Transcription
So I said, welcome to Killer Portfolio. We are doing portfolio reviews after this from 2 to 5. So if anybody's interested, this is where we'll be—anyway.
All right. Let's start with some introductions. Dennis, do you wanna go?
Sure. My name is Danish Syed. I'm one of the art directors at Bit Reactor. I guess I'll leave it there for now.
Hello, my name is Lana Basinski. I'm an associate art director at Riot Games working in research and development.
Hi, I'm Ashley Sparling. I'm the co-founder and character art director at Canine Digital.
I'm Jeff Perrett. I'm an associate art director at Blizzard Entertainment on World of Warcraft.
And I guess I probably should have said I'm Greg Firs, I'm the creative director at Bit Ror.
You guys wanna maybe tell us a little bit about how you got in the industry, like what your background is?
All right, I'll try to make this brief. It's a very circuitous route, which I think is actually pretty beneficial to hear about because there's no one way to get in. I started out in computer science. I always wanted to do something in the art field, but I also like computers and I wasn't super confident in my artistic skills. So I went to school for computer science, worked as a systems administrator for a few years and decided, okay, well, I guess this is cool, but I'd really want to pursue my passion. So I went to school at night, went to art school and got an animation degree and eventually broke into the industry, doing motion graphics for film and television. And then eventually, after a few years of that, the studio I was working at was kind of shifting direction into a place where I wasn't as interested. And I sought an opportunity for a contract position at Warner Brothers Games in Chicago, which I didn't realize was actually Midway Games, the creators of Mortal Kombat. So I had the entire interview not realizing what I was interviewing for. At the end, I was like, "So what are you working on?" And they're like, "We're doing Mortal Kombat." And I was like, "Oh my God, I cannot believe that that's like one of my favorite games of all time." So that was kind of my way in.
I have a very straightforward path, I think obnoxiously. So it's a very boring tale. When I was a kid, I thought, wow, Blizzard games are so cool. I wanna work for Blizzard. And then in high school, I, from Edmonton, Alberta Canada, went to VIC Comp, which is an art school there, and I learned how to animate. And then I came here for university just around the corner. I applied for the Blizzard internship back in 2012 and I got it, and then they hired me back full time after that, and that's how I did it.
So for me, I was always into art. I got a traditional background in sculpting, painting, and drawing. And I always wanted to do special effects makeup. That was always my thing that I wanted to do. And I went to go look at a university, and one of the teachers was like, "You don't want to get into the practical stuff, go into digital." So I was like, "Oh, I never really thought about it," and then found out that I quite like doing game characters and then kind of went from there. I've been in the industry now 17 years, worked at Rare, Lion Head (rest in peace), and Ubisoft, and eventually started my own company with my wife, and it's pretty damn cool.
My path is kind of similar to Danish's. I went to school for a graphic design major, computer science minor. Got out, was doing websites and logo design, stuff like that, freelance. And my father came to visit me where I was living at the time, and he could kind of tell I wasn't super happy doing that. And he said, "Why don't you find, you know, go back to school and find something that lines up better with what you like to do, games, movies, whatever." And up to that point, I never realized that people actually make games. I don't know what I thought; they just appeared at the store, and I went and got them. It was a really odd thing, and he kind of connected that up. So what I ended up doing is going back to school and doing that, and then I started out doing freelance work and then moving to in-studio work, and that was early two thousands. I think I've probably contributed to like north of 25 to 27 games, something like that. So, yeah, quick path.
Cool. Do you guys have a really diverse background up here? What are some of the—what about you, Greg?
Me? Okay. All right. I started as an intern, didn't know anything about games, sort of like some of you. They just kind of magically happened. I have a traditional background. I started as an intern at a place called MicroProse way, way back. And then I left there, I spent about 22 years at Firaxis Games. Left there, did a little stint, helped my friends out at Romero Games for about a year while I started my own studio. And now I went from art director to creative director and CEO of my own company, which is kind of cool. So if you're an artist out there, you can do it. You don't have to work for finance people. And so yeah, so that was my path. And I'm lucky enough to have surrounded myself with some really talented people, both at my office and friends in the industry, which I really appreciate them being here.
Anyway, let's jump into what you guys see is most likely—what are some of the common mistakes that you see in portfolios? You all see a bunch of them? What are some things that you see that are typical that could be avoided? Should we go down the line, or does anybody have—animation? What is the biggest stuff you see there? Animation. How many animators up in this room? Nice. Right, on, take notes. Just kidding. The biggest things that I see are a sort of lack of diversity in a portfolio, is probably the one I think goes under the radar. I think people have heard, "Oh, it's too long," or the length is the thing that comes up most often. But I would rather have a long reel that has a lot of it properly showcasing your skills. But also, don't make it super long. What I mean by that is I see a real—and if you're applying for a game studio, there's like an implication of like what you think you should do. And it's like all walk cycles, and they're not different walk cycles; they're all the same piece over and over and over again. Or it's just all dialogue, and it's just lip-syncs. And even if those walk cycles are amazing, or even if those lip-syncs are amazing, it's more than likely that you will be asked to do a variety of different things once you get on the job. And so showcasing as best as you can, the variety of things you might be asked to do. I need a body mechanics piece. Sure, throw a lip-sync piece in there. Sure, throw a walk cycle in there. But don't make it some kind of vanilla thing. We'll do a character cycle. You want all those different pieces that are showing the myriad of things that you're able to do, and let that be your super tight reel of sort of one of each is good enough for me. Don't double up. There's no need.
Jeff, what do you say?
I think the biggest thing to keep in mind is hiring managers, recruiters, art directors, leads are taking a risk when they hire people. You reduce that risk as much as possible and show them that you can do the job that they're hiring for. Be specific. If you're really excited about creating stylized fantasy characters, have a portfolio focused around that. If you really love realistic military vehicles, have a portfolio around that, but understand your portfolio isn't going to be applicable to all jobs. I know that feels limiting, but what that does is that actually gives you that time to focus on that one, pure craft. As students, you don't have that 10,000 hours to get good at all the things; all the things comes over time. It's really narrow your focus down. Secondly, I would say do the kind of "one of these things is not like the other" test. You can look online, you can just enter in a search engine, whatever game you want, ArtStation or, you know, artists you can look on any of those platforms, ArtStation, Kara, any of those kinds, and find professionals that are doing what you wanna do. Put those portfolios up on a screen and put yours up on a screen. What is yours missing? And really be analytical, think through it. What do I need to do? What do I not have that they have? And what am I including that they don't? And then I also say, like, with that, sort of run your work through what I call the "civilian test." People who don't know anything about video games, like a roommate, a loved one, a parent, a relative, whatever. Does this stuff look right? What's missing? And they'll really point out those flaws because they'll give you that snap judgment. So I think it's really important to curate, focus your portfolio, but then also make sure it's aligned with the people that you wanna work with. I know that's a little daunting in terms of like, "Well, they've been doing this for X number of years. I'm a student; I'm still learning." But if you want your work to sit next to their work in a game, your work needs to be able to sit next to their work on a screen. And so you do have to kind of keep that as a target for you. I'll probably stop; I could keep going for 30 minutes, but I'll stop.
I actually have an addition to that. You have to be very selective. I think I fell into this trap, you know, coming out of school where I just felt like I didn't have enough to show. And so I would put too much into a portfolio, including pieces that really shouldn't have made the cut, because I just thought I need to pad it out, I need to be bigger, I need to be more impressive. But really being more selective and honing things down is actually the way better way to go. You're only as strong as your weakest piece, right? And you don't want to give them any reason to think, "Why did they include this in their portfolio?" Don't give them that reason. Hone it down, really focus it, and just as a caveat to my earlier statement, just because we want to see the breadth, that doesn't mean you need to show everything. If you only like doing fight scenes, we want to work on cinematics; you don't have to show walk cycles at all. That doesn't have to be a part, but just be thoughtful with what you're curating for each thing.
One of the things I'd say as well, I mean, there's a lot of competition out there, and I see a lot of portfolios of characters like in T-pose, or if you're doing environments, just like a brick or something. But the whole reason why we want to get into this industry is to tell stories, so don't just do like a character in the T, you know, like either an idle animation or put in a pose. If you are doing a brick for whatever reason, just do like a couple of bricks and make it into a natural story. Show that you can actually tell a story for your characters and for your environments for your animations.
Could we talk about one thing—just kind of spread that idea? Fan art. I think that's acceptable in a portfolio?
I personally love seeing fan art. Yes, I want to see it. But what I don't want to see is recreating the thing that's already been made in the game. I want to see the thing that feels new, but also that it belongs in the game. What's the thing next to that person? If it's a superhero, what's that character that's next to the superhero? If it's a huge building in a key city in MMO world, let's say, what's that building that maybe is around the corner? Add something new to it, but fan art is awesome. Just don't remake the thing because the team is going to know what you did, right? They're also going to know what you did wrong because they've been looking at those exact things for a long time, also. If you need a logo to say it's fan art, it's not successful in my view; you shouldn't have to take a logo from a game that you did not work on and put it on your thumbnail image to say that it's fan art. Someone should be able to look at it and go, "Oh my gosh, this looks like game X," and tell from that instead of just a logo. Do you want—do you want that in the description, though, to say like that it is fan art? Just so it doesn't—yeah, say "fan art" in the description, but the logo kind of comes across like clout-chasing to me a little bit; I don't love it.
Cool. All right. So what have you guys seen—a ton of portfolios? Are there any that like you can go back and think about, like, this is like the best one I've ever seen, or is one that really lasted with you? Maybe even if it wasn't the best one, like it was one that stood out over a period of time?
There was one I saw recently that—excuse me—it was for a UI artist, and what I really loved about it, it was not only the final art was really excellent, but it showed the process. It showed the sort of like process and personality—are two things that I look for—and how, you know, what was going through their mind when they came up with this idea and what were they trying to achieve emotionally and what kind of impact they want. Like all of those things. Like that's what I love seeing is the thought process and getting into their head. And also just like the sometimes the dirty work of like, "Yeah, so this is kind of my scratch pad, and like, I didn't like this or I didn't like that," but then kind of showing the evolution of an idea. So something really thorough where you have the final piece, but then all of the kind of legwork behind it. So portfolios like that, I think, really stick out.
Yeah, I was going to say a similar thing. It's—I always quite like—I like to see if you can add value to the community, like if there's like a little tutorial or something like that, or a different way that you've been able to make, I don't know, a chain or something like that. And I think that those things are kind of more memorable than the actual artwork because quite often—oh, are you thinking of like making something? And I'm like, "Oh yeah, I saw this person, I can't remember their name, but I can remember that they did this tutorial." So it's like a chain tutorial, whatever, but it kind of shows that you're willing to work in a team and you're willing to share your knowledge as well.
Some of the most memorable portfolios that I see are ones that are able to demonstrate sort of a T-shaped person. T-shaped is when somebody has like a very clear skill that they're applying for. So an animation, it's an animation demo reel. But if it is edited amazing, you know, we're not just seeing the full length of every piece; it's got quick cuts to a song, and the song is not overwhelming. And then the splash screen with their information on it has a nice design on it. To me, that is—it's not—I would never turn somebody away who was applying for an animation position who didn't have music and just had their animations, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I think that's what I'm hiring for. But these memorable portfolios really stick out as somebody who will be extensible, will be adaptable, and possibly be able to give your team more because they're also able to show these other skills on display. So if you have other skills that are tangent to the art that you do and you're confident that you're good at them, like don't do it if it's just to throw it in; there's got to be some sense of self-awareness there. But if you got the skills, show them off.
I think the most memorable portfolio I saw—and this is going to date myself—but back in 2005, I want to say, back when normal maps and specular maps were kind of just coming into the development process, an artist put a scene together, and on a cardboard box in the scene, they had a fingerprint in the spec map. It's little things like that, like the storytelling. I want to work with storytellers, and I think that's really important to have that kind of ability to tell stories through your artwork. I don't want to work with people that are just 3D printers and just make a thing and go to an online store and just print out the cabinet or whatever, the pair of jeans. Tell a story with your artwork is what I tell you.
The next one is not super complex here, but how many samples? Everybody always wants to know, and we sort of touched on this a little bit before, but how many samples should be in a portfolio? What do you guys normally think?
Animation? I think the current advice is roughly a minute. If you're above two, it's like way too much. And ultimately, just only the best things. If your reel is 30 seconds long, but it's like best of the best, that's great. That's great. Three pieces.
Next question. I was going to say to that, normally when we're looking at portfolios, we can probably tell in the first 10 to 15 seconds whether we're going to continue looking at the rest of the portfolio, just because we get inundated on portfolios, and you could spend a lifetime looking at portfolios and never get any work done. So you've got in that 10 to 30 seconds, you've got to make something wow to catch our attention. Treat it like a store window, a department store or whatever, put the enticing stuff that people want to come in and look at more stuff. So best piece—whether it's animation, whether it's your online portfolio for 3D characters, environments, whatever, visual development, concept—best work first, always.
That's a great lead into the next question, which is, is it a good idea to show in-progress work, and how would you do it? I think you started to allude to it, like, start with that stuff. It's always tricky to me to see that because another question is, should I show wireframes? And that's such a specific answer because there's a lot of hiring managers and folks that are like, "Yes, I always want to see wireframes." I only want to see them for good, which I can tell you I haven't seen a lot of good wireframes. I've never looked at it and gone, "Oh my gosh," unless it's like 50 polygons and it's some car or something, some detailed car. So I think it's really challenging. I think you need to do it in the right space. I don't know, in your main portfolio if work in progress is the way to go. But I think you can have a blog or something like that. I do love seeing thinking and the thought process. If I can click on an image and then see the buildup in like a process GIF of how you made that, I love seeing that stuff. Secondarily, I would say I think like when you have a portfolio website, like a YouTube video for animation or anything like that is great. But I think places like ArtStation are also awesome because you can have a video, and then under the video in the same post, you can embed a bunch of images and stuff too. If you have thumbnails that you do or like reference videos that you want to throw in there, it's good to—I think—to provide the option because if it's getting down to a couple of candidates, I will weigh that in. But I wouldn't put it in like the core thing that went for that initial pass of digging through, and always lead with the finished piece, right? Then tree out underneath.
Danish, anything else about UI because that's such an—I hate to say it's emerging, but it is—different.
Yeah, it definitely is different, and I think I agree that like process for a lot of portfolios should be secondary, but in UI, it is a little bit more important because we want to know because UI and UX is so much about player psychology and the user experience and how you're thinking about how the player thinks and that sort of thing. So I think for that, it is very important to show process and your thought process.
Next one, we kind of talked about a little bit before, and Jeff and I were not actually talking about this outside—generalist versus specialist. The industry has grown so much; the window for what you do is so different. I think when I started, it was like, "You're just an artist," like you're an artist and animator. I'm truly not an animator, but I appreciate them. I really do. But I think a lot of people coming out of school feel conflicted, is like, "Do I do the wide range of things? Do I do something special?" What do you guys think?
Yeah—that speaks to me greatly because I wanted to do everything. I was almost like short attention span that like, "Oh, that's shiny. I want to do that. I want to do that," but I would get pretty obsessed and try to get really good at every single thing. So, like, that, I was saying very much T-shaped, I guess. But the important thing is to not have all of that on your portfolio. You should really tune it to the job that you want. Because what happens is, for example, we'll get a portfolio for a specific role, and they have all that other stuff; we immediately question, "Well, like, what do they actually want to do? Like, where does their heart lie?" Because the thing is they can work a job and do the job that they're asked of them, but maybe that's not exactly what they want to do, and they're kind of like always eyeing this other thing. And so we're always cognizant of that because we don't want our employees to be unhappy either. If they're not happy during their job, then it's not beneficial for anybody. So we really want the portfolio to focus on, "Oh, it's clear that they love this thing," and that can be difficult because, like I said, I'm like that; I love everything. But if I decide, "Okay, I'm going to make a portfolio about this because I think this is what I want to focus on right now," I think that's really important. I also think that even if you love doing everything, there will be opportunities to learn and likely learn quicker once you get in. So being able to specialize—I remember when I was going to school, I wanted to do it all. I wanted to be able to be like a self-sufficient art-making machine. I want to be able to make the whole game by myself. But the reality was, if I'm just animating or doing whatever art I want to do, I'm spending 100% of my time; that's great, that's focus. The second I split my focus, 50% of my time gets to go to these two things to try and get it to the right quality, somebody who's spending 100% of their time on one thing is going to get better faster and get the job, and it's going to take me double that amount of time. Maybe I'm a genius artist, I'm just creative to my bones, and I'll be able to do it. But it is lowering my chances of getting as good as I need to be at both things that I'm splitting my focus between, and I might not get a job at either thing, or it'll take me way longer. So specializing early and getting the job and then branching out and looking for opportunities to try new things or, when you have an income, just being able to spend your free time comfortably learning other stuff—I say get in and then go wide, baby.
Also, real quick, to go back to your earlier point about what makes a memorable portfolio, you can sprinkle in those other interests on the side, and that's actually really great. So you focus on one, but then you say, "I also kind of like this; I also kind of like that," but since it's all about the proportion of it because then I see the portfolio, and it's like, "Oh wow, they really love this one thing. But hey, they're also kind of interested in this too," that that's actually appealing too. I'm also seeing, like, with even indie studios that they're starting to be more specialized in what they do. But I do think it's good to—for example, I'm going to use character art as an example because of what I do. I do think it's good to have like an understanding of how concept art works. And obviously, if you're a 3D modeler, how rigging works and how that gets put into animation because when you are working together, you need to know what everybody's discipline is and how that's going to affect your work. So even though you don't want to be an animator, it's good to have an understanding of how things move, especially as a character artist. You have to think about the time, especially as a student and entering the industry; you only have so much time in front of you to get really proficient at something to be able to do it at a professional level. It's kind of that Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours, outliers saying—you don't have infinite time in school, and while you're developing your portfolio, so really focus and hone on something, and then, like everybody else said, you can kind of branch out after. You can learn those other things and have those additional skill sets. It'll make you a better game developer being able to communicate with people in disciplines and other areas even within the art world. But ultimately, like Danish said, we really want to hire people, and we want them to be happy in what they're doing. So make the things that you are happy making, the process, the style of art that you enjoy making for eight hours a day. What do you want to do for a full-time job? And be specific: stylized fantasy environment art. Even within that world, the team I work on, it's, "Do you like doing trees, props, buildings, architecture?" Like, be specific and hone in on that. I think again, that's where you can go back to find those professionals that are doing what you want to do, and they have those portfolios online; you can find those and see what they're doing and kind of mimic that and have a similar portfolio.
Cool. We're going to start questions after this last question that we have. So if anybody's got stuff, start lining up now if you want. But the next thought was, since there's a lot of this going on right now, and I've seen a few things lately that I thought it was worth mentioning, is there a place for AI in a portfolio? Any thoughts? Anybody? No, dog. I think that AI, you know, it's unmistakably part of our reality, and it's going to be something that we're going to have to face, I think in a portfolio, especially just starting out. You have to do yourself the service of making sure you know those skills and would not—I would not be leveraging AI for anything because you need to take the time to learn how to be able to do it without. There are lots of legal and ethical questions surrounding AI. I think that in your free time, if you want to mess around with it, AI is tools. It's not just Midjourney, ChatGPT, DALL-E; there's like interesting tools that are based in AI; there's interesting space there that isn't necessarily harming people. And I think is irreversibly a reality for us. But in your portfolio, you owe it to yourself to—don't do it. It goes back to what I was saying earlier about what I want to see in a portfolio is you; I want to see who you are as a person, what you like. I want something original. And what is your thought process? All of these human elements that AI just bypasses, and then I get absolutely no sense of who you are. And so that's another reason not to. And seeing like your experiments in AI, like that's not you, right? Like those don't really have a place in your portfolio, and they're also ugly. Yeah, we want to see that you've done the training; you can AI a creature, but we want to know, do you understand anatomy? Do you understand how things would move correctly and stuff?
Cool. All right. So let's get to some questions. Again, stick around; something fun at the end, I promise. All right. So let's start with you. It will be—it will be—we'll—we'll repeat it. Okay. Sounds sorry. My voice is also kind of stopped like modulating. So first of all, thank you all for coming. Actually, on the T—this is tangentially related to AI—I find that finding reference images lately has become a lot harder now that Google Images is full of AI, especially if I'm an environment artist; if I'm looking for historical reference or Pinterest or a lot of these places where I'm used to finding reference images, it's become harder with the rise of just the churn of AI content. So, you know, as I'm kind of developing my portfolio, what would be your advice as to—or what would your advice be to younger artists sifting through and finding good reference versus AI schlock? What kind of artist are you, just for curiosity?
3D environment artist, generally lean stylized fantasy.
So cool. I was going to say, I think books are going to come back into fashion, guys. I mean, I'm very badly dyslexic, but I've got thousands of books, art books. My wife will laugh at me about this because she's like, "You've got so many books, but you can't read." But yeah, they're good, and I think that would be—you know, sometimes there's stuff in those things that you can't get anywhere else. I would also say, get out and see the world. That's really important. Take a break while you're working; your eyes are going to rest; you're going to look at something; you're going to not see the flaws in your work. A lot of concept artists will flip their work horizontally just to refresh your eyes. But sometimes you just need to step away, so step away, take a walk. I'll do that quite often even at work, and I'll just walk around the building, walk around the office. It refreshes your eyes. You come back; you're able to think through things. Also, when you go to places, historical places or whatever, take pictures. If you're in San Francisco, take pictures of all the buildings and go see museums and go see historical sites. My family pictures when we travel, it's like the family here at this building, and then it's like brick textures or half my phone, and that's okay. So I would just say, get out and see the world.
Yeah. My mom's asked a question about the rock textures. Awesome. Hello. Oh, hi, guys. Uh, thank you so much for your time. My question really is about—I'm finding work as an artist in the industry right now; it's no secret that we're in a bit of a lull as an industry, and I just wanted your guys' opinions, you know, from a more art standpoint about what the landscape might look like in six months. Like, are all these senior developers going to start building their own companies? And then what would be the best avenue for us to try and find work in that lens?
I wish we knew. Honestly, it's rough which way the wind is; it's hard to say. What I can tell you is like, I think when we look at portfolios—I'll let you guys jump in on this—I'm jumping on a grenade here. But I think just be like, make great work. When we look at work—and then you guys tell me if you're wrong, but like—I don't look at how long somebody's been making something. I look at their work, and then I look at their work again, and then maybe I'll see how long they've been doing it. So it's all about the work. It's going to rebound at some point. But I would say just stick with it, try to weather the storm and get as good as you can get and make yourself as valuable as you can to somebody. I also think coming to places like this—and it doesn't have to be GDC because I think it's financially inaccessible—but there are lots of communities online, like talking with people, putting yourself out there. Don't be shy to ask a bajillion questions of a bajillion people, and obviously, read the room if somebody's not vibing with that, but talking with people and making friends. I know like this term "networking" is like, "Ew, networking." That's a smarmy word to use. But I feel like I owe a lot of my career and the opportunities I've had to come here and effectively try to make friends, and you work with people 8, 10 hours a day; you want to work with people you like. And so if you meet somebody and you get good vibes from them, "Hey, what is your portfolio like? Let's check it. I'd love to see that." And so the fact that you're here and talking to us now is a good start.
Awesome. I'll give an unpopular answer: if you're looking for work and you're new, but at the top of your resume, "Will relocate." I'm serious. It will get a door open for you, especially that will compensate for your inexperience. And it might just open a door for you. So I'm not sure how popular that opinion is here, but I'm telling you as a guy who owns a business, I would do that.
Great. Thanks so much, guys. Appreciate it.
Hi. Thank you all. My question is, for the new grads you hired, do you have any personal stories, like how you know them, and do you know them by personal connection or is it like by internal recommendation or just like on-campus recruitment? Because I guess it's like for students in school, like how we can effectively prepare ourselves for networking instead of just a blind application to all the companies. Just like some personal stories, I guess. So.
I think Lana said it really well: go to events like this or even local things; reach out to folks online. I have people do that often with me. The thing to keep in mind with networking—she's right, it sounds kind of icky—it isn't transactional, though, and you need to look at relationship building as not transactional. What is this person going to get from me? That's not the outcome. I have people that I've talked to for 20 years; I've never met them, but I've talked to them online, and they've given me advice over the years, and I've never asked anything from them; I've never expected anything from them. I just like their work; I wanted their opinion. The other thing is when you do reach out, "Hey, I'd love to get your opinion on this, your work. What you're doing. Could you give me your opinion on my work?" If someone takes their time to do a paintover or even just some verbal feedback that they're writing out, take the feedback, incorporate it, don't rush, do it right, and then send it back to them. I cannot tell you how many times I...
Have someone reach out for that. I take time, you know, during lunch or whatever. I’m sitting there and I write that out. I send it back, never hear from them again. That follow through is super important. I think professionals that have really good follow through are great to see because what happens is, oh, hey, we have an internship position and an associate level position. Does anyone know anybody? Oh, you know, I know this one person; they’ve been talking to me for a year and a half, they take feedback, and they incorporate it. So, you know, be genuine, be yourself. Relationships aren’t transactional, and incorporate feedback.
Probably the only other thing I would add is that blind applications do work. I got my internship from a blind application. And yeah, that was a while ago, but as a company that does hire interns, they also accept blind applications. You can still show who you are, not just through your art. Don’t undersell the quality of a really good cover letter. Seeing a cover letter that says, “Hi. I would like a job, please. Thanks,” is not good. Make sure your cover letter partners with your resume and isn’t a long essay. What else do you bring that can’t be written on a resume? What are your personal skills, your soft skills? What games do you like? There’s a way to show who you are, and I read cover letters; I want to see you, and that’s how you get yourself out there in a blind application.
I can’t agree more. I used to hate writing cover letters. I thought, what’s the point of this? Just look at the resume, look at the portfolio. But now, on the other side, I was like, I was so wrong because I do read every single cover letter, and it goes a long way for me. I’d also say there are avenues like some companies do contests. We actually just announced our winners today for our World of Warcraft student art contest. I know if Josh and Fred are here, but congratulations, guys. But all those work; every applicant does get looked at by a whole group of leads on the team, art directors, et cetera. So we do look at those things. Look for those kinds of avenues. I know a lot of companies will do things like that, and I think that’s a good way to get on their map. Thank you so much.
One of those things where you just never know who you’re going to meet. You could be standing there getting a coffee and start chatting to somebody, and they go, “Oh, yeah, we need some character work done.” You just never know. Hi, everybody. Thank you so much. It’s been a great talk so far. My question was, I was curious if you had any advice for people specializing because it seems like entry-level positions are already extremely competitive. I was curious if you had any advice on how to stand out amongst specializing people. Is it just putting in more hours than anybody else? Or do you have any advice on how to maybe stand out?
I think the comment earlier about making sure your portfolio is something… I’ve actually never heard somebody give that no before, but about making something that’s a no-brainer that you could do what we need you to do in your portfolio. So, like if I, when I was a student, I was maybe like, “Oh, I wanna work at ILM.” What does ILM make? Okay, Star Wars at the time. Not so much, but like Transformers. I’m gonna do a big characters hitting each other, fighting, contact, breaking trees. Like they’d be like, “Oh, this person can animate a robot running through the forest.” It was a no-brainer. It wasn’t exactly fan art; it wasn’t exactly those things. It’s just making it so it’s clearly a seamless transition to take what you put and put it in the game. But not exactly. When I was working at Blizzard on Heroes of the Storm, I’d be like, “Here’s Sylvanas,” and I’m like, yeah, but your Sylvanas was bad, and that’s not like I’m not trying to be insulting. It’s just too on the nose. I want to see what you can bring, not just what we already created. So, thank you so much.
Hi. Thank you so much for being here. I’m Katie. I’m a 3D environment artist. I was wondering what is your opinion on dioramas and vertical slices in your portfolio? Love them. Yeah, it’s great. A little bit of everything, but it’s really cool. Sometimes I’ll see entry-level portfolios; it’s like a whole city, and you know, have you made a door? Have you made a facade of a building? I would rather have a little bit of awesome than a lot of “meh.” So, yeah, I think it’s great to hone and focus your pieces. It’s all about storytelling; it’s easier to tell a story in a small little section than a massive world. Okay. Thank you so much.
Hey, guys. So right now I’m working on a project that incorporates a bunch of different specialties. I was wondering if, say I’m done with that project and I really like one aspect of it. So right now it’s environment design, character animation, a few different things I’ve liked doing. Once I’m finished with that project, should I just say, “Hey, I like environment only?” Should I expand that skill set and still include what my project was on my portfolio? I think it depends on what job you’re looking for. It’s more work; you have to tune a portfolio for different jobs, but it really does help a lot. If you were going for an environment position, make that the focus and have other things be supplementary. You could take all of the same work and do a different version of the portfolio where the proportions have shifted and it’s more focused on something else. You could show this is supporting. So I think it depends on what you’re applying for and the quality of all those things. Be real with yourself; is the quality of all the pieces portfolio-worthy? Will you get a job for any one of those disciplines individually? And if not, don’t show it all. Perfect. Thank you.
Hi. Oh, sorry. Hi. My name is Raw. I’m a 3D artist and environment artist. My question is, how can I, as somebody about to enter the industry, mold my skills for each portfolio? Do I have to have a bazillion portfolios lined up per each job specializing in specific things? I kind of live weapon creating and all forms of asset creation. But I also like making foliation and things like that, which is very different from Blizzard. How would I have a portfolio specific for you versus you on ArtStation, my own website? I would say that depends on what type of job you’re going for. If you’re going for a weapon artist job, there’s no point putting characters in it, for example. It’s even something that we do. We’re an outsourcing studio. If we know we’re applying for a client that does stylized work, there’s no point putting realistic stuff in there because it’s not what they’re looking for. Just tailor it to the company and position you’re aiming for.
Hello. Thank you so much for coming today. My question is actually pretty similar, for formatting portfolios. For people with many different interests, you guys emphasize focusing and maybe putting other interests to the side. I was wondering if you have one website portfolio, would it be worth it to make different portfolios for the different disciplines or just format it by discipline to guide the recruiter? Yeah, I mean, be specific, but also realize you don’t have time to do the quality level portfolios you’re going to have to for all the different disciplines. So I would say focus on what you like doing, what you enjoy doing, and focus on that first. Then you can branch out later. I’ve hired people as environment artists, and then they really love characters and they transition over time into doing characters. They’ll say, “Hey, I did this on the weekend,” and they’ll show the character team and get feedback. You can kind of do that over time. But having multiple portfolios – realistic, stylized vehicles, weapons, animation, effects – it’s so much stuff, and each of those disciplines is now so specific. So I would just say be specific, but formatting-wise, on ArtStation, as long as the link you send the recruiter goes to the thing that matters most for that job, send that. If you have a personal website and your reel is right on that page, but then you have little headings like weapons, character, whatever, if I have time and your stuff’s good, I’ll click through. But don’t send to a page that’s just a long list of stuff. Thank you so much.
That’s a really good point. I just want to clarify: don’t ever send a Google Drive link. No, I ain’t clicking on that. No. Thank you so much. Really good feedback. Hi. Thanks so much for your time. I’m Amanda, and I’m a material artist. As I heard you say, and other specialists say, it is less likely that you will find your first job doing exactly what you want to do. My case, material art. I heard people giving advice like taking time, sometimes even a year, to make your portfolio better. As an international student, I only have three months to find a job; otherwise, I have to leave the country. So my question splits into two: in the case of making my portfolio specialized, what are some things a portfolio would have that would get them hired immediately? And how do I make my portfolio attractive to tangent industries in case of getting a job not exactly in material art? I talk a lot, so just interrupt me if you want me to stop.
I think there’s no silver bullet. Even if your demo reel or portfolio is perfect, somebody could… my first job, they told me at the end of my internship my boss said we weren’t going to hire you, but I made an embarrassing joke to the other candidate, so we hired you instead. You never know why you’re not going to get a job. There’s nothing; it could be a perfect thing, and then somebody else messes up, and you take the hit for it. You will never know. So there’s no security there, but cast a wide net. I used to apply for three jobs every day for six months, and I got rejected from all of them. But don’t just set your eye on AAA; I was international as well, and I felt the stress of that looming visa. I worked at the tiniest little local publishing house, and that still counted. Look for anything local that will get you through, that’s even somewhat tangent to your art form. Once you have that job security and visa security, then you can work to where you want to be. Yeah, it comes down to preparation, timing, and luck, and some of those factors are outside of your control. You can only control the preparation, and timing is just paying attention to job sites, seeing when jobs are posted. Nowadays, you can usually find folks doing what you want to do, so you have a good barometer for what that portfolio should look like. Don’t underestimate the power of collaboration. There are environment artists here, material artists here, riggers, animators; work together and make a kick-ass piece together because that’s what you’re going to be doing in the industry. It’s not just one person doing it; it’s a collaboration thing. Showing you can collaborate will help. Thank you so much.
Hi. I’m a concept artist, and something I hear a lot trying to break into the industry is I’ve reached out to a lot of other concept artists who are juniors at various studios, and I’ve gotten a wide mix of people saying to have a generalist concept art portfolio or people that say it’s okay to just want to do environment concepts. From talking about specialization, you guys would be fans of going into environment concept art, not just including a mixture, or maybe include an environment piece that could also show my creature design within that environment. The funny thing is with video game art, my answer is always, “Well, it depends.” There’s always an outlier where you could have a generalist concept art portfolio and just be in the right place at the right time and get your portfolio seen by the right person. Or you could have a very specialized portfolio specifically for fantasy weapons, and that’s the position you apply for. It’s really hard to give an answer that applies everywhere. I think specialization gives you a narrow focus to get really skilled in one area instead of kind of even across the board. It lets your skill set really focus in one area. Thank you.
How’s it going? My name is Angel Padilla, and I’m a 3D character artist. I have a question for both of you. You said something similar about wanting to see how cool it looks rather than how good the topology is. Topology is important, but my question is, a majority of the time I’ll skip steps to make something look cool because it can be very tedious, and making a character takes a month if you’re trying to make a good one. I’ll Z-remesh it, automatic UV, just try to make it look super cool rather than following the process. Would it be important to show that rather than just trying to make it look cool? For me, it is different. I do like to see topology and UVs because it helps me when I’m hiring somebody to work out what I need to train that person on. Once you get further in the industry, once you’re a senior, once you become a lead, you kind of… we hope you know that stuff by now. But when you’re first starting off, it is good to show that stuff. Yes, you can still do the kick-ass stuff where we don’t really care about topology, but especially if you’re applying for games, we do want to see that you can work within limitations and understand the fundamentals. I get the answer “it depends.” At the end of the day, it’s got to be awesome and cool, and you gotta start there. The technical side of things can always be taught; that’s much easier to teach. It’s hard to teach someone how to make something awesome. It’s much easier to teach them which buttons to press or the process to follow. So yeah, it looks like we’re at time.
Hold on before you all leave. We’ll talk to you guys outside for a minute if you have other questions. But while we’re here for prize time, thanks for coming. Our friends at Sense Labs donated a tablet. So if you look under your chairs and see if you have a… Yeah, look and see if you’ve got a business card stuck under there. Yeah, you got it. I don’t have it. We are… Yeah. Thank you guys for all coming. Please be sure to fill out your forms, and if you want to join us later for portfolio view, please do it. Thank you all.