As you probably know I am know as @strawberrypink and I am a blender artist. I am looking for a job. I can do the things in my portfolio none of them or copyed or fanart. (If interested please message me on the site to talk.)
Your best bet would be ArtStation- the people here are either amateurs or professionals 3D artists themselves, neither of which category is in a hiring position 
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I wouldn’t say artstation is the best, esp. not at the moment. There is #jobs category here though. You can find a job basically on any social media platform or forum I think, but it’s hit and miss. Freelancing sites like fiverr and upwork have mostly bad reputation but some people started freelancing with on them…
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I considered moving this to #jobs but it’s not a job offer- it’s essentially the opposite of a job posting the fact that we don’t have a “looking for work” category adds extra weight to the suggestion that this forum is the wrong place for this
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but OP could simply go to #jobs and see if someone might need his help? I don’t know how successful such search would be though
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Best is to look on different social media for job offers (twitter, linkedin, artstation), showing your work and connecting to other artists is also a good way to eventually get a job.
From what I see in your work, you might find some offers but I’d advice to keep practicing a bit more and build an industry related portfolio first before sending your portfolio to every company and
answer every job offers.
You should ask yourself what kind of job you want to do as an artist and what kind of projects you’d like to work on.
Ideally by looking at your portfolio we should be able to get a hint on that, so a recruiter can quickly see that you are a good fit for their project / company.
This also means ( and is a proof ) that you have a good understanding on how a project work and what are the different specialties in CG.
Right now you are at a point where you are still learning a bit of everything , so it’s hard to see a specialty in that : something where you are a bit more experienced than the average artist at least ( along these lines since the “average” is quite subjective anyway).
Or, you can do a bit of everything and be a generalist, but it’s tough , since it asks to be “a bit more experienced than the average” in many different areas.
Say you want to be a character modeler, then train to model different characters of very different styles, and build a portfolio around that, with like ~5 character that are quite different you’ll already have a strong showcase on your skills.
Of course in the meantime you should learn at least a bit of lighting to present them well, and a bit of material and texturing since you might be asked to do both.
That’s at least how it works in general.
Don’t be too scared on the “average” level I talk about, since it’s easy to loose confidence by looking at other’s work. But as a matter of fact, many people start to learn 3D and after a years or two start to look for jobs, so there is a lot of competition among juniors artists. And obviously the more experience you have the more rare and valuable you could get, therefore experienced artists available for a job are much more difficult to find…
Take all that with a grain of salt, some people might hire you as an illustrator because they like your particular style, or a company might be willing to have you as a junior artist and train you as you work for them, this is also possible but you might find out that’s more the exception rather than the norm.
I don’t want to sound mean since I see some potential in your work, but I see that you might need more practice and understanding of 3D and how the industry works to be more relevant !
If you keep practicing and learning I’m pretty sure you’ll eventually manage to make a living with 3D.
Good luck !
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This is a good point, because as far as I can tell there are two kinds of jobs.
(a) Studios that hire artists via a contract for a prefixed amount of time -or- permanent artist position. This is somehow very specialized positions in terms that not only great skill level required, but also as well, that you must be a natural fit for the project’s requirements. As for example if you count how many high-end productions are made each year, chances that based on content opportunities for hire as slim in terms of content variety. Since projects mostly go through very standard processes, you would rarely get to see advanced creativity, everybody does the safe choices based on what others do. Just to get an idea, just have a look on trending AppStore games or various 3D movies on streaming services to see what is the state of productions.
(b) Many chances for work through opportunities that arise from community. This needs building a name and fame and gradually gaining loyal followers. Then you would be able to either have commissions (someone gives an order and you work for it), or Patreon for exclusive content. However this is more social-network based type of economy, not 100% guarranteed success, but it all depends if people find the content interesting and are willing to drop 1$ here and there.
If anyone has other ideas drop them here. 
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Yes !
On the first one it’s a bit more subtle. But for sure it’s difficult like with any specialized job isn’t it ?
You don’t need to be specialized in cartoon animation to end-up working at pixar, but you should understand their design language to be able to adapt to their projects.
Just like traditional animators : they’ve got their own style but going from one project to another they are able to adapt to the style of the show in a way that it’s like only one person that has drawn all the frames of the show.
In one hand, working in the entertainment industry asks for some skills and dedication to learn these skills in the first place, but in the other hand a broad variety of skills and level are needed : There is also a need for small and boring tasks that are ideal to get your feet wet.
About the b, yeah it’s another possibility. I don’t know how much that allows to live from it, I guess it depends on how many time you dedicate to that.
There is a kind of Ponzi pyramid forming here : you start to learn from experienced youtubers until you are able to build your own channel. And your target audience is mainly 3D enthusiasts , or I’m simplifying things too much ?
It’s also possible to make NFT or target niche markets too for sure.
Other than that, it’s a very broad industry, there are a lot of different jobs that requires 3D or art in general. But like every jobs it’s a craft to learn, it’s not always easy to find a job in the beginning especially if you are self learner…
We can all play basket ball or guitar or cook something. But for sure being professional in these field takes dedication and comes with frustrations too, CG isn’t any different.
I don’t want to sound pessimistic BTW, but for sure it’s a bit difficult to start working, but once you worked on a few projects then it becomes much more easier !
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Indeed I am a self learner. I know having a niche can really help one find a job and experience can to, but I thought perhaps if I only had practice making things only for my own current project I might learn skills that will only help me and thus teach me little of the skills someone might be looking for to get me a job not to mention slow gain of skills from no new challenges to make one grow. What is being posted here is a help though finding information about this stuff can be hard.
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I’m a self learner too so I understand the difficulties to get started on your own.
Indeed , alongside personal work you might need to test to go out of your comfort zone to learn different things.
It’s important to know at least a bit of everything, like being able to produce good looking images, and also have a few very well polished skills that will become your specialty and least in the beginning.
You can specialize in different things with time if you like to do a bit of everything.
One thing that you can try to get a better idea of what is needed : you take a project that you really would have liked to work on. Say a video game. Then try to find who is the company behind that videogame, try to find who are the artists working on that project, what is their portfolio, try to reach them to asks some questions or let them review your work, ask for advice and things like that !
You can also look for CG artists that you like and see what kind of projects they work on professionally. Again, you can always try to reach them and asks some questions.
That way you’ll have a better idea of what is needed, what kind of job you should expect, how the industry function.
That’s something at least worth giving a shot at some point among other things !
Good luck !
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That’s a good thing to think about eventually, but there are a lot of skills to learn to even become moderately competent at any given type of 3D work; don’t worry about this too soon. If you don’t have a definite niche of interest yet, and you don’t have a firm sense of what will sell that you also enjoy doing, get a broad range of skills. Your portfolio as yet is too limited as a basis for getting a job. Work on more projects of your own that challenge you to learn more and different skills. The advantage of this is that you can design your projects very specifically to do that.
The other thing I’d do is use other people’s projects for practice. So many artists put their portfolio online, look for real projects they did for a job, and try to do the same projects on your own, staying within the same parameters, but giving them your own personality, or the imagined personality of another client. I don’t know how relevant DeviantArt still is; I used to commission 2D art there and it had a solid community back then. Try to talk with other people who do that sort of work.
Look through the #jobs category here and try to do some jobs as if you had gotten hired. Consider some volunteer jobs for which you might be qualified. Doing small commissions are also something to look into. Creating 3D models for share or even sale on sites like Sketchfab, CGTrader might be a possibility, look into their analyses of what sells most and what’s most lucractive and try to see whether you might like to make such models. Practice, practice, practice.
Check out the Polycount Work Opportunity and Career & Education forums. Look at other people’s portfolios who offer their services. Don’t get discouraged! They all started where you are, and slowly worked their way up.
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I don’t know exactly the 100% of the details about the hiring process in general. I can say for sure that there is always a risk the employer has to perform, so prior related experience means a lot. For example one makes horrible creatures like in “Deadspace” and the other awesome characters as in “Zootopia” then it goes without saying who’s the real winner. Usually someone gets hired to do continue doing what already knows.
So for example a great advice here as I have learnt from Youtubers, is that you could maintain several different portfolios, in order to make things tidier and cleaner. Is great to chase different subjects because you learn more stuff, however once you start presenting everything in one place you would be all over the place and your portfolio would look random. People who are interested to hire, would be confused and get anxious.
However the solution to this is once you settle for a specific genre and you won’t trade it for anything else, then you would be really focused and have ease of mind, because you can see only what you are interested to learn and create, and filter out (thankfully/unfortunately) anything else irrelevant to your exact interest. The challenge however is either you find your interest right from the start (you are lucky) either you end up finding it too late (and you have gone in circles for a long time – rather than getting straight to the point).
Hello !
Yeah good points ! It’s a matter of balance, having things too disconnected might be confusing, but showing a range of skills can be good too.
Here is an example from a senior character modeler : https://pitiwazou.artstation.com/
There is a variety of style but yet it’s not disconnected either. Furthermore most if his work is about modelling, especially character. You don’t see like a smoke simulation or some animations.
But having multiple portfolios might be good too, for instance these two are from the same senior concept artist :
https://rominou.artstation.com/
Since they target really two very different projects type having two portfolio might make sense.
Both are from senior artists so a junior artist’s portfolio might need to be a bit more different, that depends on the case…
A key word in this job is problem solving, no matter what job you end up doing as artist being creative or technical, you’ll always have to adapt to some constraints or translate some ideas / concept into 3D.
In that matter showing some variety in your work can do good, and being stuck too early (in your creative growth) on a specific style can do you harm.
Say you’re asked to model a motorbike, it would be weird to answer “hey, I’m more specialized in cars, I don’t do motorbikes…”, or “I do only Volkswagen vehicles” At least if you work in animation different style is basically a similar problem.
That goes the same way for a recruiter, having too much of the same thing can be seen as unprofessional, but as said it’s a balance.
If you show some variety in you work that means that you understand say whats make an anime character, as opposed to a pixar like character, or a more realistic character.
Anyway, my advice is start doing a porfolio and having it reviewed by professionals artists.
You can probably post it on this forum and ask for feedback.
Since it’s really difficult to theorize what is good or not, especially since there are a lot of fields in that industry.
It’s also ok to not have the perfect portfolio, the most important is the general idea, so it’s not like you won’t get the job because you present things on a red background instead of grey.
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Hmm where would you find professional artist to ask.
You are surrounded by professional artists in this forum. Sozap, for example, has an IMDb profile packed with directorial and artistic credits
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Well, you can ask on this forum by creating a topic for portfolio review for instance, and you’ll get a bunch of interesting feedback from hobbyist to professionals.
From your description I see that you are interested in video games ? Maybe try to look here : https://polycount.com/
Or as said, if I have a more precise idea like I’d like to work at pixar as a environment modeler. Then I could take a pixar movie, look at the end credits and look for them in LinkedIn or Artstation. Looking at their porfolio will give already a lot of information on what is expected to get hired. And at some point you can contact these people by the same way, if you have access to their porfolio you have a way to contact them basically.
Of course looking at smaller projects/company might be better to get started, but nonetheless if that’s your end goal it’s worth trying to reach a few junior / middle artists working there.
And of course, it’s better to get well prepared since you ask them to review your work , they’ll probably take more time to answer if you take more time to polish your porfolio beforehand.
Also, doing this isn’t mandatory, but at least it might help you since I’ve seen a lot of portfolios from juniors self-learners that contains really cool stuff but are a bit disconnected from the industry.
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Oh… When I posted feedback wanted on some of my pieces nothing really happen is there a better way to ask? Is there a cataglory for that?
You can post on the focused critique if you want feedback on an art piece.
Sometimes people don’t jump in for sure.
Giving more information might help people to react, it’s also easier for people to see what kind of feedback is wanted.
I won’t give the same feedback on a hobbyist porfolio than on a professional one. On the first it’s only about getting better, on the second it’s more about how to get hired.
Some people want mainly to have fun with blender some others want to become really good, you can’t give the same feedback in these cases.
Knowing more what you are looking for I might write a few things next time.
Right now there is some progression between each project and that’s good, you might try to model a character from someone else concept as an exercise to try to adapt to other shape language.
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Best way to ask for feedback is by posting in #artwork:focused-critiques – but frankly, I see a lot of people ask for feedback, and many of them get none, or nothing particularly useful. It actually takes a fair bit of effort to analyze somebody’s art and give good feedback, and few people have the interest and can do a lot of that. It might help if you ask for some specifics on which you want feedback rather than leaving it wide open; that sometimes gets me started when my mind is otherwise kind of glazed over from looking at a lot of artwork in a row.
I get decent feedback from posting in my Sketchbook; you might consider starting one. But there too, you have to try and attract a small community of people who’re willing to engage with your art, and that’s usually best done if you reciprocate.
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