I will first research other artists portfolios, so I can get a understanding of what a good portfolio will look like, and how to present my work. I will be mainly looking at environment artist portfolios, as that's the role I want to get into.
This weeks lesson we discussed getting into the games industry, and talked about job interviews and portfolios.
Interviews
We talked about what to expect at an interview, and how confidence and enthusiasm are important, and first impressions being crucial. We also discussed how sometimes a studio may have an art test, in which you are given a certain scene/prop to model, this is to see your workflow and well you can keep up with deadlines. I have been able to experience an interview first hand, and I think this will help me out with this module.
I went to an interview in may, for a potential placement at a small mobile game developer studio called "Strawdog", I used my blog as a portfolio, its not really a proper blog but more of a long list of pictures of all the work I have done. I like to use and update it as I can look back and see how Ive improved, it is also there in case a interviewer wants to see my previous work and how I have developed.
This is the blog I used - http://aaronedwards92.blogspot.co.uk/
This was my first interview at a studio or of any kind. Before I went for the interview, I did some research on the studio, as I thought knowing what kind of games they make would give me more to talk about, and how my skills could be useful to them. I was quite nervous, I knew being nervous wouldn't help at all, but I'm quite a shy person so It was hard to avoid.
I was interviewed by 2 people, we sat down and discussed my work. They used my blog on a
I-pad/tablet and I just told them what sort of work I liked doing, and previous projects I had done at College/Uni.
They seemed to like my hand painted/low poly work as this is the primary style used for 3D mobile games, and I knew they used this style for a few of there released games from researching them beforehand.
I talked about how I enjoyed doing different aspects of game design, and have even done a bit of programming for Unity and got a game onto mobile. I thought it would be relevant to talk about different skills I had, but I think I ended up focusing on that too much, as they were saying how they weren't looking for someone to cover lots of things, just someone to do 3D modelling. I think for future interviews I will just focus on talking about one skill, unless they want to know my other skills.
I didn't get the placement in the end, and they didn't get back to me so I was unsure about where exactly I went wrong, but I think it just was a bit of nervousness, and talking a bit to much about other skills.When asked if I had any questions, I couldn't think of any, which made me seem uninterested, so next time I will try to prepare some questions to ask.
It could have just been that they found someone better at the job, but I still think there are areas I could improve on, and I now know this for next time.
Portfolio
I wanted to start on my portfolio straight away, so I could get feedback and change it throughout the year.I first looked at other environment artists portfolios. I found most of the top searches on Google, as I assumed these would be popular sites and most likely be decent ones. I took a screenshot of the websites as soon as you open them and compared the results.
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| Friedrich Meinecke N.D |
Luke Adwick N.D
Steven Skidmore N.D
Clinton Crumper N.D
Christoffer Radsby N.D
All these websites are from different artists with different artistic styles, but there websites are all very similar.
- First of, they all have dark backgrounds, I assume this is because the background is not important and you want to draw the viewers eye to the screenshots of your work.
- The artists name is clearly displayed somewhere on the page, along with contact information nearby, on most websites.
- All of them have the there profession displayed near the name, in this case "Environment Artist".
- They all include finished high quality renders of environments/props, and professional work is clearly labeled.
- 3/5 include the title of the game or environment above the render, one of which being only visible when you hover over the picture.
- When you select a picture, directs you to a new page showing much larger renders of environments/props. Some of which have breakdowns of high poly meshes, polycount, and textures maps used.
Using this brief look into portfolio's, I have created my own. I have used some older work which I want to replace but its just there to add some content as I don't want an empty portfolio.
I used a free website hosting service called "Weebly". It was easy to use and I managed to create my portfolio in a day.
This is what my front page looks like as you first load the website. I thought the idea of having some text over the banner was a good choice because it lets the viewer know what they will be looking at if they choose to clink the link, and showing the game engine/program it was created in also shows them that you have experience with said game engine/program.
The two banners at the top show full environments, I have then placed a small separating line below the full environment banners, and added some other work I have done, like hand painted art, and some Z brush sculpts. I think this could potentially be a positive to have on my portfolio as it shows I enjoy doing different styles of art. All my environments with go at the top as I value these more importantly that small props, and its also what a hiring studio would want to see first if I were to apply for a environment artist position.
This was a very quickly made website and is probably no where near final. I decided to make this straight away based of the knowledge I already have, and to see how much my portfolio will change throughout this assignment.
Next week our class is to get into teams and pick out some different portfolios, then decided which are good and which are bad and why.
Bibliography
Friedrich Meinecke. N.D 3D Environment artist. [Online Portfolio] Available at: http://friedrichmeinecke.weebly.com/3d-art.html. [Accessed 25 September 2014].
Luke Adwick.. N.D Environment artist. [Online Portfolio] Available at: http://www.lukeadwick.co.uk/. [Accessed 25 September 2014].
Steven Skidmore. N.D Environment artist. [Online Portfolio] Available at:
http://stevenskidmore.com/ . [Accessed 25 September 2014].
Clinton Crumpler. N.D Environment artist. [Online Portfolio] Available at:
http://clintoncrumpler.com/ . [Accessed 25 September 2014].
Christoffer Radsby. N.D 3D Environment artist. [Online Portfolio] Available at:
http://christofferradsby.com/ . [Accessed 25 September 2014].
Steven Skidmore. N.D Environment artist. [Online Portfolio] Available at:
http://stevenskidmore.com/ . [Accessed 25 September 2014].
Clinton Crumpler. N.D Environment artist. [Online Portfolio] Available at:
http://clintoncrumpler.com/ . [Accessed 25 September 2014].
Christoffer Radsby. N.D 3D Environment artist. [Online Portfolio] Available at:
http://christofferradsby.com/ . [Accessed 25 September 2014].
