Online talk: Personal Branding Tips for Game Artists
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]
[ame="
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzYC-0giKc4"]Personal Branding Tips for Game Artists - YouTube[/ame]
Replies
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???
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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!
@JacqueChoi: Thanks for the links man! Very enlightening!