Hey there unity developers,
I’m currently on my third year of 3d modeling and texturing. Though I have only pursued 3d work as a on-and-off hobbie until this point. I have decided to start offering my hand at freelance work and taking on some serious projects. I have seen advertisements on other sites and on this forum of freelancers who don’t have that don’t seem to have better skills then mine yet they still earn respect, cashcough cough*, and friends by offering themselves as freelance artist. I’m figuring now that its because iv been lazy and haven’t created a portfolio. So I’m now taking the time to do so.
BUT, before I do,
I was wondering what you like to see in/on a portfolio when hiring a freelance artist or just judging someone’s skills. Should it be flashy or filled with neutral tones? I think simple questions like these would help me put together a better portfolio and led to more attention from other devs. Thanks for
(Sorry If I sounded Cocky through out the post, That wasn’t my intention)
I think it is because you can pull surfaces symmetrically about easily and by placing a few anatomical features in the assumed configuration…voila! you have a creature/demon/monster. Standard routine at this point and maybe impressive to post pubescents but so overdone as to be pointless. The same with the scantily but heavily armored waif like warrior gurlz. The damned arm of an anorexic fashion model is not going to wield an axe-spear-sword with a 47 pound powerpack-handle and that iron belt girdle is gonna hurt like hell and cut into the hips when she bends. Or the boobs look like grapefruits under the skin surrounded by metallic armor. Kinda Freudian from my POV.
To the OP. Work to your strengths. You may be a caricature stylist or a character realist, a hard surface modeler of objects mechanical and technological or an environment assembler and lighter. Then there is also the rigging and animating aspect to decide about and pursue or not with an appropriate reel. For the portfolio, don’t just do an image dump but select your best work in the area you see yourself specializing in. Make your portfolio site concise and easy to navigate with your contact info displayed prominently on the home page. Look at various high end galleries and compare your work against the best. Use a neutral background so as to not color the mood of the images you present. I tend to prefer darker backgrounds as the image appears more illuminated and richer in color and tone.
Show wires, show vert counts, polycounts, bitmap sizes, turnaround times.
Show that you can not only do it, and do it well (or as well as whatever your current skill level is) but that you can do it fast, accurately, in a technically-competent fashion and from drawings or other instructions. Show multiple styles, if you can execute in more than one style. If you can only do one style well, show your best work.
Glamor shots from a raytracer are usually a lot less useful to anybody than a simple viewport view, with and without skin (to show us topology, show the wires on the skinless view).
Unless looking strictly for work doing CG renders, do NOT show things like zBrush pieces, unless it’s side-by-side with a finished, game-ready asset. And do not show anything higher than 20K triangles; in fact, I’d say that the lower the polycount and the better it looks, the more likely somebody will want your work. Do not buy “next-gen” hype; more projects and project developers need artists who can work within constraints than artists who don’t know how to keep within poly budgets. I’m always a lot more impressed when somebody turns out a really nice piece < 2000 triangles than some guy who blows 20K on a medium-interesting FPS character.
Best way to show your skills: build a small Unity demo, with some of your models in it, pre-lit with shadowmaps to approximate real-time shadows, if you don’t have Pro, and a first-person camera, so that prospective buyers can see the models from all angles and distances. People need to know that you are familiar with the Unity art workflow, know the tools, and are ready to jump into a project. This also shows that you’ve at least worked your way through the FPS tutorial, and have a basic familiarity with Unity.
Using Unity to show off your work is an excellent idea. Even if your knowledge of programming is very limited, it’s very easy to set up a simple scene (fully posed scene or a white render with a focal model), with good lighting from beast, and allow a FPS or free flying camera to let someone look around - a nice way to compliment the traditional still shots that most profiles have.
What I gathered all around for potential clients it’s best to have everything on one centered page with possible more indepth information available after a click.
Here’s a very valuable thread with links to portfolios that industry veterans find precious http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=80509&highlight=favorite+portfolio
What most of these have in common, game art first then everything else.
And it makes sense. When you consider you’re only one fish of all the freelancers popping up, you don’t wanna scare people away with some fancy flash animation or whatever animated elements homepage but display what you are here for, your gameart - straight in their faces and to the point.
If you have the ability to work under different style guidelines, show that diversity on your site, instead of 10 times the same style/object
As for the Unity scenes, incase you don’t care about your models being ripped from a webplayer you can definitely you this, but I wouldn’t call that neccesary for a freelance artist who mainly delievers the assets and doesn’t need to go the rest of the route
That really, really, really depends on who you’re delivering for. If it’s a starving Indie, they’re going to expect you to import it, work out animation issues, etc.
Honestly, I’d say it’s better than not to have a demo built.
As for having your work “ripped off”… meh, people worry way, way too much about that.
Unless the object’s forgettable or generic (in which case, it shouldn’t be in your portfolio anyhow) that’s not going to happen; that would lead to Getting Sued, and I have a really hard time imagining a game developer wanting that to happen for some random thing. Also, if you’re showing characters but they aren’t rigged, but are posed, nobody’s going to bother, it’s too much like work, and involves all of the art skills required to make the art yourself
Simple one that lots of people forget. Put your physical location, preferably your address. People who may hire you want to know this as it affects all sorts of things. They may want someone they can meet face to face, they may want someone in a similar timezone, or they may want someone from a country where labour is cheaper. If you just put an email address as contact, they probably won’t use it to ask you.
You might worry that your actual address isn’t that fancy, believe me, people who may hire you don’t know and they probably don’t care. What they do know is that someone with a real physical address is more “real” and easier to trust.