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Game Art Portfolio 101
🕑 Added 2019-12-17 18:55:36 +0000 UTCA lot of this advice is based off of my own experiences + my conversations with other professionals. Everyone has their own approach to portfolios, and this is NOT meant to be an all-encompassing guide! The intent is for this to just be a starting point. I stand pretty confidently by everything in this post, but please look at the advice by other artists so you have a more well-rounded set of information.
Let's get started.
The Basics
What is a portfolio?
In the context of game art, a portfolio is usually a gallery of information, mostly images, that is used to display your body of work and/or apply to jobs. If you're actively trying to get work, you need a portfolio!
Great portfolios are easy to navigate, display only your BEST work, and make it easy for folks to get in contact with you. There is a lot of nitty-gritty information and suggestions out there, but that's what it boils down to.
People across various design and art industries use different formats for portfolios. Some might make a PDF with embedded images or a ZIP folder with their gallery, but for our purposes, I always recommend making a website with your portfolio. You can do it for free, and there are a lot of accessible ways to do this nowadays.
Portfolios are living, breathing bodies of work that change over time. No strong portfolio is static.
When should I start putting together my portfolio?
Today. Seriously. If you are serious about wanting to make professional art one day, put together the structure of your portfolio as early as possible. I recommend freshmen and early hobbyists and people in high school to start ASAP because our portfolio evolves as we do and as our art does.
Any portfolio needs to go through multiple iterations over the years before it can really be effective. The first one will have a lot of issues because...that's just part of doing anything new! My first portfolio was a mess, but I made it my freshman year so it would have time to improve. This gave me time to ask for feedback from a LOT of people. By my 3rd year in school, I had a body of work that had gone through several iterations, and it got me my first jobs in games!
If you don't have any art to put in it, that's okay. Put placeholder images or sketches for now. The key thing is to start putting together a layout that you feel confident in while giving it space to grow. That way, when you DO have art to share, you just plop images in and you're good to go.
Why are portfolios important?
Ultimately, your art is what gets you jobs. Not your cover letter, not your resume, not which font you choose on your business cards. The purpose of your portfolio is to demonstrate that you are prepared for and deserving of that gig over the other applicants.
Combined with a strong network and some polished softskills, the portfolio is the make or break factor. Badass art with clean presentation is #1.
Tell me with your art and how you present it that you're ready.
Getting Started
My Absolute Portfolio Requirements
Here's a checklist of basic technical requirements. If you're going to read one part of this post, read this. Missing one of these will immediately get your work thrown in the bin for me. Make sure that you hit ALL OF THESE POINTS before sending your portfolio to anyone!
- Have your name, art, and contact info (the very basics)
- No Flash (It's super obnoxious and a pain to use)
- Let me save your images locally to my computer (I want to save your art in case I don't have work for you now but want to work with you later, or to send your art to my team)
- Don't use cheesy or weird UI (It looks amateurish)
- No ads (If your free website builder means advertisements are on your portfolio, I'm GTFOing)
- Must be mobile friendly (around 70% of my portfolio views are done on people's phones)
- No NSFW images (I don't care if you make porn. I really don't. But when my team and I are looking through applicants, I'm not going to share the portfolio that might make my team members feel uncomfortable. Keep it to another website.)
Now, some additional requirements that carry slightly (only slightly) less weight:
- Images must load quickly (If all of your images are 4k, then I probably can't even see your art
- Don't have a weird URL (I don't want to send sexyconceptart(dot)com to my team for consideration, no matter how good your art is)
- Include your name in image file names! (Like bigcoolart-beccahallstedt(dot)png so when I save those images locally, your name is included in that download)
Choosing a Platform for Your Website
There are a lot of options out there, and some are better than others.
I personally recommend using Artstation or Squarespace. They almost always hit all of the absolute requirements that I listed above due to how they're built. Artstation is currently industry standard and using the free version is completely fine as long as you curate your work well (keeping things organized and only showing your best work.)
There are other ways to make portfolios, like Wordpress or a carefully curated Tumblr with a custom URL. Those options are totally fine as long as you hit all of the basic absolute requirements that I listed above. Make sure that only your art is on the page if you use a blog (no reposts of other people's work, etc).
I do not recommend Wix or Weebly for a variety of reasons, and no, I don't care what your professor requires. If you have to make a Wix website for class, then make it, then make a Squarespace or Artstation site to use for job applications.
Literally every Wix or Weebly fails at LEAST one of the basic absolute requirements. There's always a "Build a Wix website for free" banner across the top or I can't save images or it uses flash or it's not mobile friendly or...etc etc etc
It drives me nuts to see a ton of professionals/recruiters online saying "PLEASE DO NOT USE WIX" and then some student that hasn't had to deal with clicking through dozens of Wix websites defending it. THERE ARE BETTER FREE OPTIONS. Just use the better options, PLEASE.
Content & Curation
What art should I include in my portfolio?
The art that you choose to include (and NOT include!) is the most important part of your portfolio.
All art that you do include should be:
- The best quality that you can create
- Relevant to the jobs you're applying for
- Something you want to be hired to do for 8 hours/day
- Finished! (No WIPs, sorry. Sketchy stuff is okay but don't have "WIP" written in bold over everything. Show me that you can follow through.)
I recommend having at least 6 projects or at least 10 images in your portfolio. If you're a concept artist, that might mean having 6 final designs and including a few visual development/sketch pages for each design.
Have at least 3 images/projects of any skill that you want to demonstrate. Don't have only one character design and then a bunch of other work if you're applying to a character job. I need to see that you can be consistent.
Curation
It's essential to learn when you should remove older or weaker pieces. Your portfolio is only as strong as your weakest piece. Art should be regularly flowing in and out of your website as you improve and as your career goals change.
Do not be tempted to have an endless scrolling page of images! Focus on showing me ONLY your best art. I will literally ALWAYS prefer a small, polished portfolio over a huge inconsistent one.
Diversity of Work
The range of style/content diversity in your work that you should include depends on what jobs you're applying for!
If you want to work for a small/indie company, they often seek out generalists that can wear more than one hat. Same usually goes for freelancers. I had icons, illustrations, 3d paintovers, textures, prop + character + environment concept art, and varying styles in my portfolio when freelancing.
If you want to work at a big AAA company, they usually need specialists: folks that are REALLY good at just one or two things. I recommend looking at different companies' job openings in order to understand what they're looking for in specific roles. Research is key in this process.
Either way, it's very important to keep the art in your portfolio very relevant to the positions you're applying for. Make sure your art is applicable to the in-studio game art production pipeline so I can tell you have what the job requires in mind while building your portfolio.
Layouts
Project Organization
The way that you organize your work is up to you. I definitely recommend having different sections on your website for the different types of art you create. Some potential categories:
- 2d, 3d
- Concept art, illustration, textures
- Stylized, cartoon, realistic
- Project A, project B, personal work
- Professional work, personal work
The best solution is determined by who is looking at your portfolio and how diverse your body of work is, but there's usually no single perfect answer. When in doubt, I personally recommend categorizing by type of task, like "2d, 3d" or "concept art, illustration, textures". Usually, someone looking at your portfolio wants to know if you can fit a specific set of tasks they have in mind, so organizing by type of task just makes sense.
Gallery Display Options
It's important to choose an image layout that minimizes effort on the user's end. Because of this, I recommend sticking to a thumbnail or grid format. If you use a grid of thumbnails, make sure to crop each thumbnail elegantly.
Carousel galleries or layouts with timers are obnoxious because I either have to click through everything or I have to wait for the timer to scroll through the images. Both of these are a waste of time. Many AAA game art job openings receive hundreds if not thousands of applicants so I want to see as much of your art as efficiently as possible.
If I have to put in a few moments of effort to see your work, then I'll leave. Imagine having to put in even 20 seconds for each portfolio in order to see each artists' work when you have 500 applications to go through, and that doesn't even include looking at the art itself. That's HOURS of clicking and searching and waiting for pages to load. Don't make me work to see your art!
I advise against fancy single image or bio landing pages for the same reason. Make sure your URL goes straight to the gallery of your best art so I can get right to the point.
Bio, Contact, and Other Necessary Content
Along with being able to see your art, I need to learn a bit about you!
Absolutely also include these aspects in your portfolio:
- Your name (not just a screenname, I need to know what I will call you in a meeting)
- A short bio (I need to know where you are located, you can also include 1-2 paragraphs with a summary of your experience so things are a bit more personal)
- A downloadable PDF of your resume (read my Resume 101 post here!)
- A way to contact you (have your email address easily visible or use a contact form)
You can also include:
- A professional photo of you on your "about" or "bio" page
- Links to social media (only include social media that you would want your boss to see)
- A blog section (if you keep it updated and relevant)
Next Steps
Getting Feedback on Your Portfolio
It's absolutely necessary to get more eyes on your portfolio than just your own.
Ask friends/peers/coworkers/fellow students to take a look. Post it on Polycount or social media. Go to Portfolio Days or cons or industry events like GDC, and seek out reviews there. You can cold-email professionals, but there's a good chance you won't hear back from them, so I recommend utilizing your network first.
Ask for people to spellcheck and make sure all links work. Ask them if images loaded quickly at a high quality. Ask for feedback on the thumbnail cropping or organization that you've laid out. If you have any private/NDA work behind a password, make sure that other people can access those sections.
Creating A Resume and Cover Letter
The portfolio is the most important part of your application, but not the only one. You can check out my Neglected Lessons: Resume 101 and Neglected Lessons: Cover Letter 101 posts if you need some help.
Applying to Jobs!
Once you have your application content together, start using it! Make sure that you're only applying to jobs that your portfolio is relevant to, always hella spellcheck, and make sure that you are referring to the correct company in your cover letter and any other catered materials :)
FAQ:
I don't have a lot of work to include and I need some direction. What do you suggest?
First of all, focus on making stuff you're ACTUALLY interested in. Be curious and explorative! What do you have an affinity for? If you like historical fashion, do a bunch of costume designs based on different cultures! If you like geography, do some environmental designs with references to real world formations!
Something else I recommend to students is to come up with a fake game (or make a personal project) and create art for that. Do some worldbuilding and character designs! Show me that you understand and are able to function within real world pipelines.
Should I include school assignments?
This varies. Some professionals say "absolutely not" but I think that's an overgeneralization.
I want to see art that clearly communicates to me that you are proactive, curious, and engaged, regardless if it was originally a school assignment or not. I don't recommend intentionally making something look like classwork (like including the assignment name) because it can send the message that you're only doing what you're required.
Can I include fanart in my portfolio?
Hell yeah. Just make sure that it demonstrates a skill (style matching, illustration, costume design, whatever) so you are clearly bringing something new to the table. It needs to be at the same quality level as all other work on your website.
Can I make more than one website if I'm applying to a lot of different roles?
Sure! Just make sure to link between them so folks can see all of your work if they want to.
I don't recommend making multiple websites for related roles- don't have a concept art website separate from an illustration website because it fractures your body of work- but if you're a gameplay programmer and an environment artist, then having separate sites might make sense.
What is your take on animated wipes and text on a portfolio?
Skip all animated features. They don't always load correctly and come across as gimicky. Remember to err on the side of simplicity and cleanliness when putting together your body of work rather than adding fancy doo-dads and gizmos to your website!
I hope this is helpful! Please feel free to leave any questions/comments/concerns below. Good luck out there, yall!
~
Neglected Lessons is a series of posts focused on content that isn't covered enough in game and art college programs. You can view the rest of the posts here.
Job application prep posts: Cover Letters 101 - Game Art Portfolios 101 - Resume 101
