What to do to put in the portfolio? How to make a good portfolio?

Artwork Finished Projects
1

all suggestions are welcome

2

Hm, I think you posted this in the wrong section. The Off-Topic Chat might be a better fit for it. Anyway…

3D artists portfolios tend to skew towards fewer well-finished pieces so you basically pick ~5 artworks, really polish them, ensure they’re well presented (good lighting, good angles) and put these in your portfolio. You may keep a second portfolio on a personal site and/or a blog but make you main portfolio on Artstation—that’s the standard place recruiters go nowadays.

Which Kind of Work?

Which artworks should be in your portfolio depends on your specialization. You need to create pieces that:

1 - Show the type of work of want to do
2 - Fit the industry and position you’re aiming for

Don’t include 2D art and graphic design pieces if you want to work with 3D. Don’t include environments if you hate working on environments. Don’t include something out of a CG if you want to work in games. Go above and beyond, if you’re aiming at games produce models that could be dropped into a game and look part of it, not, dunno, an abstract interpretative artwork because no matter how beautiful that artwork will be it says absolutely nothing of your skill as a game artist.

Specialization
Aka job title

Unless you’re equally well-versed in everything try to pick a specialization like character or prop artist. Hiring managers usually hire the people best suited for a given position, so generalists are at a disadvantage here. It’s not like studios don’t hire generalists, the smaller independent ones do. If that’s what you want then use a title reflecting this. They key here is tailoring your title to the jobs you’re applying to.

Your title should relevant to what you do. If you’re a 3D Character Artist you’re not a “3D Artist”. That’s too generic! Also refrain from using “aspiring”. You’re either working professionally or not, and if you’re at a junior level people will know this from looking at the portfolio/resume without the need for you remind them of it.

Also, there’s nothing keeping you from having a more diverse portfolio on a side-site like a personal one or a blog and showing it to specific prospective clients when you’re making a pitch for a more general freelance job.

Posting Your Artwork

When posting an artwork it’s good practice to show at least your UVs as well, or use something like the Marmoset Viewer in Artstation. This is particularly important if you’re going for games.

It’s also good to create relevant and visually consistent thumbnails. Overly cropping it in an attempt of being artistic hides the subject of the artwork. People taking the decision of hiring usually look at an absurd number of portfolios every day, don’t waste their time. That’s to give them the chance to jump to the next candidate.

2 Likes
3

Well that was elaborate…

In case you care about what an onlooker like myself feels:

  • thumbnails that get me curious…if I see something that looks like an object I know, but at the same time it doesn’t. I like to click that.
  • mature content always works on me… so if it is blurred I have the desire to find out.
  • i think a portfolio should contain believable (edit: not in a sense of actual existence or occurrence) things… so if i see a render of an animal that i know well and it looks a little bit off, I will not like it, haha. But aliens, monsters, goblins, fairies which i haven’t seen in real life, i can go for that. Or even a fantasy animal.
  • popping colors…
4

thank you =)

5

thanks =)
“In case you care about what an onlooker like myself feels:”
yep, this is important