There isn’t a perfect number, I’d say between 10 and 20. If you have less…well, your portfolio is “under construction” and you’re working on a couple more great pieces…right? I’ve actually seen some great, highly focused portfolios with 5 pieces of art. “Less is More” they say, but only apply this to the actual number of pieces…not the content of a piece. You want those 5-10 images to be focused (Basics #2) and to sizzle.

If you’re having trouble choosing between your works, ask a colleague, friend or even industry pro to review your work and choose their favorites. Give them a scale of 1-10, remove anything below a 7. If that only leaves you with 2, then you’ve got a few more pieces to churn out before you apply.

Here’s another way to look at it: If you could only show 1 piece, which one would it be? Measure your other work to that 1 piece… that will trim it down a bit.

It does take a truck load of discipline to do this by the way, it ain’t easy saying goodbye to old or even training art…that slick brochure, your rough sketch of your girlfriend, that CD cover…good times, good times. But this is where the rubber hits the road, and you’re on your way to being a game artist aren’t you!?  Sharpen the axe and start slingin’!

You may have already thought about this and came up with the answer…”I don’t care who I work for, I just want a job as an artist!”  But I want to challenge you to think about it a little more. Why? Because game developers want gamers: Passionate, hard working, creative, professional gamers. And if you aren’t passionate about Cabbage Patch Kids, Cabbage Patch lore, the main characters, or how the hell a Cabbage Patch Kid is born…it’s likely you’ll be miserable working on any part of it.

Instead, dedicate a portion of your portfolio to the types of games you’d love to work on. Build assets that would fit the genre or animate a character from that universe. You’ll likely get a charge working on it and actually feel that spark of passion ignite. That’s what a game studio is looking for.

Specialty areas can differ among studios but some of the most common are: Concept Artists, Texture/Material Artists, Shader Artists , FX Artists, User Interface Artists or UI Artists, Environment Artists, Level Builders or Level Designers, Character Designers/Modelers, Riggers or Technical Animators, Animators and even hybrid roles that bridge different specialties like a Character modeler/rigger. There are also roles of management within the art dept like: Sr. Artist, Lead or Art Director. Additionally, there are some roles that are specifically for support like the Technical Artist. This is just a sample of the most common roles. But how does all of this apply to my game art portfolio?

Studios are looking for talent to place within these groups and it’s important that your portfolio showcase a specialty so that a potential employer knows what it is that you want to do or what you’re good at. So, if you like modeling anything and everything you might structure your portfolio in such a way as to sell yourself as an Environment Artist. If you like modeling people or creatures you’ll want to pitch yourself as a Character Artist.

If your portfolio is all over the place and shows a little bit of everything, you run the risk of being hard to place. Also, it’s very difficult to be excellent at every art discipline, there are a few out there, but better to be a Master of One than a Jack of all Trades. Because, with the competition that’s out there; it’s likely that a candidate with a highly focused portfolio is going to snag that open seat.

If you love all aspects of game art and can’t decide what to do, review your work and look at what you do the best. That might be the area that gets you in the door at a studio. After that you can more easily explore different areas of interest.

First of all – If you call yourself an artist, especially a game artist and you’re pitching yourself to game companies you should have an on-line portfolio. If you don’t have a on-line portfolio and you apply to a game studio by sending in a DVD, CD or *gasp* a VHS tape, you’re basically saying that you are way behind the curve, don’t think much of the web or its power to reach millions and don’t consider it too highly as a medium effective enough to carry your artwork…better to leave that to this cheap DVD with “My Demo 2009” scribbled in by a sharpie. Likewise having this DVD paper clipped to your resume does little to impress a hiring manager.

Instead, invest a little time and even less money into a web presence that shows off your artwork in an easy to access, straight forward way. This tells the hiring manager that you do take the web seriously, that you recognize technology and can adapt to it and make it your own.

It’s the first thing I do when I look at an applicant. I pull up their website and review their samples while reading their resume in my hand. There’s a certain flow that anyone charged with looking at hundreds of resumes and demos get’s into, and stopping to open up a DVD, putting it into the drive, waiting until the movie player starts and then getting an error because the movies is compressed with some unknown codex immediately goes into its own separate stack…let’s call this the “sad stack”. See what I mean?