Killer Portfolio or Portfolio Killer? Industry Artists Weigh In

hey guys how's everyone doing today so that's all right I want to hear way more energy than that all right good morning everybody oh you can do better than that it's all more I know it's Friday but really all right okay welcome just to make sure you're in the right talk which I know you guys are it's killer portfolio or killer wait it's up there and it's that if everybody can actually turn off your cell phones that would be awesome and let's begin all right my name is Alison Kelly and I'm a consultant to top-tier gaming companies and we'll start from with Sean and also if you could Shawn start with what is your number one pet peeve that you see with portfolios Wow all right well I'll start with my name Sean Robertson I was animation director on BioShock Infinite lead animator on Bioshock I'm currently art director on Ken Levine's current project the negative Lera Lego thing that he talked about at GDC a couple years ago I think biggest pet peeve for me on portfolios is a lack of presentation hiding what could potentially be really good art behind a really bad presentation of that art i'm gavin golden on the lead character artist or insomniac games i just worked on sunset overdrive we're working on Ratchet and Clank edging nowhere prior to that is with Sean working on BioShock Infinite you want my my pet peeve your pet peeve I have so many though I would say having a game art portfolio with no game art in it basically just having a lot of really nice ZBrush gulps but no no technical pieces in a game engine no game art no textures just uh just pretty sculpt all right I'm Gregg Furth I'm dr. Eric rector of praxis I have my most recent stuff was XCOM 2 and nice calm enemy unknown my biggest Eve I'm like I'm like Gavin I got so many so like I guess the biggest thing is is when I see a portfolio that has stuff that potentially looks good but it's not shown in a way that I can actually see it so I you know a good example if you have an environment piece you know if you just give me a screen shot and I have no idea what anybody did or or or what's yours or being able to break it out it kind of makes a little confusing to understand what's actually happening and your thought process that's kind of my biggest thing my name is Steve Scott I work at Bungie up in Seattle I'm the special effects art lead our most recent title was destiny the taken king and my biggest pet peeve for looking at portfolios is that I do not receive nearly enough effects portfolio they're very scarce I'm Wyeth's Johnson I've been at Epic Games for 10 years now I filed a number of different roles art lead art director technical art lead and I think my biggest pet peeve is probably when I like something from somebody's but I can't do what I want with it so a good example would be flash portfolio that I can't just right click save as put it in a folder somebody I want to look at somebody maybe I'm interested in but they're not quite ready and I want to follow up you know the difficulties accessing the content on your site is drives me nuts you know I want to be able to right click save your images put them where I want them you know copy out your information get a really really quick PDF of your resume all that kind of stuff put it right there in my face and let me do what I want with the stuff on your site okay Greg is it true that your play companies don't hire recent grads and if so why um you know I don't know that that really is something that's lock solid I think it's different or boss do you go to but I mean you know the biggest thing is a lot of times I think people who are entering the industry get get turned off by the you know we want five years experience or three years experience you know the bottom line honest I mean that does matter but all that matters is your work like the first thing I do when I get a link is I look at your work the second thing I do is I look at your work the third thing I do is I may look at your name and your resume so like if the work is good I I'm not going to know that you have five years experience or three years experience or a year of experience or none until I actually get your resume so like the portfolio is all that matters all that matters is the work and so you know I've seen people that are coming out of school that perform you know like somebody who's got three or five years experience you know it just doesn't matter I've seen the reverse you know guys who have multiple experience and it doesn't look like they have that years experience so you know it don't get caught up on those things because again you can't control that stuff control your work and that's honestly the artwork is all the matters or what do you even say a lot of students get hung up on writing these big resumes that worked at you know a movie theater in the end like you said you don't care about if the content on the resume it's all about your work well I mean the content needs to be relevant right so like you know like it should be the things you've done that that would have an interest to the person hiring you no matter whether you're looking for a game job or any other job but but uh yeah it should be it should be more relevant and it matters but that's again that's like for me that's the third tier I don't know what your gender is or nationality is or I don't care you could be purple as long as you can help my game that's all that matters and so so yeah uh you know just focus on the thing that matters yeah make sure your resume is clean though clean yeah a lot of students also seem to focus on the tools heavily which none of us care at all about I will teach you any tool in three months I don't care if you're no max like the back of your hand and um week and Maya and I'm stressing about my Photoshop thing do not care it's only about the finished product the stuff that's in the portfolio that's game art just like Gavin said pretty sculpts are pretty much meaningless but if you have a great portfolio that has really good game art in it I do not care what tools you know put them in there just in case we're kind of curious what we might be dealing with but you know shouldn't be half your portfolio is oh I'm really good at Excel I know I do none of us care Wyatt this actually brings me to topic that you always are drilling down it's all about quality not quantity yes it talked to me about it oh it's crazy important and actually a better way to couch that conversation I think is you know you're only as strong as the weakest thing in your portfolio and you the reason we always say quality over quantity is because what happens is people end up hiding their weaknesses at the end of a strong portfolio see all the time they kind of Arc from an amazingly good introductory piece and it tapers down and what we're always going to do is just flip to the last page first and look at what we think mentally you believe is the weakest thing on your portfolio because you're going to hide it you're going to well maybe they won't make it to the end trust me we're going to look at the last piece first and your own you know what happens is is we question your quality bar we question your taste level right because if you have a really really strong piece maybe that was one that you worked on for a long time or you vetted with the community maybe you got feedback from your peers but maybe you went off into the corner just to fill your portfolio with more stuff and there's some weak stuff in there that you weren't able to edit out you couldn't see it for yourself and so you always have to be editing your portfolio and constantly calling stuff that's weak so that we're only seeing the strongest thing I mean I'll second that I think the the weakest part of your portfolio is going to leave the lasting Express um impression this may be a dumb metaphor but think about a nice meal somebody brings you a nice steak meal it's got like you know potatoes and a nice and cooked steak and then there's a fly on top of that and you're gonna focus on the fly you're not going to focus on the steak like I said not a perfect metaphor but I think pulling back and pulling away like rather than showing 15 pieces that are you know 10 good and 5 mediocre leave the mediocre ones out let us be interested in what else you have rather than showing everything up front it's about a story of the artwork that you're creating and leave us wanting you know the curiosity like oh what else does this person have I like to see more rather than oh they put all this like really bad stuff in so I kind of get a sense where this is going we've hired junior environment artists that had two pieces in their portfolio they two environments three images each and they got hired so Steve how important how important is my general presentation and what can a person do to improve upon it I think it's mostly important as these guys will tell you it's it's the content that we're going to be looking at but the presentation is going to impact our perception of that quality if well imagine a game with a really bad UI and a really bad introductory experience but really good gameplay it's hard to get into that and to bind that quality right portfolios are the same way so if why have you mentioned a flash presentation that you can't right-click and save on those assets it it's going to be really challenging for us to be able to like drill down and really consider that work if we can't access in terms of improving well make it work make it work test it out on your friends have them look at it on their browsers or different formats do you guys have any other ideas for how to improve that well I will say a tumblr blog is not a portfolio that's such a common thing where people are posting their work and it's kind of timeline based and it almost feels stream-of-consciousness I don't see you know the first thing that any of us see should be your absolute greatest thing you've ever done and a tumblr blog is the exact opposite of that right where it's just a timeline of things that are happening I'm interested in that maybe put that in your resume so I could scroll through it although honestly that's pretty bad presentation anyway but that would be another thing I think is you know you need a dedicated portfolio right that deliberately shows us what what you're best at well then I want to chime in with one more thing in terms of presentation you know your images are important your reel is important but a good quality presentation with without spelling errors with reasonable formatting even if it's simple shows us that you have the attention to detail that it takes to not just bring your art skills to bear but complete a project and close it out so it's it's pretty important I mean a great example is in the past I know we've had students who go in for their portfolio reviews with one of these guys and it's their presentations not loaded it's not ready to go or breaks fair enough ultimately we're all artists and we have to present our work and ultimately all we're doing at a game studio is presenting our work to people who are paying for the game and every day that's something that we're conscious about that we have to present our work to you so when we're looking at someone who wants to be on our team we want to know that they're they have an eye for presentation because that's only going to help us not just make a pretty model to put into a level but how do you present that model how do you present that UI and make it appealing and make people want to get drawn into your game and and Shawn is it acceptable to show your own interpretation on a company's IP or should you completely create your own I think it's absolutely fine to do that one antidote I have is that a woman named Claire Hummel had done a bunch of Disney Princesses historical Disney Princesses we were struggling to find a look for Elizabeth at the time and we saw her artwork floating around and we contacted her and she ended up designing the student Elizabeth the one with the white shirt and the and the blue skirt and the two Lou Tess's the two red hair because on merit of us being interested in her because she'd done some Disney stuff now it wasn't the only thing that she did that got us interested in her and we saw her entire portfolio and saw that she was a really really good artist and that we really wanted to work with her but that initial interest level was because she had done something that kind of was making its way around the the Internet and we do get a lot of submissions from people that do bioshock stuff the rare occasion and is really rare it's not comedy but we had one guy do a poster that was so damn good that we ended up putting it in the dlc because it looked like it was you know we paid him for it we wrote up a contract we you know we got the rights to put it in the game but that was unsolicited piece of fan art so I think normally it's okay to do that stuff but you got to have other things to back it up it can't just all be copying other people's work or doing your own your own thing on other people's work I think it probably has to be really good too because I mean you're basically submitting work to a company that has been staring at this work for like three years so if you know you want your work to get scrutinized I think it has to be good enough to have pulled up to that kind of you know judging yeah why is when should a portfolio be a real and when should it be is still hmm well anything that's animation based is a demo reel so you know when you're talking about actual traditional animation we have to see it in motion the other you know key part of that is visual effects if you're an effects artist we have to see your effects in motion that doesn't mean stills aren't also interesting in those avenues because a lot of times when you think of traditional animation or you think of effects animation you're actually thinking about the different states that those things travel through over the course of how they animate and how they resolve and so thinking about it from kind of pose to pose either as an explosion or as a traditional animation like character animation showing that progression and thought process is nice but for the most part does need to be video reels for my money as well and I've generally talked to these guys about this is also animate our environment work we often get environment reels I hate that I want just want to see really great still images of the environments that you've created you can include a video fly through as well but to me the primary way to see the environments that people are making is through still imagery because there's you know there's this ability to see every little detail to see that overall sense of aesthetic it's not blurry you know there's not motion blur and camp artifacts kind of hiding things so that's one of the things that may or may not be a little controversial but I feel like that's a crucial component great Gavin when should my portfolio be as broad or should be more into specializing in given style and technique I I would say the specialization over everything I mean when you're starting to make a portfolio and you're applying for like your first job or or whatever you should really be focusing more on quality so they rather than having hey I'm applying for a character our position but I've got an environment I've got a gun I've got a car I got some concept art here's like a shader rm8 and stuff like that every one of those pieces is going to end up being weaker overall because you're not focusing all your energy on being the best character artist being the best effects artist being the best environment artists and things like that so I mean it's getting good first and then branch out you you know you have stylized art and realistic art or you have some props but with your character you haven't Minar but first is you know what wife is saying quality first and then spread it edit and edit again I don't know and then and then reduce your portfolio by half exactly I was actually just talking about this the other night with somebody and they said something really interesting because that's frequently a student thing right like not exclusively students but typically it's like okay so I did this class sophomore year I did this last year and they don't remove right like hopefully you're better your senior year than you were sophomore year so get rid of that stuff but he said something very interesting where's you while you're looking for a job you have a job your job is to replace all of the work from college with new stuff and I think that that's a really healthy attitude to have for people who are graduating from school and looking to get in the industry like while you're looking you you have a job and that's replacing all of your student work yeah and and and a good approach to have to if you like your portfolio is also kind of a representation of who you are as a person to you so we should show like your your interest what you really want to do look what you could spend every day of your life devoting yourself to and I mean with school I don't think it's necessarily the case is that you're gonna have a curriculum and you have to finish these courses and do whatever and get a good grade then after that it's made you start finding your own voice and start being your own identity you know so then why if any particular standout standout or failures in construction of a portfolio that you've seen well I touched on the flash thing I touched on the kind of tumblr blog approach though those are big ones that we see another one is maybe kind of piggybacks on what kevin was talking about but lack of specialization it can be really really confusing for us where we're not getting the impression of what it is you actually want to do you know you're kind of what we see this lot of students right where you're you're basically comparing yourselves to your peers around you like in the class and you're kind of saying well you know I'm looking at a rather the people around me and like a model character and in fact I think you know overall maybe I'm stronger than the guys around me what you're not doing is comparing yourself to the industry and to the people on you know the people without a job on polycount who are or whatever who are just kicking ass and you know you're kind of you're in your little bubble and then what happens is you build your portfolio around that bubble where you're like I doubled that I took a character our class and I create a character that was kind of compelling and so I threw him in there and then well I went and I did a tech art thing for a little bit and I learned how to write some shader so let me Ram those in there as well your point of view is dead in that approach right because it's this kind of five spoke wheel and we don't know even no matter what you say all I'm applying for a character our position if those other pieces are there we don't we can't get your point of view we don't get your taste level and that's a that's a you know at the end of the day we're hiring somebody that has good taste right we're hiring somebody that we can trust to invent and create and take something like a rough sketch concept and go interpret it in a way that we think is going to be applicable to our game we're looking at your taste level and we're looking at your kind of passion that's what we need you to show us you know that's what how you need to construct this this portfolio and this house of cards that you're building that's the thing we need to see the other thing that I want to touch upon is how all of you guys as much as many times as you're applying continue to apply to all these companies because you never know when they're going to need that person right so it brings me to shawn has some experiences with this I like to offer up the rest of the panel to bring in their rejection letters at some point when I first was trying to get a job in the industry I sent my portfolio as bad as it was everywhere all the time like I would go back to the same place every three months and just annoy the hell out of them keep keep sending it and I got rejection letter after rejection letter F rejection letter and I still have these at home just to remind me of how long it took for me to get a foot in the door and no doesn't always mean no no means could sometimes mean we're not ready for you yet we don't have a position for you at this I'm there is an example of someone I had met seen his portfolio thought I was pretty decent but I didn't have anything for him there's you know we it was a for FX art a year later literally is totally coincidence we had just decided that day that we needed a effects art position open and he emailed me the next day out of the blue so that was that's kind of like a feel-good affirmation like coincidences happened but the point for me there is that despite that it happened literally the next day I was still going to call him like he was still number one on my list because at that point he is the best portfolio that I had seen so even though I didn't have something for in the year before when I talked to him the quality of his work definitely stuck in my mind and he was on my short list for getting in contact with but Shawn like how did how did you keep going with that lots of alcohol and years what's a Kleenex right oh it I had a lot of good friends when at Ringling that really pushed me at the time and I think I came out of that school with just a very strong trot Drive to never be satisfied and I think as artists if you have that drive that you know you keep driving towards the next thing like this isn't good enough I want to do this I want to try to make it better you're going to get better you're going to improve and if you can improve at a rate that you can keep sending your portfolio out and don't worry about the mistakes you make you're going to make mistakes one of my teachers always said you know you had like 10,000 bad drawings and you just you've got to get them out by practicing I mean it's lame and cliche advice but I think you just you got to just put your nose to the grindstone and keep doing it you got to make sure you don't take it personally right like yeah like we were not your rejection letters are never there frequently they're almost always you know it's not right now not you know and it's not a critique on who you are it's your timing might be bad these timing might be bad other thing is that companies are generally slower to react than you want them to so things move a little slower pace and you'd want but but I think not taking it personally and like just okay the other thing is if you completely replace your portfolio I'm probably not going to remember so it's like a fresh slate so you know I think that's good too but you can't take it as a personal slight and you just keep plugging away you know it's um it's awesome if it's your dream do your dream don't we know believe in yourself surround yourself by people that they care and want to help you too there is absolutely there's one thing where I on the opposite of that I after I gotten a job at Looking Glass I went to visit another company at the time camera or the name they're out of business stuff but when I was talking to the art director this was like two years after I sent my portfolio to me yet one of my pieces stuck to his cubicle and I was like what like what he's like oh I really like this piece but it wasn't really what we needed for the company so you still even get that side of it like people remember you and like the stuff but sometimes the the company's your client right like if you're you're not going to be sending super like hardcore realistic Gears of War stuff to Media Molecule so you kind of have to know what your audience is and what what that company is going to want to get out of you yeah there's a there's a gentle thing in here too that I think is really important as well which is that you guys are not capable of judging your own work nobody is this is not exclusive just to people who are students or people who are trying to break in we are not capable of judging our own work you get better at it and you gain an instinct for what's working and what's not and that's kind of as your skills increase you start to be able to filter a little bit better but that's you know this is the relationship we have with our companies all day every day is we make something and then somebody else comes in and tells us whether it's working or not because you just can't see it you're too close you're too myopic on it you can't see it so this is why the communities that are out there to support people who are up and coming like the polly counts or whatever those are the most valuable thing you can't filter it yourself you need to put it out there to your teachers you need to put it out there to other people in the community to put it out there to your peers put it out there to you know even just send something to a company that you like and say can you look at this I'm not applying it can somebody there look at this they oftentimes will and they'll give you feedback I've done that before but you're not capable of judging your own work you have to absorb that put it in your soul and just get the fear out of the way of showing your work and show it off as much as you can and get that feedback so I'm going to ask this out to the group have any of you guys had a very successful candidate story an applicant yeah yeah I mean I think oh I mean I know that you we have hired some people looking a portfolio come back we're we're you know guy that we we did a portfolio review right and then like a couple months later you had pretty good stuff you know it didn't happen here just be clear like no stress in the other room later but uh you know he had good stuff and he he was looking for work once school graduated and he contacted us again it's just wrapped but we had a one site contractor job and I was like hey why don't you move out here and and work for a year with us and he came out and we hired him probably bout three or four months ago I just worked out that the position came available and he kept he was doing great work and we kept it you know so it's it a it all happens kind of kind of kind of weird like that and you know it's it it just timing a lot of cases it can be timing I think to your point Greg though like your point of contact like that person made contact with you and you thought before he's probably making contact with dozens of other places so you have all these irons in the fire so to speak so you're not just solely relying on on your one you know the one place that I'm only going to work you know you really have to cast a wide net because you really don't know where these companies are in their terms of hiring even what's on the website could be a month or two old because it has to go through so many people before a job listing even shows up on a website sometimes Gavin how important important is it to be able to talk about your process and working in general when you're reviewing a portfolio um I mean I think it's a I mean I think it's important to be able to be like knowledgeable about you know how you how you created something in your in your portfolio I think depending on discipline though and like what you're actually showing it's more important for some than others I know it kind of changes for like art director like maybe like Wyeth has one opinion and Gregg has another but for me for character art like I don't want to see speeds gulps I don't want to see sketches I want to see anything like that because it's not really showing your quality it's not showing you know what you do want a daily basis it's just kind of like work in progress and throw away work something you tend to keep in a folder and you're messing around with it but not really you know it's not something that will be making it to the game or anything like that for concept art though for me that's where I would rather see for a concept artist because most of your job is going to be talking to the art director about getting an idea across or you're banging out a bunch of different sketches you're banging out a bunch of different ideas and eventually one will make it right but for character art that's not the not the same not the same to number of facts it's very much a process-oriented discussion when when I get a reel and effects reel I see that as the beginning of the conversation between myself and a prospective artist and when we have the the first phone conversation we talk about process we talk about that iteration loop and you know it's a very disciplined centric thing but for effects that the loop between looking at a piece of work making adjustments seeing it back in context and then then going through that over and over again until you put together something that works within the confines of the game is the job and so I want to be able to know that you can speak to that and have a good understanding of what it's actually like with it with the day-to-day operation and not just be able to go away lock yourself in a room and come up with something pretty that we you know check into the though and goes into the game and like I said that's very specific to a fax and character art is a little bit different but I just wanted to offer that different perspective also chiming in on concept art the word concept is in the definition of the job conceptualization is in the job title and that's something that gets lost I think almost immediately when you're thinking about oh I want to be a concept artist you're not an illustrator you're not a painter you're not you're not anything other than somebody who is generating ideas who is an idea Factory and if we don't see the thought process of the ideas which leads to a finished piece which if you're talented will also be maybe a beautiful illustration or a beautiful painting or you know incredible line art or whatever all that stuff is ancillary to why why did I draw the thing that I'm showing you we have to know why we have to know your brain cranking away oh these are my references my inspiration these are some of the silhouettes that I'm presenting the Y is crucial and so that's I mean remember that the conceptualization is literally in the Job Description there for character art I guess for a process to showing how you actually constructed it is important though just to make that clear so having good topology having good UV layout having an understanding of you know physically accurate materials and stuff like that it's definitely important but you know how you come up with an idea as a character artist it doesn't really it doesn't really matter to me so why if you know do you guys at epic look at other thing aspects of people's online presence when you're when applicants are applying everything that you do is fair game any way that you present yourself out in the world whether it's on forum posts whether it's on Twitter or Facebook or your blog or even your personal blog because you really love brewing beer on the side I'm going to go read it if there's something about you out there that tells me your taste level that tells you your passions that you're interested that you're not whether or not you're a dick is really really crucial I mean we have to be in a room with you for 40 plus hours a week you have to be somebody that we're going we think is passionate that's hungry that's Alton so yeah anything is fair game right and your presence out there in the world is something that we're interested in I mean when you know we don't always go crazy deep and we're not waiting that insanely heavily compared to whether or not you're a good artist but if we're if you're we're on the edge and you're somebody who's well maybe we'll take a chance you don't have any experience but your work is really great but then we find your blog and you seem just not like a great person we may just hit us just that far over to go you know what maybe we'll try somebody else maybe we'll dabble into you know take a risk a chance on somebody who doesn't quite you know we don't think as a cultural problem so be aware that we are definitely looking at all of the ways you present yourself they don't other side also warn everyone that the industry despite what it seems like here on GDC is very small and that chances are you're a friend of a friend of somebody in a company and word travels fast if you're hard to work with or a difficult person yeah there we all talk to each other so there's no reason not to have a good attitude about working well and we you know the one line stuff like we're not going to go look at your Facebook page right like nobody cares about that but um but when you're on poly count or whatever you know came up last year I told a little story about how like we had you know we beat had actually interviewed somebody and you know at a certain point some things maybe triggered that kind of caused us to because I think we were discussing poly count and so we actually went and looked at feedback and you know it it wasn't favorable and it wasn't that you know anybody's too blunt I mean anybody knows me knows that that's really not a problem for me but um but chemistry is important to the team and and and you we all take that very seriously about the personalities we add and so you know it's part of the spirt a little bit of a conversational polycount and yeah like Gavin is is you know Kay Gavin it does more he's more out there with his work than by the rest of us on the stage and so he's this the guy who's doing it right right like like he talks a lot which any a lot of sauce possibly two months now and it's all good stuff but like your your the example of to me of a person who handles themselves in an online presence the way it should be done yeah right so yeah yeah I mean I think like at the risk of sounding too much like Kanye up here um you got to kind of look at yourself as a brand right like everything you're putting out there needs to reflect you as a possible employee or as a professional or whatever it's not like everything you ever say has to be like on point and super intellectual and you know I'm the you know smartest guy in the room or whatever but you know it's like Sean said it's a super small industry it's a quick search to see if someone is going to fit with your team I mean you're hiring the person as well as a great artist you know and you have to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with this person for years working on a game and you'll be stressed and all of this so it's really important to always have that in your mind when you're you're giving feedback on a form like if you're a complete ass about it or you know if you're just always just railing on games or different people and stuff like that it's it's going to hurt you yeah you can always be you can you can always be blunt and honest as long as you're being professional you might like that doesn't at the end of the day you don't want to wake up and go wow I president said that right and once you've tweeted it or you've put it on polycount it's done I mean so some of the things well you're working on a multi-million dollar product right and you want someone who's going to represent the brand and your company respectfully incorrect it's also recruiting techniques so yes Kevin you really when you go out and you talk you actually aren't going and attacking people or making these random comments you're actually being constructive and actually putting for something for the industry to take away from we're because I think we all up here the reason why we actually made really trying to drive this home is for a reason we have seen lots of problems online and don't think when you're applying people aren't checking fair enough no one okay so Steve what are the what area of game are production do you see more demand than talent for right now well like I mentioned at the beginning effects is definitely an area where I feel that there's more demand than available talent the other two areas that I would say are UI user interface and technical art I think wife has a much better perspective on the the various types of technical artists that that are needed oh it is interesting because it's fracturing now where you've got tech animators and that's a job of rigging I'm scripting in Mel and making sure I'm supporting the people who are doing animation by giving them good bones and guts to work with some good tools and then you've got kind of the shader side which is hey I'm making tech art that's relevant inside of the game engine itself doing you know materials work or landscape work or blueprint work scripting that visual scripting that kind of thing then you've got the kind of bones and guts underground tools guys like I'm writing Python scripts for import/export pipelines or I'm you know getting really really deep into the technical side of like tools support almost tooled programming but not quite so that's three different things and all of those jobs you could you know we will hire a great person immediately and I know every other game company on the planet pretty much it's the same way I'm seeing effects grow into much more than just particle manipulation and more into shader application for glowing armor or shield bubbles you know in the case of destiny all of the space magic is is starting to get more and more like actual physical models with with interesting shaders applied to it and that and that is a discrete skill which is the becoming more and more important as the industry moves forward well I'd like to take this time to if anybody has questions to take this opportunity and line up at the podiums the microphones on the side and while people are lining up I'm going to ask one more question before we get to the Q&A section sounds good so we're hearing a lot about art tests Sonny what do you have any comments on that I I test everybody so I I believe it's important only because there's so many so many art thieves out there um it's showing commitment to the application um it's showing how you can work with the team at a very small scale so handing something in getting feedback from like an art director like addressing that feedback and how you're going to respond but that being said it's not but the way that I do it isn't testing literally everybody who applies it's you know you could filter down you potentially are a good fit you have a great portfolio um get tested and then you know basically start that process do it but I'll just add on one thing don't be too intimidated as well if you and we're the same way everybody tests don't care if you're a 30 year industry veteran everybody test but there's another side of it too which is don't be super intimidated if you get a test and it looks like the scope is way out of your comfort zone like oh my god I don't know if I can do a whole character in two weeks or whatever they're asking me to do try because a lot of times what we're doing is we're actually designing a test that's kind of too hard it's a little bit too tough for the parameters in which were giving it to you because so much of the skill is cutting the right corners and showing us well you know I wasn't able to model the whole guy but I did I got half done and I did a symmetry modifier and did a little bit of extra stuff above and beyond that to show some asymmetry and we're going to see okay that cut the right corner to finish the test even though it wasn't exactly the parameters so that's sometimes we're actually doing that intentionally sometimes I'm great on the humor correct so let's begin the questions okay so a lot you guys are talking about you know like internet presence and stuff I was wondering is there like an effect if someone lacks any kind of like presence in on the internet I don't think that's any as long as your portfolio is strong it's not really we're not hiring somebody because of tumblr skills or Twitter skills um you know I think that we're really looking for a solid artist you know the these social media stuff can help like if you have other work icon your Tumblr site that we can flip through flip through whatever is fine but it's it's never a mark against you okay thanks absolutely one thing I've heard a lot is you should really tailor like your resume and your cover letter teeth the company you're applying for but what about the overall portfolio so like I've kind of heard that you should have like a portfolio for this company that a portfolio for this company and something like that I mean I think you're probably going to burn out Oh after a while you know I mean for me I would tell you to do what you really want to do you know like if you're if you really want to do stylize stuff if you want to do like league of legends art or something like that but you're throwing your portfolio off to you know Activision or you know Naughty Dog or something like that I mean if you don't really want to do that day in day out eventually you're going to get tired anyway so I mean I would I would focus on the one thing that you want to make it as best as possible and just hit up the companies that are in that that wheelhouse you know yeah but the cover letter I would that's always nice yeah you know like you should if it's a form cover letter it's gonna so yeah anything you'd say and there is always a nice little touch again we don't get to that pill probably the third or fourth thing I'm going to look at but yeah right thank you howdy I was just wondering what is an effective way to present technical art like materials and shaders and visual printing and stuff is it you guys were touching on whether to do a real or whether to do stills and I was just wondering on your opinion of you know effective presentation of technical art tech art is super broad so some of it is the avenue of tech out that you're in so you know like if you're doing a rigging reel you could even if you're just doing technical stuff you're going to need to show the effects of that rig on deforming meshes so we're going to see need to see that stuff in motion then then breakdowns of the offline stuff that goes around it like here the scripts I wrote or whatever they're gonna want to see that when it comes to shaders you know we almost always want to see that stuff in motion so I think some stills showing hey here's some of the shader graphs here's the logic maybe here the functions that I derived my math from here's some of the white papers that I read that inspired the tech that I'm you know doing in the game level itself and then seeing it in motion with some real samples is probably the right thing to do you know when in doubt a combination of Stills and video can work very well when you're really not sure if just one or the other is the right category for you so I would say you know if something you need to see it in motion do the video even if it's just for that section kind of break it down piece by piece and that's fine too and we'll we'll do the work of scrolling through it as long as it isn't crazy you know so so just add onto that let's say you have a you know an awesome material is then you just stick it on a cube it does it doesn't matter that it's not on you know the prettiest model or you know the best art but it's an awesome shader or awesome material presentation matters so if that would look better on a high quality model find one from somebody else or download one you know what I mean and then just make a note that says look this isn't my model but look at how good the shader looks we're gonna want to see that but also it shows us oh he's got good taste he knows it would look better on on a three you know a character rather than just on a sphere and you made that choice and you lit it and it has a nice nice aesthetic stand or whatever so you know the presentation matters for sure but if you're not a model or don't try to do it because like then we won't be able to get past the bad model I you're not I mean like it again like I said find one busily flying mistake yeah I mean I yeah I think there's ways around it like if you're doing like a skin shader or something like that and use download a scanned head but you're applying for like a technical our position no one's going to no one's going to look at it as Wow you model the great head oh it's just a scan mmm shitty but like the opposite would be true where it's like I'm trying to do technical art but it looks like garbage on a cube or something it's you know it's going to be bad like all they'll be able to look at is that cube and not you know focus on what you're actually trying to show and just make sure you're crediting other people's work so there's no confusion totally thank you hi you guys touched on on once if you're playing for a character artist to put your character art or environment to just tailor your portfolio to what you want to work for what are you guys has opinions on because I've heard of about specializing to get it and usually just you want to specialize getting a triple a studio but you want to work at a smaller studio then generalist might be better because you'll be doing more things what's your guy's opinion on that oh good good good good I think overall that's a true statement the smaller the studio the more hats you're gonna have to wear when once you get into you know 100 plus people working in a studio then you have the luxury to really specialize in one person can be really the best person at that one particular thing and you just hyper focus on that one thing there's always exceptions to the rules of course but I think is a rule of thumb that's that I've generally seen that to be the case that the big thing is just edit right so if you're not really if you took one figure drawing class and you have a couple of craftsmen figure drawings you don't want to see the rest you know it's like you have to edit and still show solid work in all those categories unity second gestures don't really don't really do it for us yeah totally so you just again you have to be able to edit and solid working those categories even if you're trying to be a generalist you have to make sure that they're elevated to a point where you're comparing yourself to the way that the quality of the industry and pay attention to the job description itself and you want to make sure that if you are putting together a portfolio for a specific description maybe maybe you are looking at a description that says hey we want someone who can model and rig and texture and then you can show proficiency in those assuming you follow all the other rules but if you're if you're applying to a larger company that is asking for specialization in the Job Description they'll usually tell you it's like oh this is the only thing that we want to see is the specific area thank you hey um so I'm most I'm not very interesting moving to like doing can design game mechanics and I wonder if like its studios due today for game design and game mechanics where people have a demo reel or the point of all just submit more links to the games or how would that process work for more into game design industrial design well so so like level design all again mechanics and things like that like I don't know if you guys more like game playing yeah edge lace line yeah yeah the the designer portfolio is is a bit of a black box I mean when you're hiring a designer you're looking at different things than looking at what we call architects or level builders the people that are taking the art and constructing the space keeping mindful of tactical considerations and line-of-sight and how it's going to stream in I mean that again it's specific to what are you what are you trying to do if you're trying to be a level builder that's going to construct worlds that the player can walk around in that may not necessarily be built out of the models that you have built but you're placing the models in you know to create the world I think you need to show those spaces even if it's a level we can download because nowadays most engines you can download for free and you have a package that you can load this level and walk through it or it can be a fly through unless of course its environment art and then life will get mad at me okay well good good design really can only be experienced through play and so you have to have something interactive and that's just the be all end all you can't show good design in a video it's just not possible you can show good theory and you can talk about it in foot portfolio but at the end of the day if we can't put our hands on it touch it and play it you you know that's that's the end of the story also I will say this with art candidates a lot of times they apply and the if they've passed the art test and the portfolio review we're interviewing them for the most part as a culture fit by the time they get it they're putting the door and in the building you know we realize you're good artists you already tested we like that you pass those gates with the designer oftentimes play and we experience what it is you've done but there's a big component once you get on site if talking about your philosophy of design to the people in the room and so those are you've got to come prepared for both of those those things thank you hello I was just wondering what do you guys look for in a level design portfolio what stands out to you and what are things that shouldn't be done our and or should a four level design you mean environment or level design um like building building the level though get art about by environment artist building a level of gameplay I'm sort of similar to the last question but just yeah it is pretty similar the last question I think one of the we hired a guy on next comp to that he had come in for an interview first of all he had actually like made a site that had dissected everything we didn't XCOM enemy Unknown and had like like like sequence shots of like the level and and what was happening there he'd figured out all of our mechanics and then came in for an interview as if that wasn't enough came for an interview before we keeping respond to him he'd gone home and applied all the new mechanics we had added and made it totally different level and sent us basically a gray box of that you know as a that's a pretty good move who's gonna get the job anyway but after that it was like there's no way we can't hire him so but but yes it's a little bit different I think you got to show your kind of share your thought process as well with level design it's a weird it's a little bit of a weird one and I've seen it done various ways for instance on BioShock Infinite when we were looking at level designers we were very concerned more more concerned with how they could tell a story in the world then if they were good at like setting up tactical space because we had a design team that would you know that they would work with when it comes to setting up tactical space but we were much more concerned at that point with can we bring somebody on that is good at telling a story of what has happened in the world so we were looking at that specifically not so much like tactical walk space and things like that so again know your studio all right thank you so you were saying that the UI and technical our positions were less competitive than some of the other ones so um what would you say the like specialties that are more competitive versus ones that are less competitive character art and concept art and character art those are pretty yeah those are pretty hard lots of animation on the fish in there yeah I mean it's it's it's it's again you look at the majors and schools and stuff and and and and and where things tend to gravitate and then it's just it's broader stroke it appeals to more people I think and so I also don't think you will think about well I mean you mean I could actually do UI and motion graphics for game I just don't think that that hits people that do that much like graphic designers would be natural fits in a lot of cases they just aren't thinking about games all the time but again modeling and animation tend to be your kind of go twos and concept of course but they're just the competition's more fierce because those jobs have existed longer mm-hmm well you know and it was just like naturally like a good UI no one notices yep you know like everyone notices a bad UI and paired with that everybody wants to make monsters you know so if you can make a career making monsters you've probably Tate towards that you know it's not not many people are like I can't wait to make health bars it's going to be awesome so why are we talking about like a portfolio that you came back to because you like something about it I was just wondering have you guys experienced something similar and did you eventually hire that person and why did you come back why did you stay what kept you kept checking out updating well so for me it was somebody who was really really good it just there real didn't you know satisfied something that we didn't need at that moment and usually in that case I'll just put it into a special bookmark folder of people that are good that we don't need at the moment and then every once in a while go but you know it's all deeply categorized by their specialty and what they do and when I found them and it's all actually I have a pretty good system for all of that and so if there's something comes up I'll go back and look through that so that was just a simple case of oh you seem really good maybe someday we'll need someone like you yeah I mean talent this talent and when you see somebody who has a lot of talent you take notice you tend to remember them and similar to why if I have us the same folder where I'll just keep dragging images or website links into this folder that's kind of like my save for later and if something comes up and we need a very specific role to be filled and I have people that have already kind of vetted then that'll be my starting point so I don't have to start from scratch in the case of the person I said that we had hired a year later it just you know at the time we didn't need an effects artist and I his portfolio is really good a year later I had remembered it and when an effects position became open he was the first person I was going to call and we ended up hiring him but that was because you know that it's stuck in my mind it's really like his work was good and his process was good and he knew what he was talking about his very solid foundation of what he was doing so that that kind of stuck with me so the best way for that is that we I had a guy I met at GDC yes ten years ago now and he was one of i GJ scholars and we got to know each other and he went off to work at a couple of different major studios and kept checking on him every now and then and we had an opening up open up about a year and half ago and so I called him up and I said hey uh Morgan you want to come you know interview for a job and he was like yeah you know I think I think I'd like to do that so a kid that I met nine years ago I ended up hiring about a year and half Co and so it just worked out that way would I needed was what he had actually gravitated to and it was a great fit but yeah it took nine years to get there but we got there I had an applicant one time that the timing this wasn't right and but I liked him we had a good conversation but there wasn't a good fit for the company so I actually called up a friend who worked for a another local studio and pushed him over there totally self-serving but a couple years later I called him up and said hey we have we have a need for these skills to do want to come want to come over him and looked at his portfolio it had been refreshed whole new stuff and it was a pretty pretty easy hire after that thank you good day and I just wanted to know we're mentioning the tumblr thingy before I was wondering is this a the same rules apply to web sites like LinkedIn for example do you guys check that out you have a LinkedIn account or something that does I use LinkedIn I've had a number of applicants reach out to me through LinkedIn and show me their portfolios I think it's a great tool but it's not an art display tool so all it is is communication device to find people like us or hiring managers or whatever so you still need a portfolio you still need a dedicated website that is a portfolio site I have two more questions what would you call that display tool what do you mean by that well the purpose for LinkedIn is to be just a an online resume right and anything beyond that would be like your portfolio of your art station page something like that where it's specifically just art content just your best work and then the final question is going back to the generalist versus specialization when you work on a on a big studio my guess is that you also have big a very open line of communication with your programmers or directors and stuff like that right ideally so yeah hopefully right so my question would be wouldn't be more efficient if someone that applied that has many skills show you that he can do well I can do 3d art but due to you know my situation I can also do let's say programming and stuff that you normally when you're when a big company is hiring for position they have a very absolute need for that position so let's say character art we need a character artist it's great if a character artist comes in that can do effects and concept art and other things but we don't want to see that until we see that your your character art portfolio is amazing and we want to hire you for that so the rest is just bonus right okay so you wouldn't communicate to say your programmer is like and he'll be like hey by the way I need a new programmer because last one I got sick or had a crash or something no no thank you very much hi I was wondering if any of you have any advice for people trying to cater their portfolios to studios that are under a NDA and haven't really sir title yet specifically for art position possibly tech artists more art oriented wow that's a tough one it's a tough one I'm seeing anything that they're doing you don't you'd like you don't know what it is they're kind of doing that's that's tough I mean again I would just put together your best work but put together what you think is good what you enjoy doing and if it's not a fit they're probably going to call you back but if it's a fit and you you wouldn't be there anyway if it wasn't so yeah you know you're kind of shooting in the dark a little bit but you know yeah showing a strong point of view for what you want to do all day every day it's about probably your best bet yeah when we were stepping up for destiny and we hadn't shown anything about the game to the world we were still like we needed people it was a big game with a lot of work but we couldn't tell people what we were working on but generally people who were playing were familiar with our previous titles and we're and we're delivering portfolios that were kind of in line with with the nature of work that we did anyway so even though it's a little bit of a black box you can kind of look to a company's track record and then try to cater to the company rather than the project and at that point would it be okay to take a step back if you weren't sure like for Bungie and halo what not could you take a step that could be a little bit more generalist with what kind of art that you show in your portfolio would that be alright or is it better to just make you think I think you're probably you could pull even guests to I mean with Bungie even though Destiny's a million times different than the halo right I mean I think you could probably guess that it's gonna be in that realm of a game right versus like you know you guys are making the new Skylanders from something like that you know what I mean is a absolutely completely different like I I think it's kind of rare for a company to take such a hard a hard turn we wouldn't have gone completely left turn and go cel-shaded you're funny animal games yes or no Snoopy games no font of the Snoopy so you know again it's a matter of like sort of checking out what the wheelhouse of that particular company is and and sort of driving towards that due to time we can only take one more question thank you so that is you hello um as was mentioned just a couple minutes ago um character art is extremely hard to get into what can a prospective character artist do to make their portfolio as competitive as possible all I screw to you oh all right I mean it's essentially been saying I doll you know the whole hour I mean it's just quality it's self editing it's having every piece that you you have being something that you're really really proud of I mean to give you a rough stat I have an opening for my company and I've had five hundred plus applicants so you get a lot of people I mean you get concept artists you get like just sculptors you get everything which is coming in so there's a lot of noise you know you really have to stand out and like what will make you stand out is not being obnoxious it's being like your professional your work is really solid it's hitting you know modern technology it's looking like it should be on Xbox one ps4 something like that like it already fits because I mean you're competing with everybody you know it's competing with your class you know well thank you guys very much for this and we're really excited to be doing this talk and we hope to be here again next year please be sure to fill out your form or your online forms whatever okay and also we'll be doing our for playroom reviews in the next term 132 which is that way so we'll see you there you

Channel: GDC

Views: 80,526

Rating: 4.9063926 out of 5

Keywords: gdc, talk, panel, game, games, gaming, development, hd, design

Id: 0RcYAwP3YJ8

Length: 64min 14sec (3854 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 11 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Linkitch]

Very nice talk and the the PDF's they link has good summaries of do's and don'ts.

http://twvideo01.ubm-us.net/o1/vault/gdc2012/slides/Game%20Career%20Seminar/Killer%20Portfolio%20or%20Portfolio%20Killer%20handout%20GDC%202012.pdf

http://dccdn.ubm-us.com/files/aT0zNjAyNDUmdj0xMSZpc3N1ZU5hbWU9Z2FtZS1jYXJlZXItZ3VpZGUtYXVndXN0MjAxNCZjbWQ9ZCZzaWc9MmQyNGE4NThkNjZkNjg1NGY1ZDkwZTZhNjU1ZmI4ZTE%253D