devices out there that can view web pages and you're going to want it to perform consistently on each of them. Your portfolio needs to work on FF, IE(7, 8, 9, 10, etc.), Opera, Safari, smartphones, tablets, you name it. It wouldn't be good if things didn't work on a prospective employer's device.
From my perspective, as long as stuff loads quickly and well, that's great. SEO and clear branding are good too, and I'd never look down on someone for using tables vs CSS. But for my purposes, being technically sound through-and-through with your website isn't as important as simply being good at what you do and making it easy for me to see your art.
The most technical I'll get on that subject is that I like seeing websites that create their own Google XML sitemap so that when you Google for their name, their portfolio will come up and all the site's sub-menus (about, resume, portfolio) are already clickable links from the Google search page. It's not a dealbreaker not to see it but it is nice.
Also, yeesh, namedropping logical fallacies in a convo is a fast way to being That Guy.
Its the same deal with nobody cares what method or program you use to achieve the results. They wouldn't go like "oh they used 3ds Max". I'm sure someone would argue against my point, but the general idea is there isn't a need to look at the nuances of website design.
LOLLLLLLLLLLLLL.... made my day.... great tips
However, my site's not been updated in a good while (the content hasn't been updated in far longer than that). The core HTML hasn't changed substantially in 3 revisions, just the CSS around it - but it's the second result in a google for "game character artist"* - which seems to get about 2000 unique visitors a month.
It's probably worth keeping an eye towards if you're making a new folio site. But if you're really wanting visitors to your site, I think the key is to be either outstandingly good or to put up good tutorials and resources that people want to use. That's where most of my visitors go, at least...
* With a straight up search for "character artist" it's just the dudes who are really, really good in there and I'm nowhere to be seen. Which pretty much illustrates the fact that it's your skill that's going to get you noticed, not where your folio appears in google.
What about this -- everyone should have a links page that links to their artist friends. I've found and contracted people that way.
this is why I stick with heavily modified blog platform. ( plugin based blog)
feature that upload and publish images/thumbnail by bulk is quite useful also
I got a number of cold calls from prospective employers though Linkedin, some big ones too. I would definitely recommend keeping it up to date. PLUS, if you format it the the right way you can use this resume builder that draws directly from your Linkedin profile. It provides a printable and online pdf link for you, but I recommend you just keep the pdf linked to somewhere like dropbox as they sometimes go down.
Lastly, Linkedin ties very nicely with BeHance, so people can get a teaser right off your profile page (still have to set mine up).
Thanks btw Jon Jones! Great thread.
haha, yeah. I would seriously question the sanity of a game art recruiter if they judge a game artist by that. The only thing I care about is polish. I like well presented art - and that's why simplistic folios are great. It's just easy to polish a simple site and make sure everything is correct and works.
Polish is so important. It shows me that people care. And if you don't care how you present your own art, how little will you care for the art my company produces?
Also, some more tips:
- Do not include long lists of previous jobs in unrelated fields. Not even sysadmin stuff.
- Do not include irrelevant artwork in the portfolio, like arch viz stuff or web design.
A single piece of art can get you hired if it's good enough, there's no need to add images the potential employer wouldn't care about just to have a bigger portfolio.
- If you have a long work history, there's no need to list everything. You don't have to include all the 20+ mobile games you've worked on, only the most important ones.
- Not sure about others but I don't really care about stuff like "objectives" or "goals" and such...
I'm happy to answer questions here as well! I'm more involved in polycount these days and it's a lot of fun for me.
TWITTERBLAST!
ARTISTS TIP #1a! If your website URL looks like a bad hand in Scrabble (VWXYIIQ), it's not a good URL.
ARTISTS TIP #1b! If your name is difficult to spell, it's okay to find a nickname that's spelled like it sounds.
ARTISTS TIP #2! Your YouTube page is not a portfolio. Make a website, and use Vimeo for your reel.
ARTISTS TIP #3! Don't use your nickname in your professional website or email address. It looks young, in a bad way.
ARTISTS TIP #4! On your digital resume, your portfolio link should be at the top, AND either clickable or copyable.
ARTISTS TIP #5! If you're applying for an art job, make a resume for that. I've seen full resumes for normal jobs and NOTHING for games.
ARTISTS TIP #6! If you lack professional work experience, put Education\honors at top, and then summarize your amateur\mod experience.
ARTISTS TIP #7! Never put your birthdate or age on a resume. EVER. No good will ever come of it.
ARTISTS TIP #8! If a job application says "Local Applicants Only," FIRST find out if you're local to them, and THEN apply if you are.
ARTISTS TIP #9! Make sure your portfolio doesn't appear to have only one piece. I was very amused by this today.
ARTIST TIP #10! If your resume and folio are film-centric with games shoehorned in, it's obvious which you're more interested in.
ARTIST TIP #11! In an ideal world, everyone would do full breakdowns of who-did-what in a folio. Let's make it that kind of world!
Only other suggestion would be repetition, and to spell it out when people ask for it. When you include your domain in signatures, email footers, etc, always spell it out and not hyperlink it to "my portfolio" or something. As someone who frequently has to spell my name out and say "yes, like Maury Povich" I can relate.
i think zdonald.com sounds cool, its catchy, humerous, memorable, and short. I wouldn't worry about how it's said aloud or how it sounds (unless its theRAPISTs.com). Some would think "zee germans" others may think "zed donald." I wouldn't stress it, and just go for it & own it
ZacD is fine though dude, people know who you are. :thumbup:
Seriously, everyone knows ZacD.