Could you charge higher rates and offer clients a "discount" if the contract includes a clause allowing you to put the work in your portfolio after the game ships?
There are tons of game related podcasts out there, including several produced by members of polycount. These are the ones I've listened to the most. GIM CrunchCast TheGameDevCast BrainyGamer Idle Thumbs
When you export the lowpoly OBJ, are you including vertex normals in it? In Xnormal, when you add the lowpoly model, are you setting it to use Exported Normals?
@ Mikezoo Turnaround time for the model+outfits was around 15 days I believe, not including polish we did as the game was developed and added more graphical features.
Working mostly on textures at this point (still plenty ahead, including gloss, metalness, extra skin maps, etc), also a little tweaking left on hair planes.
If you've done something truly worthwhile within that project include it. Format it in the same way as any other job. Experience is experience, though if they failed state it was cancelled.