How to become marketable to employers as a 3d character artist?

focus_method

Henlo,


Being able to do just nice sculpt, retopo ,UV , and paint it seems is not enough today. 
So, what would make some 3d character artists marketable?
Do we need to show some facial and body rigging ready for animation on the portfolio to actually get a job ? 

thomasp

Nah, you just have to be good at the job. You'd be one of usually just a handful of people on a team, as opposed to the kind of mass hiring and revolving door contract policy that from what I've seen seems to be going on over at environments or animation.

Just far more competition for character art. Being good and knowing someone on the inside is how you get the interview without a fuss.

sprunghunt

I don't see a link to your portfolio. I immediately can't tell if you're any good? notice how both thomas and I have links in our profiles? 

If you want to be more marketable I suggest you try marketing yourself. This means you show your work to as many people as possible. 

You can have an artstation and a twitter, and an instagram, and a youtube, linkedin, and even facebook. When you finish a project post it to all these social media. When you're working on a project post updates somewhere (like polycount or artstation). 

Of course you'll get more attention if your work is awesome to look at. But if you never show anyone - how will they know? 

focus_method

sprunghunt said:

I don't see a link to your portfolio. I immediately can't tell if you're any good? notice how both thomas and I have links in our profiles? 

If you want to be more marketable I suggest you try marketing yourself. This means you show your work to as many people as possible. 

You can have an artstation and a twitter, and an instagram, and a youtube, linkedin, and even facebook. When you finish a project post it to all these social media. When you're working on a project post updates somewhere (like polycount or artstation). 

Of course you'll get more attention if your work is awesome to look at. But if you never show anyone - how will they know? 

https://www.artstation.com/denisbarucija

sprunghunt

focus_method said:

sprunghunt said:

I don't see a link to your portfolio. I immediately can't tell if you're any good? notice how both thomas and I have links in our profiles? 

If you want to be more marketable I suggest you try marketing yourself. This means you show your work to as many people as possible. 

You can have an artstation and a twitter, and an instagram, and a youtube, linkedin, and even facebook. When you finish a project post it to all these social media. When you're working on a project post updates somewhere (like polycount or artstation). 

Of course you'll get more attention if your work is awesome to look at. But if you never show anyone - how will they know? 

https://www.artstation.com/denisbarucija

Thanks for sharing but the point is that every post you make should have a link to your portfolio. You shouldn't have to repost the link. 

Neox

tbh that portfolio is lacking

you have only one asset that could be considered final and even that glove is a bit faulty in places.

Otherwise there is a zbrush anatomy sketch/sculpt and another unfinished helmet

and a heavy artillery thing that's also not finished but also doesn't sell you as a character artist.

so first things first, finish up that glove. atm you have some heavy density inconsistencies. For instance the knuckles are super lowpoly, while that uppermost layer with the stitches is crazy dense for no reason. balance that thing on a mesh level and then work on shading/texturing and presentation. atm the final textured version looks very samey, there is little material contrast.

then finish up that helmet to a usable standard. which btw seems to have the exact same material properties as the glove.

it's very mushy and gooey, the hard surface parts feel rubbery and not like metal. like some foam made cosplay. nothing really feels fabricated or intentional here, its a bunch of things slapped together.

if you wanna show hard surface modelling, which imho is super useful as a character artist, maybe don't show it on an asset that's essentially a bunch of boxes. if you wanna sidetrack as a weapons artist research for better readable presentations by people who do this for a living. because atm it could be a lot of things, but its clearly not a finished asset.

ditch that sculpt exercise this has nothing to do your portfolio as a game character artist imho.

it's cool that you exercise. but at the end of the day, your potential employers want to see that you can finish assets. there are better zbrush only dudes out there. for a training piece its nice and all, but this would be better in a blogpost or its own "sketches" category. Not in the one thing you use to apply to possible employers with.

and to quote you

"Being able to do just nice sculpt, retopo ,UV , and paint it seems is not enough today. "

i think you are wrong here. show that you can actually do this and you should have no problems finding jobs. atm you show that you can start things, show that you can finish them.