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Portfolio advice, from a lead who hires Concept Artists
(This was originally a twitter thread I wrote before the site self imolated, hense it's strange structure.)
I wrote this after a weekend of portfolio reviews -
1. Like a maths exam, please please show your working. I want to see thumbs options, mid options and of course a final design.
2. Arrange your portfolio, I don't want to bounce about between subject matter and pipeline. Your portfolio's narrative should be as strong as your work...
3. Please make worlds that excite the viewer, make them want to go in and explore them, explain to them the interesting parts of the town, or the way the character's hat unfolds. How will this draw the viewer in?
4. As I've said before the majority of your project work is explanatory not mood, make sure your portfolio contains explanatory work. Explained here -
5. A lot of beautiful post apocolyptic paintings, , but 80% of realistic games and film, we just give the environment artists photo ref, they are capable artists in their own right. Different work in stylised where you do need to create rules for how things can be translated.
6. Production art contains call out sheets, material references and flat graphics. This doesn't have to be your final image, but it should support it.
7. Design characters on a swatch(es) of the environment they will be viewed in. Not on white. I make swatch backgrounds from screenshots, it avoids assumptions that damage readability.
8. Reverse of this, put people in your environments, show me the scale.
9. It's not a deal breaker for a review, but if you intend to get a job, please show me your work on a screen larger than a smartphone (print outs probably the cheapest option with the best battery life).
10. Please have your contact details clearly visible, and by that I mean email address, I will not pass your social media contact on, I cannot input your form into my tracking system. EMAIL ADDRESS emblazoned and bake it in, sometimes recruiters do funky stuff to pdfs
11. Your portfolio will never feel done, not to you anyway. You will have learnt from your latest pieces and want to apply it to older work. But we know art is a journey. Send your portfolio anyway. I've been in the industry 10+ years and my portfolio is still not 'finished'.
12. If you are applying to an environment centric Concept Art position then please vary your times of day! Golden hour is cool but show me some happy sunny days, looming overcast days, what about at night? Vary your weather too! Sunny snowy day? Rainy Spring day? Stormy night?
13. If you are applying for a character centric Concept Art role then please ensure your portfolio shows a variety of body types and ethnicities.
14. Designing characters for games?
Please show back views and feet (!) Many potfolios contain only front views.
This is a problem because:
You haven't shown you are considering the design from all angles.
In many games rear view is the main view.
Stop cropping feet.
15. If you are entry / graduating and looking at Portfolios to compare content and standard of yr own work too, look at hired grad/junior artists as opposed to seniors Seniors and leads often have old or personal work in their portfolio which isnt representative of the day job.
16a. Show clearly the intended use case for your Concept Art. Mention the game type in the description. Are these player character designs for a 3rd person adventure game? Then more back views please. Bonus points for diagetic ways of showing health / equipment / role etc.
16b. Are these designs for an FPS? Then really the player view of the gun needs to sell the player style/ choices, in an FPS your weapons are almost your character. Are these world designs? What's the view distance? For an RTS your shapes need to read from above & a distance.
16c. The lack of clarification means I am judging the design in isolation, which both harms the design (you might be considering the backview of a char as the main adventure character.) Or an NPC, their waist up expressions may be important for conveying exposition and mechanics.
16d. Concept art is not separate from gameplay, great concept art serves the game team before it is a good illustration.
17. Play games. A variety of games. Think about them. IMO to be a good concept artist you need to understand the common language & references used by your peers. Also understand the principles and common language your audience are used to. FPS design rules are v.diff from RTS.
18. There are many skills that are needed in concept art, please show them. For example: Graphic design - logos, liveries, typographic use etc. VFX concepts - Abilities, Ambience, motion concepts. Architectural knowledge - How buildings are built! & more but I'm out of space :O
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new bts of Calypso’s Birthday from the set decorator
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Today’s Crew Shoutout: the lovely @kristiannairn who plays Wee John🏴☠️ Always a guaranteed good laugh, hilarious banter, improv, fun games and we both loved sampling New Zealand’s fine foods☠️ I drew the line at the rat though⚔️
#OurFlagMeansDeath #ofmd #ofmdseason2 #bts
Source: Samba Schutte's instagram post
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Y'know what else I love? How damn much Ed loves and wants Stede. Like, no one outside the crew can believe it. Izzy thinks Ed's brain has broken. Zheng straight-up keeps saying that Ed dumped Stede. Archie is flabbergasted that Stede is "STEDE Stede?!"
The Revenge crew all get it, though. They went from plotting mutiny to defending him with all their might. Lucius watches Ed and Stede fall in love in real-time. Jim, the most deeply critical of Stede from the start, tells his stories to Fang and longs for when life had meaning on the ship. Olu stays up all night with him and later follows him everywhere. The Swede owes him a life debt. Buttons, probably the most experienced sailor of the group, declares him a pirate with his whole chest.
Stede just showed up one day with his fancy unicorn boat and fancy clothes and depth of human kindness and promptly seduced the most feared pirate of Caribbean without even trying.
They're like the Roger and Jessica Rabbit of pirates.
Gif by @nicostiel
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💖From Samba on Twitter:
Happy birthday beautiful @KristianNairn, you deserve the sweetest treats 😍🥳🧁
#I love the dynamics of this picture#look how different each person is it’s beautiful#bts#behind the scenes#wee john feeney#roach#cast#samba schutte#kristian nairn#season 2#calypso#calypso’s birthday
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🏴☠️ Go! Go! Go! 🏴☠️
TODAY — Stream 'Our Flag Means Death' and get us back on the Max Top 10 list! Ask your family and friends! We're pushing hard for the next 24 hours. Let's do this, crew!
Please reblog!
FAQ and tips on how to make the biggest impact with your streaming:
https://renewasacrew.com/impact
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Greetings, mortals!
OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH
S02 E06
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OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH SEASON 2
— imdb rating (insp.)
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I love Archie because she's just some gal. Not a famous historical pirate or someone in a position of power. She's a part of the crew, not a captain or a first mate. She isn't noble enough to refuse to fight Jim or strong enough to win. When Jim asks "which one" she thinks they are talking about the legs.
I just. Love that she's no one special, that she is allowed to be flawed and a bit silly sometimes. It's refreshing. She shows up in every episode but the main story isn't about her. She's a part of the crew, a part of the ship, someone who has to live with the consequences of the actions of her captains. She's the kind of character I missed in season 1 and I'm so happy we have her now.
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Izzy knew how important his last moments were with Edward. They say your life flashes before your eyes just before your death. Well, Izzy saw a life full of love stunted by fear and trauma and repression. And he needed Ed to know that he had seen that he was growing and changing before Stede even came into the picture, but he was afraid. So he kept pushing the darkest parts of Ed.
Izzy needed Blackbeard to be who he was, because as much as Blackbeard was a creation to protect a traumatized and vulnerable Ed in a vicious world, it also became something Izzy needed to protect himself. Hiding behind his ruthless and bold captain, because he too couldn't handle the idea of being vulnerable. Of showing his feelings.
But then, increasingly over the time on the Revenge and desperately so in his dying moments, he realized that Ed needs to let that go to survive. And in those moments telling him to let that be. Izzy went from being so repulsed and afraid of Ed’s vulnerability because it threatened his own walls, to recognizing that it is the thing that will allow Ed to live without him and not end up dead within the fucking week.
And most importantly to their relationship, Izzy knew that Ed has spent decades hiding away in locked rooms while sobbing alone because he couldn't stomach the vulnerability and the open hurt. And then we, Ed, and the crew see Izzy watch Ed sob in broad daylight on deck, and he smiles and essentially tells Ed, “I see you. This is you. Thank god you’re here. Thank god I get to see the man I was so afraid of all my life in my last moments. Thank god I don’t have to die in Blackbeard's arms. Cold and angry and yelling for revenge. I get to go out with family.”
"There he is" goes from being taunting and cruel to being so warm and earnest and full of genuine vulnerable love.
If Izzy Hands taught Ed everything he knew about how to be a pirate, Ed (and Stede and the crew of the Revenge) taught Izzy everything he knew about love. And he got to show him that.
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Whatever problems you have with OFMD
Remember: it’s MAX’s fault
#not the writers#blame max#the writer are great at what they do#they got cut off at the groin with no hope for a season 3#that tried to hard to give us everything#they should have picked two things to focus on and that’s all but o well#I don’t blame them#back in the day we’d have gotten 25 episodes a season and this would have done wonders#but we don’t live in those times and that’s that#Our Flag Means Death
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“So it goes” - Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughter House five
Rest in peace Izzy Hands. ❤️🩹❤️
I have a few thoughts ( that are very unorganized, I am still putting them together so bare with me for a moment) and don’t take anything I say too seriously.
I feel like some ppl need to take a breather before biting ppls heads off because they’re angry about Izzy’s death and the writing.
“They should’ve buried Izzy at sea instead of on land like a dog”
I personally didn’t mind the land burial, Ed and Stede (and whoever visits) get to watch over Izzy (I think it’s kinda sweet)
Also I’ve seen similar statements being said:
“When pirates died on land, they were likely buried on land. When they died at sea, there would have been the customary burial at sea.”
Take that info how you will, I’m not a historian and don’t know how accurate that is or isn’t.
But the main thing I wanted to talk about is just his death in general.
Many ppl are obviously angry (and rightfully so), but I have also been seeing things being said like “his death was pointless, unnecessary, unjustified, unfair, etc.”
And maybe it’s my nihilistic self but,
that’s life.
Life is full of the unexpected. It’s often brutal and unfair,
And death is the same.
It’s normal to be angry when someone you love and care about dies.
It feels like a personal attack, it’s infuriating, painful, it’s unjustifiable, it’s unfair.
Ppl have been saying that Ed should have had the chance to properly apologize for the things he did, or the crew should have been able to properly say goodbye.
While that would have been sweet,
Death does not wait for proper apologies or satisfying goodbyes.
I also like the take that Izzy’s death sort of represents the death of “the golden age of piracy”
Anyway that was just sort of a rambling of some thoughts.
Oh and some context behind the choice of the “so it goes” quote at the top:
“Kurt Vonnegut’s “so it goes” can be accepted as a philosophical commentary. A belief that one ultimately lacks free will in life, death, events, and everything that happens in one’s life. One must simply accept it and roll with it. One must go on.”
(At the end of the day, I know it’s a fictional story. That Izzy’s death could have been different, avoided, or written better, happier, But it happened the way it happened.)
everyone’s opinions/feelings about it are valid, ppl are allowed to feel the way they feel. Just stop going at each other’s throats just for different opinions.
That’s all, bye. :)
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