Advices for 2D/3D Artists looking to work for Indie game studios

After my busy days looking for 2D artists, which were even busier than when looking for a 3D environment artist 1 year ago, I feel the urge to write a few advices for all 2D/3D Artist Freelancers, especially the ones looking to work for Indie game studios, by answering ads they found on Internet.

Basic Advices

1. Indie game creators are poor, or relatively poor ; if they don’t have money at all, avoid to work for them, except if you need to get some experience ; and if they do have money, don’t expect them to have AAA budget
2. when asked for your portfolio and a quote, actually link your portfolio and give a quote
3. if you really don’t have time to give a quote (and that’s understandable, no problem), then at least provide your hourly rate, your location, and the price for 1 of your creation that somewhat matches what the ads was researching, so your possible future clients will have some idea if you’ll fit in their budget or not
4. in your answer, specify if you’re full-time or part-time freelance, and how many years of experience you have (1) in general as an artist, (2) in game industry and (3) as a freelance
5. prepare a list of references : once I want to hire you, I’ll demand the contact emails of a couple past studios who hired you, so they could recommend your work to me
6. if your quotes or hourly rates are negotiable, or lower with the volume of work, specify it
7. if you don’t have experience working in the game industry and looking to get a 1st job there, offer to do a test asset for free and then accept to work on low budget ; personally, I don’t have the time for that, but I’m sure a lot of Indie studios would be happy with such agreement ; check the background of the studio, though : if they don’t have any released game, or only poor games, it might not be the best place to acquire experience
8. Do not offer to work on a hour or day basis if you’re asked for quotes ; in that case, the studio wants to pay a fee agreed upon for a set of tasks, not hire a temporary employee
9. If you link to a game page to show your previous work, then detail what you did for this game, else it’s extremely not useful

Portfolio Advices

1. do have a portfolio (there are a bunch of artists who just send a few pics by attachments )
2. a blog is not a portfolio
3. dropbox is not a good portfolio
4. deviantart is a good portfolio
5. do have a portfolio with your best work : I won’t presume you’re able to do better than what I see in your portfolio
6. show your best work 1st ; don’t let me browse through dozen of experiments or old creations before seeing your best work, because I might not do it
7. if you have a lot of stuff in your portfolio, try to provide direct links to your creations relevant to the job offer
8. theme your creations : so I won’t lose time trying to look for the kind of stuff that interests me
9. do not have a portfolio with only a few pics linking to categories with more pics : seeing the homepage, I may think your portfolio is only these few pics, not click on anything and go away ; at very least, write the category name on each picture
10. date your creations : so I’ll have some idea if you get better with the time
11. if you want to work in the game industry, you need to have some game ready assets ; doodle, illustration and unfinished stuff can look nice, but they don’t tell me enough about the final product I’ll get if I hire you ; this is a major concern ; most 2D artists who contacted me have _zero_ game ready creations ; this only make sense for concept artists ; anyone else should be able to display finalized stuff
12. If you even want to raise more your chances to get hired, create game ready assets for different styles : the most requested style is probably the cute cartoon style all mobile games use since a few years ; so you may want to start with that, but don’t end there ; I create game for PCs, cute mobile stuff doesn’t interest me ; so if possible, also create game ready stuff with scifi and/or heroic styles ; these are pretty standard style and you’ll catch the eyes of game studios a lot more ; if you do good scifi stuff, I’ll probably see you’re able to produce good heroic stuff (and vice-versa), but it doesn’t work for cute cartoon vs mature style
13. if you never worked for game studios before, create game ready assets during your free time ; you don’t need a ton ; only 3 or 4 assets might be enough ; be sure to specify you created them to show your skills and that’s the level of quality your future clients may expect
14. One advice especially for 3D artists : in addition of the date, specify the constraints of your work (ie: max 2000-polys), the target (mobile, PC, console) & the game or at least the studio who hired you for that creation  ; if you’re showing terribly low poly assets, but you say it was done for mobiles in 2010, then I’ll understand why. Without further indication, I’ll just assume this is your idea of “top” art and I’ll dismiss your candidature right away
15. Do not prevent right-click ; I’m not going to steal your artwork, but I might want to see it in different sizes, or even maybe saving it in a folder with your name & details, for future reference

Resume Advices

1. if possible, have a resume with your portfolio : it helps to know who you are
2. in your resume, list the companies you worked for, with the dates ; if not all, at least the most important ones (by reputation & work amount)
3. don’t forget to detail your education as well

 

Ok, hopefully these few advices will help some artists to find a job more easily…