Games Industry Guide: Artists

We are often asked for advice about how to get into the games industry. We are more than happy to help out, so we have gathered advice from all across the studio. We covered everything from how to land the first job to how to keep learning and stay inspired. These guides will be published over the next couple of weeks and the disciplines we will cover are Art, Programming, Design, and Sound.

Artists

It doesn’t matter how technically brilliant a game is, it also needs to be visually compelling to reach its full potential. We spoke with our talented team of artists to get their advice on how to land a job in the field, what they do to keep learning and where they go for inspiration. 

Application & Portfolio tips

• Make your portfolio easy to read! We want to be able to open your website, and BAM, see all of your high-quality work instantly in a nice overview!
  
• Showcasing five pieces in your portfolio is a good rule of thumb. But only include your best work – “only killers, no fillers”.
• We believe artistic fundamentals are really important. Show that you master the fundamentals of form, composition, color, and lighting.
• Show your thought process behind arriving at the final design (and what the goal of that design was).
• A common mistake is to showcase individual assets like a gun, helmet or tree instead of a full scene. Showing a completed scene proves that you can make assets fit with the style of a game, get colors and shading right, etc.
• Complementing a strong portfolio with a small hobby project can be very helpful. It shows your range and flexibility. However, make sure to state what the purpose of the project is, so we can evaluate it accordingly.
• When doing showreels, remember that seeing a model slowly turn six times is quite boring. Once or twice is enough to see how awesome an asset is.
• Please do not add music to your showreel. We usually watch them without audio unless it is an animation with lip-syncing.
• If you are asked to do a prop for a work test ensure that it would actually work in a game. For example, avoid creating a pure display piece with multiple 4K textures. This tells us that you know how to make pretty things, but not things for games.
• Show work where animations are combined into a final result. Even average animations can create fantastic results when combined properly. This also shows your technical expertise.

Video

Tore Wesolowski is a Concept Artist here at Arrowhead. We asked him to share his thoughts on what tools he recommends learning, what motivates him and how legendary painter Anders Zorn makes him a better Concept Artist.