Portfolio Review
triangle
I'm putting together a portfolio to work as a freelance artist. Seeing if I could get some feedback and suggestions.
Portfolio
https://www.artstation.com/luke412
Refined portfolio
I'm putting together a portfolio to work as a freelance artist. Seeing if I could get some feedback and suggestions.
Portfolio
https://www.artstation.com/luke412
Refined portfolio
Replies
Hi! I recommend checking out the wiki: http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Portfolio
Your portfolio is not very specific imo. What kind of artist? Projects tend to have specific needs, and if your portfolio doesn't adress them or is too convoluted, you will likely not be considered.
Generally I'd cull stuff that's not polished from portfolio (keep it in your regular artstation or sketchbook). And provide more context to projects (what assets where created by you, what was the objective?).
Videos are entertaining 👍️ Overall the quality varies a lot.
Good luck 🚀
Thanks for the reply.
I agree my work is kind of spread out. I'm a jack of all trades. I think if I try to make a portfolio that focuses on a specific thing, I would get easily outclassed by people who specialize in that area. So I try to impress them with all the diverse and general work I done.
But I hear that portfolios are not suppose to have things that are any less than perfect, so I'm not sure what to do. I still have some standards. I already cut out things that I didn't think were very great.
Surly employers understand that people make great stuff, along with ok stuff? I would just like them to know I can make more than a few really good objects. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thanks for the reply.
looking for more feedback.
*bump*
The problem I see with your portfolio atm is that is has too many things of varying quality and with no particular order. Some things look like you did them when you started learning 3d while others look more curated.
There is also a lack of focus so I don't really know what are you good at
I'd probably focus on taking your best 5 or 6 works and removing everything else. You should also try to focus your portfolio to one or two particular skills that are very clear to see without having to click on everything (i.e a weapon artist should have weapons, character artist characters and so on).
Thinking about the role that you would like to get can also help you tailor the portfolio for that particular position.
A few others have have pointed out the lack of focus and quality. I'm sort a a jack of all trades. I think if I try to make a portfolio that focuses on one thing, I would easily get out done by people that specializes in that area. So I try to impress them with all of my diverse and general knowledge.
But I read that your portfolio is not suppose to have anything that is less than perfect, so I'm not sure what to do. I still have some standards. There's some stuff I left out that I thought wasn't up to par.
Surly employers understand that people make great stuff, along with ok stuff? Or appreciate general knowledge over specialization.
A generalist would need to be good at a lot of stuff. Like, industry good. They can't be sub-par at everything. That's why people say specialize. You get amazing in one area in order to get a job, then start to branch out (if you want to be a generalist). But you get into the industry because you're amazing at a specific thing. A generalist should be amazing at a lot of things. Being a specialist, yes, you'll need to beat out other people who are a specialist in that area, but that's just what it takes.
If I was a recruiter, I would look at the first few things in your portfolio, and if they didn't impress me, I would move on. I think you need to do a cull. Hide everything except for like... your very ,very best stuff.
I think what I have is is pretty good though. Maybe some lighting tweaks here and there.
I used bitly for my Artstation on my resumes, and I have appeared to have gotten 37 clicks. No interviews yet..
I'm also having difficulty deciding what "quality" means. There's objects that are textured, greyscale, low poly, and high poly. Each model serves different purposes. A matte colored low poly house could work for a blueprint presentation, while a photo real house could work for a film.
I have some models that are meant to be game ready. So they don't have crazy amounts of detail. They could be viewed as looking bad from a photo real perspective.
I will do improvements to some models and make other artstation accounts that only have certain things.
"I'm putting together a portfolio to work as a freelance artist"
'freelance' can be subjective if not indeed relative in terms of ones presumptive POV....
For example, an artist with 5 - 10yrs industry experience under their belt decides to go it alone, they're more likely too secure a profitable let alone sustainable livelyhood, simply based upon working under a production environment, whilst not forgetting usually accruing *inhouse* contacts which often lead to outsourced contract work, besides.
If on the other hand, creating content for various online stores that seem to proliferate these days or one off cash in hand jobs for peripheral outlier professions, beyond the entertainment industry as a whole, then maybe?! an opportunity exists with what you've got atm.
However, the essential point remains especially client-side whether you're dealing face-to-face with a studio/company or not, the 'passport' of entry is above all else, portfolio quality though not necessarily quantity and equally coupled with having a competent business acumen, as well.
Edit:
After a brief glance, your folio seems to be leaning generally toward hard surface prop/vehicle assets so as Asher mentioned above, I'd suggest specializing in that discipline + search artstation plenty of AAA standard art on there shared by pros, in so doing provides the benchmark required,
What stuff do you think I should leave out?
Everyone is free to roast. I used bitly to track 55 clicks to my artstation and 33 clicks to my youtube channel through various job applications, but have not received any interviews. I usually apply for remote prop artist, environment artist, generalist, technical artist, and some creature animator positions.
How many applications per interview is typically normal?
Clicks or likes are not a measure of hire-ability. Maybe looking at the likes vs views ratio on a per artwork basis could give you a hint of how good it is but its still not an accurate metric.
There is no "applications per interview" standard. It varies greatly and the fact that you are not hired yet should be the only "metric" that you should look at.
I was pointing out how 55 people must have seen my portfolio, and all of them decided not to do an interview. I would presume that a better portfolio would get more interviews per views, or wouldn't have to submit as many applications to get a job. It's a little surprising since I believe to have shown high quality in a lot of areas. Even my weaker pieces are not too bad.
I think I'm starting to understand that employers just want to be blown away by the best and most realistic visuals that computer graphics can offer. Essentially CGI porn. It's going to take me some time to make these highly detailed models. Hopefully I'll have better luck afterwards.
Not all people on AS are recruiters, in fact most ppl checking out your work are probably other artists.
"you're only as good as your worst piece."
showcase only your best work.
The views I tracked are coming from applications, since that's where I used the bitly link.
That ☝️
*up*
What more feedback do you want to get on the portfolio? I think the most important thing for you at the moment is culling the portfolio to the best 4 or 5 pieces. Your portfolio is just as good as your worst piece. After that people will be more capable and willing to give feedback on specifics, instead of on everything.
I would personally save the Sherman redoing the UVs and textures, giving it a bit more care and interesting features than it has now (looks too much like a smart material slapped on it with no color variation or purpose on the wear and tear), the industrial tanks fixing the UVs and textures and some of the cars working in the presentation and shaders. Maybe the Steampunk biplane if you were to add some more detail in the modeling and some more thought in the textures.
You also need to show more breakdown images of the models (show wireframes, pbr maps, maybe add a 3d viewer like marmoset or sketchfab...)
Everything else in my opinion is too simple or would require too much work to get it up to a proper quality.
One suggestion that might improve your portfolio is to use albums to batch together stuff, like animation, programming, high poly modeling, real time rendering, etc.
Another suggestion although its been already posted a few times already, is to trim down low quality stuff, like really old stuff that doesnt show your current skill level, that sort of thing. Since you mentioned that you dont really get what is "quality", i suggest looking at portfolios of people working in the industry (movies, games, motion grapghics, etc) and then you will get a sense of where the bar is.
And saying that YOU think your work is pretty good (despite what everyone else here have said) only shows a lack of self awareness and an adversion towards feedback. Not a good trait to be displaying...
You can think of your portfolio as a conversation starter.
Imagine you are at a party and somebody comes up to you and tells you way too much info about themselves. Talking and talking and telling you answers to questions you didn't ask. What do you do? Try to get away. It's weird.
Somebody who says just a couple things but they are very interesting is who you remember.
Both the bad conversationalist and the good conversationalist are probably goofballs in their own way, but one made it seem like they aren't.
I'm proud of them.
I've been trying to get feedback this whole time, like any good artist would. But I everyone has been giving very little and vague advice saying to just "cut things out". I think my work is good enough to get a pretty decent job.
Honestly, I think the employers are getting overwhelmed by soo many pieces because I've done soo much good work, so might need to be trimmed down.
I don't agree in the "your only as good as your worst piece". Whoever started that don't know what their talking about. I think your as good as your best piece.
no matter what people say, it is important to be proud of your accomplishments and rightly prize a positive view of your self-worth, the art spirit *will* die without it.
the words are not an attack on you but is insight into how an audience thinks.
As Cory said, you should be proud of your work, but it is also necessary for you to notice the quality of your work. It is hard for all of us to get rid of old work because we are attached to it, but we all had to do it at some point because it no longer represents what we are able to achieve.
Even if ideally the work that speaks for you should be your best, the truth is that bad quality work mixed with good quality work gives the impression to the employer that you don't know how to tell good from bad. To get better at this you have to look at the work from other artists and get a better idea of what makes a 3d model good or bad. This might help you get a glance on where the required level is for people starting out: https://polycount.com/discussion/187512/recently-hired-in-aaa-show-us-your-portfolio#latest
This is also an interesting read regarding how to build a portfolio: https://cgsociety.org/news/article/3027/how-to-create-a-stunning-portfolio-with-jared-sobotta
I know all that, and kept alot of my work because I still think its good.
A skilled employer should know that people make different levels of quality/detail.
Regardless I updated it and removed some stuff. How does it look now?
https://www.artstation.com/luke1741/albums/all
creating a second page is a really great idea Lukes3D.
unfortunately i wasn't able to look through all of your work due to my own personal constraints, but looking closer at your work, if this portfolio is being aligned toward being a freelance artist, i feel these are your three strongest pieces in that regard: 1, 2, 3.
generally speaking, i'd suggest removing anything using store bought assets and kits that are not your own, any cool collaboration stuff like that be sure to credit the source and delineate what is your work, separate your video editing work into its own portfolio. i'd suggest coalescing images from the same project into a single folder or combine them into a single page, i think it best in this setting to only show an asset once per page, asset turnarounds with additional images if really necessary, i'm guilty of this but, i personally don't want to see more than four angles of any given asset and think someone's being classy by only showing two angles, if not getting away with just one. another personal preference, because video thumbnails appear heavily compressed at first and also have an additional time commitment associated with it, i want a sample of what it is before i click it, i'd display a still render first, place the video or 3d model viewer or whatever, below it.
so you have a good amount to select from, what's important to keep in mind is what you showcase in a hiring portfolio essentially puts you on a course of making that type of thing moving forward, so whatever you're showcasing make sure that's the direction you want to be moving, it's not always easy to change course due to the amount of work behind it all.
overall, i'd think you can work towards improving your lighting and rendering, i think presenting work using more modern techniques such as sub-d modeling, texture baking, pbr texturing techniques would be of great benefit for game work specifically.
Thanks for the reply. I use alot of stock assets in my work. I'm not sure what to do since they are intertwined with work that I actually done. They aloud me make things quicker.
Take for instance my airship https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ZeXNOw. It's using parts from a WW2 naval ships package from the Unity store, but I made the body and positioned all the pieces. The plane is also from the Unity store.. The terrain is extracted from the a satellite downloader in Unity.
I wasn't really thinking about a portfolio when I was making all these. A big chunk of my time was spent learning game programming, so I tried to save time and be as resourceful as I could.
because you have an understanding of programming, i'd recommend pushing your learning towards anything involving node networks, as that will be a large hurdle for your typical 3d artist to overcome. look into seeing if Substance Designer or Houdini interest you, these particular apps are valued tool sets.
I seem to have gotten 127 clicks on my portfolio, and only 2 interviews, 1 from india.
One of the interviews appeared to been a a mistake, since they have not seen my portfolio yet until the zoom interview. It was for a 3d modeling job. As he was looking at it, he had the most confused look on his face, and started to ask questions like what do I do, and to see my resume, as if the portfolio could not speak for itself.
When I mentioned that i've been doing 3d modeling for 15 years, he said that the steam train didn't look like 15 years of experience.
I've since removed several pieces from the refined portfolio that I did not think was up to par, but it only leaves me with 1 video of the spaceship battle I made 11 years ago.
fail.
I was told once of a former EA employee (TA) a single screenshot is what can get you a job. Focus on making shot that people have to double take. or maybe 2 or 3, but less is more! get rid of all work in your portfolio except the utmost excellence, they will never ask for more, they will only judge you by your worst piece of work. So erase all of the process and stuff YOU find impressive (E.X. topology, rig tests, Texture maps} and have them in reserve. Only reveal them if you find the person you are interviewing with is smart enough (or an expert in the "making of the sausage" ) to ask for such things. Never show your weak spot. Just get the job. dont take it too personal either. we have ALL made trash before ALL OF US... ;D
Honestly I'm not sure if I want to work for these people anymore since they all appear to be snobs.
Just seems like I got my hands tied behind my back since I pretty much can't show any of my work in the past 15 years except for maybe one thing, which is still debatable.
I'm going to have to start from the ground up. If I only have to have one amazing thing in my portfolio, maybe that's all I need?
I am not trying to get a job at big AAA company either (I'd imagine those are fiercely competitive). I'm just going for any remote 3d job as well as doing freelance gigs on upworks. Does everyone have standards as high as Activision or EA?
I think you need to change your outlook my dude. The people you refer to as 'snobs' are just other artists trying to ensure the games or shows they're working on meet a quality bar. If I'm hiring, and looking at a portfolio, and 50% of that artist's work is substandard, or looks amateurish, I'm going to assume 50% of the work they will do for me will look amateurish. When I get work from other artists who did things to a below standard, I have to spend my time fixing stuff, and I don't want to do that. Bad work also slows down production, because the art director or clients or supervisor will look at work that doesn't meet the bar and tell you to redo it. It puts strain on production times. Speaking of strain on times... If I'm looking through portfolios, and I come across someone who has 40 projects, and maybe 3 or 4 of them are production quality, do you think I have the time to put aside the other 80 applications to sift through that artstation in order to assess if that person actually has the talent required for producing quality art?
Taking critique is a skill if you're an artist. If other artists are suggesting doing a cull because of lack of quality, instead of calling them snobs, take what they're saying into consideration and figure out why they're saying it. Whether you're aiming for a AAA company or a small studio, the competition for both is fiercely competitive.