Student Looking For Portfolio Advice

JordonTurberfield

Hi guys,

I'm a third year student currently studying Games Design, and I'm also working on 3D environments to put into my portfolio. The main questions I wanted to ask were.. What is the ideal amount of images I should have in my portfolio? and secondly, should the environments I create be a mixture of realistic / stylized?

Hope someone can help me out!

Mattvaughn12

The best way to go about designing your website is, find artists who are working in the field doing whatever it is you want to do (characters, environments, animations, etc) and use that to gauge where abouts you should be at. If you want to work on Stylized environments, the majority of your work should be stylized, with maybe a little realistic work to show you can do it if needed. But again, you can sense that from looking at others website portfolios.

Beard3D Bandit

Hi Jordon, I'm currently self-teaching myself, so I'm not a professional or anything. Perhaps it's a process of elimination when it comes to discovering yourself as a 3D Artist, I think. It was with me anyway. My method was to:

1. get myself on Artstation - This to me gave me an opportunity to see what artists in the industry are happy to show to the public, comment on their work and perhaps ask for advice. It sounds like the ''usual'' thing, but Artstation was really big for me and has helped me a lot. I've contacted and emailed artists SO MUCH like Warren Marshall (who is AWESOME) and some folk from Epic. Also if you're really unsure about how you're going to make your own website, artstation is a great platform to show your own work. 

Artstation also posts jobs, tutorials and other stuff. It's helped guide me a bit more looking at some of the Junior environment art posts posted on there.

There is a forum also called Mapcore, but I've only just found it myself and don't know a LOT about it.

2. Obviously creating a Pinterest account and having your own boards on there e.g. 'environment concepts', 'modular environments'. I've found I have learned more about my sense of ''what I like'' when having a break from work and just browsing references. I tend to create random boards which have leaned more toward modular assets, and has also guided me toward what kind of artist I want to be.

I guess this is kinda obvious, and you probably already have done these things, but I thought I should mention them, simply because it's helped me.

3. In terms of deciding Stylized or Realism for me, it was a mixture of looking at the above and playing games I love. I had a couple of weeks of thinking about 'should I learn PBR, go full realism and follow the directions of 60% of my favorite games (Skyrim, Witcher etc)' or 'Learn hand-painting, create some wonderful assets with custom textures etc and follow the other % of games I love ( Overwatch, Starcraft and other older games).

The thing that cleared all this up was the game Divinity:Original Sin. I played it, and it felt more like semi-realism for me. For me it felt I could create realistic assets, whilst having a more loose feel in the texturing. 

Matt hit a few good points, perhaps I also helped clear some things up. If you're confident enough in creating your own website, then it's a great Idea. If you think you're not so confident, and it may hinder the experience of the viewer (who you want to be a professional to look at and hire you) then maybe posting your Uni work on Artstation couldn't hurt. That way you can experiment with what you want to do, get crits on work and then move onto your own website.

I hope I helped in any way, Good luck and Happy Holidays. i'd love to see some of your stuff!! Link!

Peace,
Beardy

JordonTurberfield

Hi guys,

Thank you both for the reply, and information! As beardy mentioned, I think I'm just at that stage where I'm unsure what 3D artist I want to be, but will do what both of you guys have said and look more at other artists in the industry.

Thanks again for the information.
Happy Holidays!

Jordon

JamesMeader

Just answer your 2 questions, I'm personally a big believer in quality over quantity. Better having 4 amazing pieces of work showing your best qualities than 8 pieces with a few stand out pieces. 

In terms of styles and directions I think it's always cool to experiment and see what you connect with. I started off doing realistic stuff but that was before quixel suite and substance and making realistic textures were a pain to make. So I worked on handpainted for a while. That got me noticed as I picked some cool concepts to model from. But now seeing as things have really improved with realistic textures and my interests have shifted slightly I'm focusing more on that. My advice in some ways is also have an idea of what companies or games you'd like to work with and on and work towards that too once you've had some fun experimenting with styles. However the quicker you decide the better your'll be on the long run, It's a big regret that I have but it's the way it goes sometimes. 

Hope this helps in some shape or form and hope to see some work from you. 

JordonTurberfield

JamesMeader said:

Just answer your 2 questions, I'm personally a big believer in quality over quantity. Better having 4 amazing pieces of work showing your best qualities than 8 pieces with a few stand out pieces. 

In terms of styles and directions I think it's always cool to experiment and see what you connect with. I started off doing realistic stuff but that was before quixel suite and substance and making realistic textures were a pain to make. So I worked on handpainted for a while. That got me noticed as I picked some cool concepts to model from. But now seeing as things have really improved with realistic textures and my interests have shifted slightly I'm focusing more on that. My advice in some ways is also have an idea of what companies or games you'd like to work with and on and work towards that too once you've had some fun experimenting with styles. However the quicker you decide the better your'll be on the long run, It's a big regret that I have but it's the way it goes sometimes. 

Hope this helps in some shape or form and hope to see some work from you. 

Thanks for the reply James! Sorry, wasn't being rude, just haven't been on here in a while. Decided to go with more realistic stuff, but looking to work on my stylized skills as well. 

Thanks again for the information,

Jordon