Game Artist Portfolio - critique and advice, please

ninaneco

Hello my name is Lisa. I graduated in Oct 2016 as Game Artist at the Games Academy and couldn't get an internship until now. I would love to get some advice and critique to improve my portfolio.

I want to start as generalist at indie studios and my main skills are in 2D Concept art (character and environment) and 3D character and prop creation.

https://www.artstation.com/ninaneco 
Please point me in the right direction.

Gannon

It's great that you've got an interest in so many different areas, but pick one and get really good at it. Right now your 2d and your 3D are on about the same level.

Since your focus is mainly 2D concept art - Keep studying anatomy and showing you understand edge quality/material definitions. For your secondary skills I'd really show off that you can texture, lay out proper UVs and understand good polygon distribution for 3D objects. Get good at 3D characters OR props, don't try to do both unless they relate specifically to the character you're trying to create.

Specific notes about your portfolio would be - Your 3d prop models have issues with topology/normal map errors. Your character concept work is really fun and shows a good range of styles that all read reasonably clear. Show some illustrations/environment/prop concepts that are industry level, if they're not - remove them.

A generalist rule of thumb rant incoming

The more desirable generalists I've seen have been those that have a specific focus and then show skills that greatly compliment that focus. IE Character artists that can rig/animate. Environment artists that can do VFX/shader work, etc. Not necessarily a Character artist who's also an Environment artist and Concept artist. Those are 3 major pillars that usually have specific people solely for those roles and perform them to a high level of skill. Spreading yourself too thin by being that diverse tends to lower the quality and thus has an inverse affect that makes you less desirable. I think its safe to say most leads would rather see a few really strong pieces than a lot of diverse mediocre ones.

ninaneco

Thank you so much for your great feedback! It really helps a lot to decide what my main focus should be!
Are there any good tutorials / literature to recommend? That would be very nice.
Cheers!

DmitryMorozov

At first you need to decide in which direction you want to work. After that, it will be clearer on what topics need search for tutorials.

Or are you interested in education materials immediately in all the above-mentioned areas?

Gannon

@ninaneco I don't have any specific tuts/literature but - I'd recommend finding artists you look up to and try to dissect their work. If there's a particular studio you're interested in working at, start with the artists there. For me I've always wanted to work at Blizzard so I looked up artists like Tyson Murphy, David Harrington, Ryan Metcalf etc... the list goes on, but I think you get my point though.

Focus on an area they do that is better than what you currently have in your portfolio, then try to replicate it with a small project. IE if your need to practice rendering, find a style you like and render something that compares to or improves upon the reference.