Killer Portfolio or Portfolio Killer 2019: Advice from Industry Artists

[Music] welcome to killer portfolio or portfolio killer my name is Alison and I want to see you guys get excited this is gonna be an awesome day so let's hear make some noise for this alright I think so too I didn't hear that I need a little more we come on okay so there's a couple of comments a please turn off your phones any question you guys want to ask please ask so when I I'll give you a signal to start lining up and we will answer all the questions the other thing after the panel we go to the room for the portfolio review and it is we take great pride in this but we see every single student so I know the line get really long but we will see all of you okay so I think we should use some introductions Mobe guys my name is Moby Frankie a grudge from actually ironically from the Academy of art here in San Francisco I was a illustrator fine art major I had no aspirations of getting into video games at the time that was something that I I was more into you know the fine art and illustration aspect I wanted to get into Pixar at one point you know that didn't happen it's okay i luckily happened long had a friend from art school that got me into into valve ironically that was my first real job in the industry I didn't take that for granted I was there for 11 years and now I worked at write games and it's a it's a fantastic job that's all I can say any of you guys ever played team Ford to anybody yeah I was there a director on that yeah it's the little little game that didn't do much with the industry [Laughter] my name is Greg Burch I was the art director on XCOM enemy Unknown XCOM to spent 22 years at Firaxis games I'm newly independent at a unannounced studio with an unannounced title so yes my name is Claire Hummel I've been a concept artists and art director in the industry for a little over ten years now my first job in the industry was technically at Neopets where I worked as an artist for seven summers and since then I've worked at Microsoft games I worked on BioShock Infinite design blew test winds I worked at HBO doing a Westworld VR project and now I'm with the Campo Santo team who is now at valve that's where I'm at so I'm Gavin golden currently the lead character ours had insomniac games he just worked on Marvel spider-man but 17 years ago I started as I would say I determined failure basically I dropped out of school I was sure that I knew more than the teacher I moved across the country I didn't know more than the teacher I applied to multiple jobs I got rejected multiple times I eventually landed a contract gig doing pixel art which maybe shows my age and from there that led to a studio job working on mobile games at the time doing UI character designs and you know environment tiles and stuff like that and eventually worked my way up as a full-time character artist and multiple Studios later Here I am I'm Wyeth Johnson I'm creeping up on my 20th year in the industry I've had any number of random art roles along the way but predominantly technical art and effects related stuff so if you have questions or portfolios weighted to those definitely come talk to me I've been an art lead and a technical art lead and an art director at Epic Games in one way or another for the last 13 years okay give these guys a round of applause so our room last year fit like five people so this is very exciting yeah we had a little room problem last year but obviously the room is twice the size and that means twice the fun and amazing questions so I wanted to talk to you guys about just some common issues of things you're seeing in portfolios and I'd like to open up to the panel on that Claire Wow put on the spot I feel like something we were talking about this a little yesterday but I feel like a thing I see especially in game centric portfolios you see it on the front page of art station a lot is this this focus on improving your technical skills without really improving the intent and message and thought behind it and you will see so many amazing artists so they're always going to be artists out there who are technically better than all of us but if you have a portfolio that proves that you have a unique voice that it proves that you have taste is the thing that we really brought up that you're consuming things outside of the industry you're learning how to interpret it in your own unique way that content is just as important if not more important than the technical skills themselves because if I hire someone I can teach them how to use Photoshop better but it's a lot harder to teach someone just the process of learning what your passions are and what you uniquely bring to a project all right I feel why if you were also really passionate about this especially when we're at lunch well it I just feel like there's so much focus on man I really know ZBrush I know it so much and you're like okay great I mean that's good that's useful you need those skills but like if you have good taste and you have an eye and you've developed that and you start to have a little bit of a point of view and have something to say I'll teach you any tool in three months like if you're talented you can learn the tool so I think this very forward focus on the the technical side of it like yeah I'm getting really good at Maya it's like I don't really care you know I want you to just you know show me that you know how to make art basically I think that goes back to the common thing that we usually talk about is like you know too too much stuff like the taste part of it is like editing right how much is in your portfolio as well yeah I would say there's so like a lack of execution - so I can like focusing on the tools you'll end up having a portfolio full of like ZBrush models or you know you'll have a illustration but not a concept or you'll have a you know sphere with a great substance on it but it's not in the level it's not actually being used in any context and what you'd need to see and how you'll improve is finishing something and if it sucks burned to the ground built back up you just keep doing it until you're you're good what's the importance of presentation I think that kind of goes back what Gavin was just saying like you know you you want to make sure that you're presenting things in context you know like a sphere little material great like where does that live show me how it exists with four more materials and harmony and a shot same thing with your models your concepts like do you do a demo real for a character mm-hmm probably not unless it's moving like the general rule of thumb my opinion is that if it's if it's not moving it doesn't really get a demo reel like I want to see if I'm looking at environment artists I want to see breakdown of their assets I want to actually digest that I don't want compression to ruin what's happening streaming across the internet if you want to fly through demo reel to add great but like I'd rather see things where I can evaluate the work animation you have to see it move effects you have to see it move but rule of thumb that's generally but I mean you only get one first impression right when you're showing your portfolio you want to make sure that the the message is I want to be hired by you and I'm doing this skill you know so anything that you do that gets in the way of me hiring you is a bad choice so too many clicks on the website demo reels wouldn't be video formats like you know we're design choices like that anything that complicates you getting a job is something you shouldn't do over time I've realized one of the important things about a good portfolio is that it reduces friction it just reduces the friction between the person reviewing it and the quality of the content getting to their eyeballs basically so any kind of choice that you are making which adds complexity or adds clicks or obfuscate some of the decisions you're making behind pages or video downloads and all these other things that's all increasing the friction between your art and the people that are reviewing it why it's just elaborate on that would you say the work should speak for yourself you shouldn't have to explain it yeah it's interesting particularly with the first impression so it's always like you want to start with your strongest thing and that's a very common thing that you're gonna hear over and over the portfolio's what is the absolute strongest thing you have which by the way you are probably not capable of judging like just and that's just to have been honest factors like you're gonna want people other external people professors and peers and experts in the field to be able to help you guide what you think your best thing is because oftentimes it's just the thing that you're closest to but not necessarily the strongest that's a tangent but just kind of this when you're making that very very first impression you don't want to have to explain yourself you want it to be very self evident in that first work why you exist as an artist so that people are like oh yeah this is person you know character guy got it really into sci-fi cool whatever let that say something as you get further in yeah I think personally attack the same character maniac but then as you get further in there oftentimes is a little bit of reason for explanation because we want to know a little bit of the why behind some of the decisions you've made you just have to keep that stuff light and if you've collaborated with people you need to make sure you call that out too so that we know what you did because that can be a big problem as well that is a huge thing I feel like - if you are a character concept artist and your work has been taken to a final model I think it's very important to show that process because it shows that your work can be successfully translated into 3d but crediting those artists that you work with because everything we do is part of this huge pipeline and everything you're doing is about enabling the next person in that pipeline so if you forget it I think people notice well just one more comment like Greg one of the things you always say is you look at the portfolio first and then the resume actually I look at the portfolio and then the second thing I look at is the portfolio and then I may look at your name if I go to email you like so you know a good artist good art I don't you know it's it's and that's kind of the work is all that I care about and I think you know we've all been talking about this for years and um you know I think the whole group probably feels that way okay so when we all got together at lunch to have a discussion these guys could not stop talking about poor or about the tutorials so I know Gavin you should have some really good insights and also movie yeah well I think it started by how a lot of portfolios will end up having class work or you know something from Gumroad that you'll do and while that serves a purpose in learning you know the tools again going back to that like lacking a you know soul I suppose that's sort of where your portfolio needs to be so even though like the class assignments the technical stuff is really important you need to put your own spin on it I'm looking at mobi because you know even though Gregg explained it he's a god to your designer so somebody like me has like drooled over team fortress stuff and really like he has set the bar for people like you and the audience to have a job doing really pulling back to illustration and like classic like you know rules for design and I kind of wanted to ask you like like how do you do it how do you ought to be how do you be a mistake I mean really like you know in art school I was very very lucky because I was setting out to become a non digital artist I mean know so I was learning oil painting gouache painting pastel you know run the gamut of everything so for five years that's what I really you know that's what I was really into once I saw what they were working on it valve that's what really it was half-life 2 and I saw that they could actually create this world I mean that's what fifteen years ago or so but it was something that I just blew my mind it's I saw that you could actually instead of like a Pixar movie where it's only I know I'm going down a tangent here but you know it takes years to produce some of it you're gonna consume for about you know an hour and a half or so or two hours this you're gonna be playing and enjoying for you know 60 hours something like that but anyways I love doing a lot of traditional work you know doing drawings I still do to quash paintings for for my character concepts as well and I'll also do digital as well but it's good to have a variety like do you have any any tips or tricks for like how would somebody take a like classical training like that or how would somebody take something that's very standardized aguh everybody can download this side file corridor hallway tutorial from Gumroad right right how would you advise somebody to take that and make it their own wow that's a good it's a good question I mean I the tutorials that I've seen I mean they're they're very very good but at the same time we just have to be you know careful because so many it's a it's a very incestuous you know institution gaming entertainment in general right like a lot of people that I know or even portfolios that I see everybody's looking at you know art station and I love art station as a showcases talent but at the same time a lot of people use that as reference gathering and I would really love to have like a tutorial where people are are kind of taught to think outside of the box right so instead of me we're all you know fans of sci-fi or fantasy whatever the case but imagine coming up with your own way of sourcing you know gathering information gleaning and being able to tinker with that and bring it forward I'd love to speak to that that in terms of people digesting art from art station kind of spitting it out there you will see so many portfolios that look like knockoffs I'm installing hog portfolios and it's so abundantly clear that it's not his because his is coming from this lived experience it's referencing his own life own childhood and there's kind of a truth there and if you're just sort of one step removed from that it's like taking a JPEG and saving it over and over again it just turns into this jumbled hideous Pikachu that you can't recognize anymore and so I feel like finding reaching outside of games looking at traditional illustration and painting looking at film just getting out of your house reading literature anything you can do to bring that influence back into your work is so refreshing because my god you see so many environments that are beautifully painted but it's the same vignette 'add spiky mountains with a tiny person they have a staff and there's a city in the distance and you very rarely see that in the real world like the fact that nature is crazier than most concept art is like it's worth looking at those references outside your industry and originality isn't too far away I think that's one thing that people get really stuck on it's like I have to have this insane idea and I have to do this ridiculous world building and I have to invent and like the reality is is just make a little choice all you have to do is just choose something and it doesn't have to be really far from the where you are or even far from real-world reference just make a little choice and then that choice will steer you in a new place just change the surface or a material type on something into something unexpected or make something translucent it's not supposed to be or I'm just throwing stuff out here but like just make a little choice and then within making that little choice you realize you're injecting a little bit of originality because you don't have the thing that the photograph to compare it to or whatever and you might not start to find your voice a little bit that way where you start making these little choices and then you realize oh I'm I kind of like this I dig this this is my jam so it's it's just not it's not super far away you don't have to go way down the rabbit hole to find originality you can just just hear it a little bit I would see to like a lot of it is telling the story right like what story is the piece telling right so if you did download this tutorial and you were like working from that what story do you want to tell right and like with Claire like I've worked from Claire's designs before on Bioshock and the best part of your designs not to suck up to you or anything like that but is that like the thought and the research that goes into it and it's like clearly coming from a place of inspiration versus just like it's a copy-paste photo bashed outfit you want I mean and like something like that really speaks to your your taste your style and what sets you above like other people so really clear clear raised a good sorry I just want to say yeah beautiful point looking outside the industry it's super important I I go to you know a lot of these conferences in Europe for example do a lot of portfolio reviews and I'm just shocked just shocked at how many times it's it's the same portfolio it's just the same portfolios over and over again you know so you just gotta really be cognizant it's only like maybe one or point zero one percent of people that actually stand out over that entire portfolio review well I think the one thing to that comes down with this to it the portfolio is not that labor on these but if you take it tutorial and you do it great that doesn't mean you post that in your portfolio go do it again and when you do it again start looking for ways to to make it yours it starts it also shows that you you understand the concept and not what button to click right and and and the the text could have change yearly maybe more but when you understand what the higher level concept was to the button click it it's it's a much deeper advantage for you as an artist okay so one of the things that we Gregg and I actually you and I talk about a lot is the sorry comparing your work to other people and to setting the bar that's what's expected in the industry today yeah I mean it's like when I started you know they had rocks and sticks to draw with but but there wasn't a way to compare your work right like there was an art station there wasn't poly count there wasn't a community I'm like Moby I started as a traditional artist so anyway you know now you've got all these reference points to compare against and you're not comparing against the kid in school sitting next to you you're comparing against the people that are pros like you may not be able to beat Gavin's characters but Gavin's the guy you're chasing he's your competition he's the guy you should be looking to to kind of catch and so again it's not just like biggest fish in the smallest pond when you enter the market you're actually competing against you know seasoned pros so like making sure that you're looking at the right bar and again with art station you know Pollock and all the all the communities you have now it's it's so much easier to find it one thing I like is if people have some questions I'd like you to line up at both sections of the stage with the microphone now anyone else have a comment other than just agreeing but I mean I think I like the common misconception when you're in school is that if you're the top of your class that you're the your hireable and really that's not true cuz you have to do like broaden your horizons and seek feedback from people that aren't your friends or your immediate or peers right and like that's how you'll that's how you'll be challenged to become better and that's how you'll get a better understanding of who you're up against you know when I first got to valve for example they they called me they call me slow because I was really slow it was bad and I remember I was sharing an office with this concept artist and I actually didn't know him Photoshop at all I mean I didn't know how to use the layers the Wacom tablet nothing and I was struggling and you know I was on edge because I was at valve and that's kind of scary so I I went home that night and I got my my sketchbook which was gray like a nice gray tone paper and I started just drawing my concepts there and doing my my go wash approach and I came the next day with this nice you know four or five concepts and I showed it to my friend that I was sharing the office with he's like how the hell did you do that I was like I mean he didn't know what it was right didn't know what type of material it was and I was like no so we kind of traded so he kind of taught me things and I thought him but it was nice to come in with a completely different approach you didn't need the tools and yeah and like a month I know how to use basic Photoshop I see there's quite a quite lines already so we're gonna dive into some of the questions if that's okay so quick question about environmental pieces when you see a scene do you also like I know arts station lets you show multiple pictures of like all the assets and what do you like seeing a couple shots of the scene and then the assets and maybe a sketchy concept if there's one yeah like I would go like a that your beauty piece should be the piece that gets my attention because I don't have you know forever right so like I thought the harmony of it like this is the environment that's seen everything working together and then from there work macro to micro so like you know Beauty shot you know isolate assets possibly show concepts if you want but kind of like kind of breaking it down so that as I you get my interest with the pretty shot and then I'll start looking deeper and deeper and deeper but if you start the other way it gets a little yeah no one wants to see the show me show me the awesome and then once I got the awesome like then I'll look for more yeah and it really does stand out if you also show you know elevations or smaller breakdowns of this space or if you're showing this larger space and then you start to show smaller angles if you were actually exploring it or the path through a space I think it's really important to show it's you can draw a beautiful environment but then actually showing how the player is going to experience it or how someone is going to make it anything you can do on that front it's very gratifying is it actually it also had some body to your portfolio keys a little like there's it it's not just one image you start to get a little more and it's still substance right so like it if you get more images out of one image and so it gives a little more depth so it's good to do and I'm guessing it just shows like how the basically how it ends and then you see the backwards process all the way to how it began I mean just someone it's almost like looking at a you know hmm an architect's interpretation of a house right you're not just gonna build the house right yeah from that image you've got to kind of go in and show the blueprints and all that stuff right alright thank you very much you guys talked a lot about making sure that your portfolio stands out from other people's like things that have been regurgitated on dart station time after time but do you have any advice for making sure that something is to your personal taste and style and is unique but still looks like something that to an art manager and director still makes it clear that you're capable of working within like their Space Marine game that they're hiring for it do you want to I mean it depends on if you even want to do you know Space Marines right like if you know you want to work at 343 I mean I probably wouldn't be a good fit there because I have a different taste I admire what they do but I'd give up my portfolio for specific companies or or the games in general I don't want to work on a game that I don't you know I don't know if it's you know if it's in a genre that I don't like I'm not even gonna do it either so I think it's yeah one make sure you're applying places that you want to work or that you can find a hook in that work that still makes it interesting to you so if you can I mean there's so many boring Space Marines out there but say you do a take on Space Marines that's referencing like sixties NASA technology or that's using animal imagery and patterning or historical fashion tailoring there are ways that you can bring interesting shape language and details to something that's otherwise kind of boring when I interviewed at Microsoft I just straight they're like what properties wouldn't you want to work on that was like uh halo it's so dumb it's for boys and I just I was such a little firebrand and it was kind of irresponsible of me to not just say like oh I think I'd be interested in halo but I bet I could find a way to bring my my expertise and my personal voice to this you should hire me hi so I'm from Academy authority and the more care my portfolio this semester so my question would be is there any advice for level designers to showcase their works in portfolio back what people are looking for from level design its portfolio for a level design yep I mean it's really like how you're going to interpret so do you work with a collaboration of artists for environment design like so that they can help build up you know the you know the level for you and you know help supply assets and whatnot the way that we we work or I've worked in the past with level design we there's kind of like an in-between there's an environment you know like an environment crew that helps port over the the representation right of you know tangible assets right over the abstract of game of the game play space so that's a good question yeah it depends if you're world building or level designing like world building is you know like you're laying out and will probably involve a little bit lighting and stuff level design I think it's it's it's it's good to maybe have like a little bit of a playable yeah so I can move around the space so again there'll be a presentation think it's a little different but it's catered to the thing you're trying to make hi everyone thanks for the talk so I'm currently working at an animation studio that is predominantly working on it like a Disney series and I would like to kind of shift into realistic-looking environment art for triple-a and I'm trying to figure out how to kind of shift my portfolio from being this very stylized kind of looking thing to more environmental art without completely do regarding my experience with like pipeline and working with others and that kind of thing do you have any tips on that those transitions are hard because oftentimes they do have to feel a little bit like an afterthought in the portfolio otherwise the message is gonna feel very awkward and mixed and we're you know we're gonna be reviewing it and we're kind of go like what what is this you know is would be the kind of broad scale question you start to ask yourself of like what does this person really want to do the reality is you're gonna have to basically set all that stuff aside and work as if none of it exists and then really really drive home the quality of a you know high-end you know realistically rendered if that's your thing now our portfolio for environments that includes that squint test overall feeling being right and the lighting we're being right at the tonal range being right and then the if you're going for realism then the albedo and the textures have to be right and everything so you have to nail all that stuff and assume that your other experience doesn't exist and then once you have that stuff and it's there for you you start to work some of your other experiences back in your portfolio strategically or even just in your resume as a compliment to the portfolio to say hey there is more to me I have you know I have more to offer but this thing this is the thing I care about and this is what you should be judging me on and then oftentimes we might get into a situation where you're being compared to somebody who's roughly equal and then you might win because you have this little extra touch you have this pipeline experience so you can script in Python you know Mel I don't know what you is you know but like there's some another little you know a little cherry on top of the sundae and that can help push you over the edge but I don't think you should really assume that any of that exists okay while you're trying to put together a portfolio for a different kind of path right just add to that like usually when we're because we're in Los Angeles so there's plenty of film people around us so usually a turn-off love hiring a applicant that's from film unto you know into games is that there's usually like a knowledge gap that you know I think you're trying to fill by like doing these new pieces for right so beyond the like technical understanding of like what's a PBR material like real-time rendering and you know building an efficient space and stuff like that it's more the purpose of it it's a bit different cuz rather than just just telling the story it's like an interactive space it's playable like I said like flow well and and things like that so you've got to kind of change your your mindset a little bit and show that through the portfolio okay thank you hello I was wondering what was the best way to represent a full game project in your resume and portfolio so kind of like an IP write development yeah whether it's made independently or with a small team that's a good question and if you've got a whole game that's done ok so if it's if there's a way to make ID treated just like we do when we make game like like record b-roll splice it together cut out the boring stuff like not having the mouse slide around but like yeah like you know like treat it but like clip it together like b-roll like it's like a trailer you know same way I go about selling my game when I'm done with it I do a ton of that I spend an awful lot of time toward the end of the project actually recording b-roll evaluating that's how I evaluate the game but yes and I put all that stuff together and I try to make it juicy and speedy and again presentation think about that it's just like record go through and actually give it some video editing to actually make it interesting and exciting and I would probably show a full game the same way we would do when we ship it and just be careful to make sure you represent only your work that's really common is to yet wow we did this thing and there are a bunch of us and look at what we all did and then we were like what did this person actually do what did you do is a really important question to ask probably the most important question to answer when it comes to portfolio is here's the things that I can do you know and make that hyper clear because there is nothing worse than wow this looks really good this junior junior person a lot of potential this looks really interesting let's get them on the phone and then you get you know get her on the phone or something and she's like well I I modeled the engines on the spaceship and you're like no you know like the you I thought we were headed in a different place and so it's really you have to be very careful to like represent yourself very very carefully and appropriately for the just of things that you made and make that really clear thank you hi I'm Ally thanks for being here so I'm wondering if you think it's beneficial to sort of gear your portfolio towards a certain role or a particular position that you're looking for and then also I'm curious if you have any tips for like a tech art portfolio and what you would expect to see on that I can answer the tech art one well actually I mean I could probably dabble a little bit in both in the sense that you always want to be tailing your portfolio to who you're applying for that's kind of portfolio 101 and you have to be making those choices which are showing how you are relevant to the place and how interested you are in that place they make that really clear you know blanket single resume to ten different companies is not a good idea and by resume I mean resume and the corresponding portfolio as far as tech art so first of all there are lot of different definitions of technical art some people consider tech art to be tech animation and that's a whole other ball of wax and has its own host of problems so I'll just talk about you know how we at epic anyway view technical art which is basically like shaders technical understanding of the rendering pipeline and basically how the you know artwork fits into that budgets would be another big one visual effects can be part of that you know there's technical VFX artists basically who are actually writing HLSL and stuff to do things so I think the thing people forget when they make tech art portfolios is that they have to be technical and an artist and the artist one tends to kind of slough off the side over time and and what you're left behind is this shell of you know node based scripting screenshots and HLSL snippets and you're like I don't want does the person have a soul I can't tell ya totally that has basically almost happened yeah and so I feel like you really have to be careful to show that you are aesthetically have something to say and so even if that means you're just taking something that's really beautiful like a still image and bringing it to life using all of these techniques like complex shaders or effects or you know I don't know that those kind of problems make sure that at the end result is pretty it's beautiful because that's those are the best technical artists are people who can you have this really lovely vision you can't quite pull it off so they pull the rabbit out of the Hat and find a way like that's really the person you're trying to hire when you're trying to hire tech artists is that person so don't abandon the visual side in favor of just showing that you know how to you know string some hlsl together or whatever hi um my name is McHale really glad you guys are here and that you're doing this I have two questions if that's all right first one is there anything that like if you see it in a portfolio makes you immediately move on to the next one like regardless of what field or what it's targeting like something that's just an absolute no-no I mean I'm when I'm doing a portfolio review first and foremost I flip through it and and people start panicking because they're like but you're supposed to start with this one but for me personally I mean I just I go through it I want to make sure that we we gloss over I mean especially the like today for example how many minutes do we have per person attention right so ten ten minutes right we've got a you know there's a lot of stuff to go over right now are you talking about the context of a you know a piece that's offensive part perhaps or um we're just not hitting though at the bar either not hitting the bar or something that doesn't mesh with your company's standards I mean yeah I mean that that happens all the time but it's it's okay you know it's it's okay you know we you know you're gonna course correct I remember I went to Pixar they invited me I had my portfolio and they went through it and it was all geared for illustration and they're like and then a totally different kind of styles well they were like you know you've got your chops but you know come back in six months with a new portfolio and we'll consider looking at it again you know so so I I won't hire somebody that doesn't have any real time work so if you're an amazing sculptor or amazing like you know high-res ass head creator I need to see it in real time because like really what I'm I'm hiring is the problem solver right like more than just an artist like I want to hire somebody that will join the team and help us create the next big thing right so if you don't show that potential in your portfolio like you won't take that one step just to meet me halfway then I pass immediately Oh piggyback off of mobis comment that I think it is abundantly clear when I see a portfolio and do that initial quick flip if someone just has an illustration portfolio and they're applying for a concept art job it's just a hard no immediately even if they are so talented illustration is is it's a Venn diagram that overlaps those concept art there's a lot of the same technical skills but there are certain stylistic things and compositional things that are important in illustration that don't speak to the thought process and the actual concept side of concept art so really being able to make that distinction is important and also the one hard line is good god if you have anything traced or stolen we will know do not do that that's such a red flag I've had somebody apply to my I'm a hiring manager I've had somebody apply see one of my openings with my work in their portfolio you don't do not steal my work when I was at Microsoft we were working with this this studio making a game that I will not say the name huh but involved Western animals so figure it out on your own and the first concept art they sent over to me and I was like this looks familiar I like pulled the Rango concept art book off of my shelf and they just traced Rango art and sent it over to Microsoft and then of course they did the thing where they blamed it on an intern oh this poor intern did this and it's just it's we're all so well-versed in our industry and in other industries that it's so immediately apparent if you are either very closely aping someone style to the point of plagiarism or if you're just straight tracing something don't do it you're all good people that is a lesson in how like small the industry is right something like that is a black mark on your you know reputation there's like also incomplete work like that kind of stops me yeah like if it's all gray box if it's not intentional it shouldn't be there so if you didn't finish it and it happens to be the thing that's on the front page and it's like a a gray sculpt that's not done and it's like okay this is not there so that would probably stop me by the way somehow we have gone this long without telling everybody to delete half the stuff in their portfolio right now please what's your what's your fashion quote that usually say oh you mean as far as I'm moving on virtual real whatever like you actually was Derek yeah who said yeah I've never quoted Coco Chanel yeah well I usually say delete your profile yo in half and then subtract one and that's how many pieces you're actually supposed to have in the current portfolio as it exists like it's so it's so common that you know you and you hide it all at the back that's always what happens is you got a couple of strong things and then a portfolio just kind of dwindles off toward the end and then you're stuck with a bunch of stuff that shouldn't really be in there in the first place it's so much better to show a couple of really high value things than it is to show us even one that's not high value because now we start to question your taste do they know it's not good are they aware are they a little ashamed of it is that why it's in the back is there some situation what's going on here I'd rather see three amazing things and I tell the story every year but we hired an environment artist who had three pieces in his portfolio he'd three pictures and you junior guy amazing three images and we hired him so it doesn't take much they just you just have to have really good taste in those three images and we're going to notice why not I'm curious sorry we've got the room a little longer I just curious is there anything you'd look for specifically in an animation demo real for games like I know that you've been talking a lot about the artistic side and rendering in real time and I was wondering what an animator would want to present to specifically a game company in engine work is extremely important and when you get an animation portfolio even from guys who've been in the industry for thirty years who are in their entire portfolio is just cinematic work that's really hard to judge because because game animation is such a specific beast compared to cinematic so I think you can have absolutely have some acting work and you rail because that's relevant to do games with cutscenes and things like that but really showing that you know how to animate a character how to do run cycles how to actually move them through a space and that you're aware of how characters look and animate from the angle that they're intended to be in a game so how you're animating a character for Assassin's Creed isn't it be different from how you're animating a character in dota 2 or something if you've seen in first-person animation like if you go and watch the talks on overwatch for how they're doing what they're doing the the hoops they jump through to make it look right makes the animations absolutely absurd what ABS just bonkers choices with arms that are 33 feet long and stretched out into the perspective of the camera so that's a really good exercise too if you're talking about game animation is really like you said pick something that's in context of actually how games are made and then to that standard and then if somebody's reviewing portfolio sees that they're gonna see that Oh your act you're thinking a little bit further than just the you know moving from pose to pose or whatever it is that you're doing from day to day on the animation side that you're actually starting to make some relevant choices to making the product that is always gonna win out a little bit over I can just make a pretty run cycle or whatever that's one thing always has bothered me by a mesh portfolios is that the an animator doesn't consider what the camera is yeah like you know you like for God's sake but in perspective right like do something like give it a get goes back to that presentation like that a little bit of consideration your camera if your work is just as good as the third enemy that applied for the job that day but you considered your cameras a little bit is gonna make you look better than that person that was just as good as you yeah right and that's that edge that you need so it's that presentation and thinking about that and how you show your work just giving it that little extra thought this is huge just one other thing I mean this is not a plug for my friend but one of my co-workers Rory Alderson he does a lot of things on YouTube and he I'm just like what you guys are all talking about you know the context but he's actually going he's he's going repairing old assets and bringing them giving them you know new flourish and and a new fresh perspective so he's a person that you might want to look at in that context I will say that that thinking about the camera is also relevant for I mean any other job in the industry especially from a character design standpoint a lot of times you'll see these beautiful character designs in a void but if they are meant to see be seen from like a top-down orthographic view you need to completely rethink that color blocking and how they read from that angle there's a reason why a lot of Assassin's Creed characters have cool backs and interesting cloaks because it makes it interesting for the 90% of the time that you were running away from the camera it's really keeping that in mind in a way that character design in film is very different from character designing games and knowing that difference really shows if you show that in your content all right thank you so much hello so Matt earlier you mentioned that like it's not so much the resume it's more the portfolio that you guys look at it'll work however what if you know I'm applying for to be a concept artist my portfolio says concept artist my LinkedIn says I'm in hospitality in accounting do I just clear out all that work history even though I have zero professional experience fine I mean the end of the day if the works good that works good you know I mean I hired people from a Walmart before you know just because like you're working in hospitality doesn't mean that you're not badass you know so I mean it's relevant you're still working with people you're doing you're probably dealing with customers and stuff like that but really I mean I always look at the work first and yeah the bottom line is I'm not gonna look at your Linkedin so I've already look at your portfolio or two or three times okay and so if I like your work enough to do that I don't really care it's when I go your LinkedIn and looking to see like did you jump jobs every three months or did you sustain something do you work in hospitality for three years I'm more concerned about that than I'm that you worked in hospitality so but again I'm not getting there if it work isn't there it doesn't matter okay thank you [Music] I was just curious so like what technical requirements do concept artists need to show in their portfolio like stuff like thumbnailing and like rendering in order to show like we're ready we're ready for the iterative production path that is concept art the tech well this I mean you could once you guys go ahead I will say it's it is a mixed bag what people want to see in portfolios I've definitely heard people say that they don't want to see any process in portfolios whatsoever I love seeing process in reason I love saying thumbnailing color blocking and because if you show that process and I can see like oh oh it got stronger each time and you were making smart to see don't put in process if your sketches are better than your final man it's a bad look I don't necessarily think I am NOT subscriber to the idea that more is better sometimes concepts need 100 iterations sometimes they need two or three so just showing that natural process not feeling like oh I have to draw a whole page of silhouettes it's like because sometimes the work that you're putting in is on the research side of things is in your head and if you put down three silhouettes and then you narrow it down start refining that seeing that process seeing that you are thinking through that is super valuable to me I mean I think that's the like a misconception as a concept artist is that all day every day you're making this great polished piece of art you know when really the majority of the time but yeah you're making you're basically making ugly sketches with an art director to like get a problem solved right and showing like your work is showing that you can solve those problems and work with like an art director to you know get get a problem solved I think they're touched on this earlier about concept and illustration like they're the the illustration can frequently masquerade as concept concept solves problems it's great that you make a really polish render but like how did you do it like show me you can think right it's a really hard job it's a totally different muscle so understanding that difference doesn't mean illustration does have a place in the process but understanding that that's what we're hiring is important critical thinking go ahead oh no but just as far as it shows us critical thinking and you know the amount of silhouette studies that we do it's I mean they're hundreds before we even start filling in the the interior shapes and then you know going forward from there you know until we end up even at color we don't like I'll actually when I'm building a game there's no color for at least four or five months in the world itself there'll be material renderings the characters will be running around making idiots out of themselves but at the end of the day there it's everything is done with Reid hierarchy in mind but yeah back to the point yeah showing that process all the way through and then I mean the color is kind of the icing on the cake that final polished piece right that's kind of the fun part so yeah perfect cool um what advice do you have for someone who wants to make their demo real pop because you mentioned earlier that environments are a bit hard to get right with a demo reel I mean again I would go with telling a story right so if you are doing a demo reel I would have that as like a last resort I mean Greg and Greg knows more than I do about that but really like stills of your image that really tell a story about the setting the world that pulls people in will always put you above somebody that no substance painter and they can make like a nice corridor or something like that right so yeah really making like a narrative experience have it be you know a story right and that'll that'll make it better if it's for your your demo reel I mean I would cater any camera work do that and I mean Greg's the the master of that but I would I would really if you're going to do that make sure you pay attention to the cameras don't just do this like straight you know pant pan down a hallway like you have to like make it worth why I'm watching a video you know that comes down to comment earlier of make a choice just kind of choose something that is a little bit past just the setting of the place itself and one really thing that can be really valuable for an environment if you're stuck if you don't know what to do just ask yourself what happened there a hundred years ago what happened there ten years ago what happened there last year and then what happened there five minutes ago and if you could fill in answer those questions in that image then the PERT of the viewer is going to feel like those questions are answered too and then you can start to feel like the place is alive a little bit and that's a really nice way if you're stuck if you don't know what to choose just go through a little thought exercise like that and then ask yourself like well this hallway did somebody just walk down here with an ADD dragging an axe on the floor why is there a gouge mark like just little things make little choices and then those will come through in the final image um sorry I'm not cutting off anyone Am I is do you think it would be better to just omit a real if you don't think it adds anything to your portfolio yep yeah absolutely mm-hmm yes simple answer yes I actually if you want to look it up I have an article called why I hate demo reels it's about a three page rant exactly yeah I think it's there probably it's probably plastered on some lamppost outside thank you first off I also went to the Art Institute so it means a lot seeing you up there um but I was wondering how you guys consolidate cliques with content cuz say if I have an environment and I have all these breakdowns if like there's three environments and all the breakdowns are on my landing page obviously it's not gonna load and it's gonna be cluttered so how do you make that consolidation between organization and being too much to look like to click through right the flowchart right I mean for me like with my my website it's pretty straight forward like I just put everything you know but they're all categorized into what I've worked on in the past but yeah just creating a flowchart that's gonna you know make sense to people you know and just making it very simple and not an elaborate kind of experience yeah I guess if the beauty shot is the gallery you've got ten of those and when you click on it then the deeper stuff is there so you don't overwhelm the person with like choices and stuff you know we get bombarded so we've got enough work to have like four or five environments let's say and then you click on it and when you click on it it drops you down into like the deeper stuff that's yeah you know you've got me now it's it's just you want to get them to click on it so once you've clicked on it then I'm gonna keep scrolling so that's kind of the way to go on it I guess okay thank you sure thank you guys so much for coming my question is as a modeler you know you're in the middle of the pipeline and you want to show that you can make decisions like you said you guys were saying but you also want to show that like hey I can take a concept that someone else made and interpret that so how do you balance that like I can make my own decisions and also if someone gives me a concept like I can execute that kind of thing well I mean so I guess it's like a lead or an art director but usually what I'll try to do is have you know a a good concept artists such as clear will give you a lot of reference to pull from right and that'll start inspiring you to make decisions based off of those concepts right so when we're working on like Liz or like glute s2 wins and stuff like that like we're pulling from the same reference but we're also like innovating based on like what the concept has right so like it's really the guideline and like once we start getting it in game how can we put our own twist onto this so that it you know it like renders well it's like you know it's unique in the world and stuff like that so I think the first you know to get your your foot in where I guess like the first you know things you can do it starts finding opportunities maybe of obscurity where you can innovate right so if there's a a concept that's like more rough it's like what can you do to interpret that in a way that fits the world like fits the project pillars and like moves things forward and then from there you'll start be getting more and more you know pieces of the pie and interpretation is a great word there because that's another way to take it as well which is hey somebody gave me this amazing concept of a sci-fi crate I don't know and I'm gonna reproduce that thing to death I'm gonna kill it that thing is gonna look exactly the way it was art direct and yes nailed it but then if you could go and make some variants and then they're all there together in the scene and you show this on the pedestal hi I did the thing and then around it you're saying oh and I understood why the thing existed and so I was able to intuit the shape language and the forms and the ideas and the details and then go and invent something similar or tangential to it and show those two and call that out I think that would be really appealing particularly for somebody jr. where you wouldn't always expect that to kind of take that leap now I think that would be heads behead territory for us looking at the portfolio that would show some good strength right oh thank you go ahead yeah hi my name is Gerald I'm graduating this spring from a game program if you will my concern is that the program has more of like a broad range of skills that's been teaching so not just like gaming or game design but also like app development and virtual reality and website design and like coding and this like a broad range of things right so for the artifacts that I have for my portfolio it kind of reflects all of that instead of like one narrow focus so what are your thoughts on like having more of a general portfolio as I've described to like being more narrowly focused Thanks so I mean I think like most schools they're really giving you like a primer onto like here's a here's an appetizer for all the different things that you could do it with your career right but I think the better choice would be to find what you're most passionate about and just go all in on that right like having a general portfolio you know we do hire generalist like there's smaller studios indie Studios it's way more common but when you're spread so far like I've never hired a website designer and scripter and a modeler and yeah like all in one person you and I mean so I think the more you focus the more the better you'll get the quicker you'll get better and it's generally just the better move okay yeah thank you so we you know you're going to become a generalist later on down the line like you're gonna and when I started you know at valved for example yeah it was just uh you know working on character development but you know initially you know foundational skills and you know learning how to draw in general right like getting at least good enough at those foundational places color theory like that was a big one too and and then using that for those five years and really getting a firm foundation there and then I could go in and learn level design and you know learn or just all the taste you know ZBrush general modeling as well so but yeah generalist I mean that's something at least for me happened a little bit further on down the line so then real quick just to cap on that if I wanted to go more towards the direction of game design or narrative design I probably shouldn't want to include like the three models that I've been doing in my nope I mean I think the difference it's like Moby to is that he became like legendary like one thing and then like started learning other skills from there but right now it's not meant to I'm not being an or anything but like a lot of a lot of students will end up being not good at a lot of things right and like what you need to do is be really good at one thing to be hireable and from there you can branch out and learn other things like I I like the reason why I'm such good friends with Wyeth is that I'm bugging him about like scripting stuff and unreal right so you know while I'm doing character modeling like hey how do you do something in blueprints you know I mean so eventually you'll learn those things but the main objective is getting hired so behind your super junior generalists basically don't exist yeah they just don't one of my good friends he he started at riot he went to Art Center he's been working at riot for about I think seven or eight years now and within the last year he's learning unreal and he's actually building his own game on the side right and that takes a lot text arity and knowledge but he had that foundation okay well I appreciate your frankness and thanks for being here thank you absolutely hi you guys talked at the beginning about the importance of having your own voice any points having like a research outside of the art world when you're doing your work and I found out to be very very true in the work I've done like a lot of my best stuff has come from like historical research or like other things that aren't from art station but at the same time portfolios are supposed to be kind of carefully trimmed to be just right so do you guys like seeing evidence of that research in the like our portfolio posts themselves or do you like to be like self evident from our Beauty shots and things like that interesting I feel like generally I would want to see the evidence of that research in your work in the same way that instead of including life drawing in your portfolio it should be evident in your character work I I wouldn't you know kick it out of bed for eating crackers if I saw like a couple reference images within a larger sheet of thumbnails just to sort of understand where your head's at I don't necessarily think you need to do a deep dive into your research process you can kind of include in the in the notes that you were looking at a certain culture or a certain time period or certain type of rock formation yeah and we understand like if you're coming out of school like this is yeah that's not plagiarism right you're you're just taking your reference shots and you're gleaning and then you're gonna tinker from there and and make it your own right we all do it thank very much I I'm more into the programming and game design sort of side of the game dev stuff and like I've built like a ton of prototypes just sort of figuring out little mechanics here and there I was wondering like I've been seeing that it's kind of hard to show it off in a portfolio just because they're like little snippets and people might not really understand what they would be exactly just fly themselves so I was wondering if you have any tips for like building a portfolio for just like little prototypes for games and stuff like that would that be dealing with level design and or just the game itself I just sort of the game itself like I have a like just building a really short prototype for like an idea I might have in unity like oh this sort of mechanic could work so I want to try to see if I could do that and they're just like getting a large amount of those over time instead of like building out entire full games from them so I think we're gonna be all more kind of art centric but I will tell you some things that I have seen that it worked in the past that aren't just playable the most important way to judge game design is to interact with it right so that's going to be the your primary use case for selling somebody that you are talented but I have seen something interesting which is kind of a long-form conversation about your thought process as a deep dive on an aspect of what you're designing so for instance I've seen people go on and say like hey look what happens when I jump okay look what happens when I jump in and hold look what happens when I add a little bit of a camera shake bump to that jump look what happens like when I hit the ground and then I dipped the camera a little bit and then I have an easing function that it pulls it right back at the right speed so that I feel like I should be able to jump again right at the right moment so they're like all these really subtle things go into that problem and seeing somebody take it all the way down the rabbit hole in this kind of long-form blog style like here's what I did and here's my thought process is like one of the only ways I think for people to get inside of a designer's head so I don't think any of us are capable of telling you exactly here's how you make a good design portfolio really but I have seen that work or at least whet the appetite of designers looking at other designers work so for what it's worth would like something like making tutorials just to sort of show off that I know what I'm doing that'd be like a good way to get I think that's an interesting way to do it - yeah I mean you don't really know something until you can teach it to somebody else so if you can prove that you can teach it to somebody else that's probably a pretty good thing okay thank you so in times in your portfolio when you want to include that you've been a team lead and you are handling other people's assets and things like that how would you show that off in the portfolio and kind of an interesting way rather than like a line of text chin scratcher so is your work mixed in yeah I'm a student right now so I have many experiences one of them being kind of the producer or a team lead and game does we were creating the game and you're creating assets as well oh yes okay so I would also like taking other people's assets and putting them together for me that polished that can be text again you could start with a beauty shot and then what I would do is probably isolate your assets in the shot and then knock back the rest of it and then in the text just a little text verb I mean I guess that's probably how it off the top my head you know point out these are mine the ones that and then you could just you know do a - just a breakdown of those pieces by themselves and just remembering that that data point that thing that you did is just icing again it's not really that meaningful to like somebody judging your work your work still has to be the thing that speaks for itself a tiny little data point that says oh and I helped everybody else to would be might be that little kicker that makes you a tiny touch more interesting maybe then the next person that didn't do that all other things being equal but I wouldn't over value that right in in exchange for other things like would make sure that the art is still the forefront of the thing that you're trying to get across thank you hello guys thanks for the presentation it was awesome I'm a character artist and before I once showed someone my work and they said that if you're interested in being a character artist just show the character but sometimes when I finish the character I'm excited I pose it out I get a put them in an environment and get a nice still you know just to kind of show a little bit more or so like you guys were saying stand out from the crowd so you don't get your typical a post II pose could you guys elaborate on what you guys would rather see oh yeah I actively I don't love seeing tipos characters like I find it much more interesting to understand I mean we've talked about context a lot today this idea of this is this character as they fit into an environment obviously don't put them in a random environment that feels like a disconnect if you can pose them in interesting ways if you can show them interacting with other characters if you can prove out that this is a model that moves well and rigs well and can exist in an environment I personally think that's a boon especially on the with concept art as well when I just see a character just standing there it's like well that's useless show me them a moding show me them moving show me how they work within an environment and not just on their own yeah I think it comes down to presentation right so if you're putting a character in an environment and the environments distracting from the quality of the character then it's a bad idea right if you're not good at rigging or posing and it's distracting from the quality of the character it's bad but there is a happy medium where you can go from the a pose to something that's more relaxed it fits the character and looks more natural and that still shows that you went the extra mile to care about how people view your work as an experience you know and I think that's what matters more than like it's in the it's an environment I manually am worrying about that especially - if you're trying to if you're trying to get in and you're spending time building out an environment when things on your character could be better then you need to invest the time in the character or not in the other parts you know okay all right thank you hmm hi hello guys thanks for the talk I am a 3d environment artist but I'm also thinking of switching lanes into narrative design although my issue is I only have 3d environment are in my portfolio and nothing related to the narrative design so I was wondering what exactly you would put in a narrative design portfolio and how exactly what you outline our format that life doesn't have to be images or doesn't have to be weird documents and a lot of people use like what's that old game that's like 20 years old now that people are still making neverwinter nights or whatever i think moby said it was half-life 2 central crisis up here like what they're actually basically scripting narratives experiences in these directly in these games and you know those games expose an SDK that allows you to do that the reality is you're kind of screwed you don't have anything right now right then don't trick yourself into thinking you have anything because you don't like if you want to want to be a narrative designer and you don't not reflecting that work then you got to start over basically so you're doing yourself a disservice you if you think you can torque and twist this environment work that you've done in the past to serve that purpose it's you're gonna put yourself immediately in a very awkward middle place where nobody's happy the people who are reviewing the portfolio aren't happy and then you're not happy because you feel like you're not even representing your own work that is the thing you want them to hire you for I think your stance to putting the time honestly and that probably involves something playable where you can actually show and interact with these narratives that you're interested in about these stories you're trying to tell you're gonna have to kind of do that in situ so to speak so that people can interact with it and you can even improve a lot with like using ink or something where you're just writing these interactive just totally text narratives like the entire beginning of Firewatch is just this really emotional thing that made me cry when I first played through it and all it is is you're just making simple decisions and being walked through this story and interacting with a story and so what I think you need to do is just you need to write you need to write in ways that are interactive if you can find small jams that are happening where you can add your work to these small projects and really prove out how to design a narrative it's that same thing where you can't just slowly transition that portfolio that's just gonna be a separate portfolio that you slowly fill out until you feel like you have a body of work to show to people okay because currently there is a story idea that I'm working on but I'm guessing since at this point should I just focus more on the environments of that and then put that into the portfolio or just like drop that whole whole idea I've got to talk to you about like what you want you know it's like you really want to be a narrative designer then rebuild you just go work at it yeah okay thank you go ahead I'm a I'm a game and level design student and most of my portfolio work can change a complete level that I made from a school project for a level design portfolio should there be things like bubble diagrams and 2d layouts maybe videos of prototypes and of course either a playable version of the level and or and the video that goes without saying I think but the bubble diagrams and not layouts and all those should I add those as well or just show the finished product I would definitely show your process and I mean yeah just what you what you're saying right there sounds pretty pretty good to me yeah specially for level design yeah sure you work I think that's valuable yeah absolutely and I think it shows that you didn't just they fall into good level design if you're showing that entire diagrammatic process and showing the thought behind it it's really valuable so guys we wanna we're gonna wrap it up right now and start lining up for the portfolio reviews but to the two people that are still left on the sides if you guys could just come up forward to us and talk to us directly thanks why thank you thank you buddy [Applause]

Channel: GDC

Views: 50,736

Rating: 4.9332142 out of 5

Keywords: gdc, talk, panel, game, games, gaming, development, hd, design, game art, concept art, portfolio, portoflio tips, valve

Id: 93_6P-hXFGY

Length: 72min 56sec (4376 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 01 2019