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[Impossible Realms]

Hello, I've been wanting to start doing commission work for a while now, and since artwork is what I can do fastest, and with the most consistent quality (my programming takes a while and my music is all over the place in quality), I wanted to know what the fastest/best way to build up a portfolio is. Most of my stuff is unfortunatly stuff that was either made quickly on the cheap (i.e. Ludum Dare games) or quickly, on the cheap in pixel art (I use Vector art now, because I'm far better at it), and most of this was made a while ago. Any advice?

[Fauxfox]

Well, if you are starting from scratch, I'd say make a mock up project as if you were making for a real game/company. create all the elements involved. do two or three of these projects. that way you can stay consistent with your art and carry a theme as well. Random stuff is good too.

This is more of a concept artist way of doing things but I do find it handy. Just my 2c.

[john sandoval]

you dont really need a big portfolio. 4-6 well polished pieces presented properly are enough to catch a potential employers eye.

tbh tho if you're genuinely interested in doing art for a living maybe you should invest that time practicing your art fundamentals instead (especially if you don't need the money). i dont know how old you are, or your current living situation, or if that's a viable option for you, but freelance art is a tough business and if you dont want to starve you need more than stuff made 'quickly on the cheap'. you don't want to get into it just because it's what you can 'do the fastest'. you need to be able to make work that sells. otherwise you're better off working a day job.

[Impossible Realms]

you dont really need a big portfolio. 4-6 well polished pieces presented properly are enough to catch a potential employers eye.

tbh tho if you're genuinely interested in doing art for a living maybe you should invest that time practicing your art fundamentals instead (especially if you don't need the money). i dont know how old you are, or your current living situation, or if that's a viable option for you, but freelance art is a tough business and if you dont want to starve you need more than stuff made 'quickly on the cheap'. you don't want to get into it just because it's what you can 'do the fastest'. you need to be able to make work that sells. otherwise you're better off working a day job.

It's less "for a living" and more "for some pocket change" and "for the experience". Heck, I honestly would be surprised to get paid enough for the occasional extra video game (much less to fund mine). The most well polished piece that I've uploaded anywhere would be this, but since it's a fan-work, I'm not sure if that's the kind of thing to put on a portfolio. I also have a graphic of about this quality that was considered for a fangame (not sure if it ever got used), but again, fanwork. That's here BTW. Unfortunately, both pieces are rather old, but the best examples of what my drawing looks like when not "on the cheap" or made in a short time just for fun.

[john sandoval]

yeah those are just recoloured paper mario sprites

if you want to get some experience, the best way to start is with actual art studies. it takes years and nobody wants to hear that, but that's what it takes if u wanna get good

[Impossible Realms]

yeah those are just recoloured paper mario sprites

Actually, they're drawn from scratch. I still have the .svg files lying around somewhere on my other computer.

[john sandoval]

kek

[rj]

mr. gravity games your mediocre art and refusal to listen drove john sandoval away again

are you happy

[Impossible Realms]

mr. gravity games your mediocre art and refusal to listen drove john sandoval away again

are you happy

I didn't mean to come across as hard headed or refusing to listen. I simply was pointing out that those images weren't simply recolored images. I also implied several times that even I saw my art as not worth much, hence ""for some pocket change" and "for the experience"" and "Heck, I honestly would be surprised to get paid enough for the occasional extra video game (much less to fund mine).".

[davemakes]

I understand thinking of yourself as a "Jack of all Trades," but remember that the rest of the phrase is "Master of None." It can be valuable to have a diverse skill set, but at some point you should identify your strongest trait and start investing skill points with focused, deliberate practice. If you want to build a portfolio, you need to start doing work every day. Focus on improving your weaknesses, make art, make fanart, make projects, identify and fix your mistakes, work hard, and move forward.

When I'm hiring an artist, I look for technical skill, but also conceptual ability. Everyone here understands that you didn't just recolor those Mario images, but the style is the same as in the actual game. The artist on Paper Mario looked at previous Mario art, asked "What would Mario look like when made of paper?" and created an entirely unique style. That was the impressive part of the work they did. If I saw Mario in an artist's portfolio, I would want to see Mario in a style I've never seen before.

It's fine to make copies of existing art to study them. Artists do this all the time to really understand how a style was achieved. Those studies don't belong in a portfolio, however. I've had game artists create new assets that match an existing style, and I've had artists create entirely new styles, but I've never had artists remake existing existing assets in the same style for a job. There's generally no point. People hire artists to create something new and wonderful.

So yeah, work on your technical chops. Work on your conceptual abilities. Work on taking feedback and art direction well. Make a ton of stuff, improve as much as you can, and get your 5-10 most awesome things together for a portfolio, no meh pieces included.

[Impossible Realms]

I understand thinking of yourself as a "Jack of all Trades," but remember that the rest of the phrase is "Master of None."

Yeah, I still don't remember why I didn't put the rest of that phrase in my title. As for the rest of the post, that's really helpful advice, and yes, the previous images were made to see how the style was done, hence why I don't really consider them portfolio worthy, and I apologize for getting so defensive. Heck I actually partially take that as a compliment, as while it's insulting that my work got confused for a simple edit, it's simultaneously encouraging that it looked close enough to the real graphics to look like an edit. My main problem when it comes to my own styles is that I generally get very little criticism on the art thread here, and as such, rarely know where to improve (believe me, I want more feedback, as long as it helps anyway). Most of the comments I've gotten have been on the Ludum Dare graphics I've made, which only consist of encouraging yet non-constructive comments like "looks nice for 48 hours" and "cute graphics", so I guess I let that get to me a lot more than it should have. The only instance I can immediately think of where I got helpful criticism on this site was that one of my characters was a little too dark (and probably still is) to work well with a black outline, and so I brightened him up a bit in later drawings.

I guess some time soon I'll try to throw together a sprite for one of my characters, probably something from Kyle the Caiman, as most of my other styles are still very much in experimental stages. Of course the problem with this is that the style is very simplistic when compared to most vector art, as it's supposed to be very cartoony (even more so than my current avatar picture, which still uses the old drawing for some reason, now Kyle looks more like the right image here, though now with actual fingers, no gradients and slightly lighter shades. I would do something related to my more major characters, but the style I wanted to try is to make the actual graphics really flat, and add all of the shading in real time with normal mapping, but this is obviously dependent on me actually programming normal mapping, and I don't even know if it will look good yet... Well, at the very least I'll make some progress on my own games whilst building a small portfolio. Thank you davemakes for being so polite and giving constructive advice, and thank you for your advice as well Fauxfox, I'll probably try my hand at making some mockups as well.

[davemakes]

Hey, glad it was somewhat helpful. I don't hang around here much, I just jump in and try to say something constructive once in a while. I don't know how helpful the overall art feedback on these forums is. If you want to improve your art, it usually helps to hang out with artists who are preferably better than you, although you can learn a lot by looking at art that's not good as well. I do think that's one good thing about going to art school, you're naturally surrounded by people with a common interest. You can debate the cost of it, and certainly I wish there was a better system, but that's one option. It might be worth browsing around and finding an art/illustration community that fits your style and will give decent feedback.

Hopefully you have a collection of illustration inspiration. Are there any particular artists you look up to? We could identify some things they do that you could work on to get started.

[Impossible Realms]

Hopefully you have a collection of illustration inspiration. Are there any particular artists you look up to? We could identify some things they do that you could work on to get started.

It's less individual people I look up to and more certain games' artstyles (let's face it, not many people actually read the credits...). Oddly enough, most of my favorite artstyles are pixel art, as most non-pixel art nowadays is realistic, and I personally think realistic graphics are ugly. The only "modern" artstyles that immediately come to mind that I like are Rayman Origins' artstyle (Legends was a step down IMHO) and Paper Mario's (not counting 3D games, but that doesn't really open up that much either). If you want to get into pixel art, then there's also Earthworm Jim 2, Yoshi's Island, the Sonic games on the genesis, and most indie games TBH (not kissing up to anyone I swear, a lot of indie games' pixel art is gorgeous, I just suck at it for some reason). Especially those first two.

[davemakes]

Oh man, there's a lot to like about the art in Rayman. All the fundamentals of cartooning and animation are on display, and it would be a great example to study.

First of all, the poses are really dynamic. Read up on "line of action" and collect a bunch of research material. Get out a pencil and paper and draw some poses you've found, starting with the line of action. Try pushing them to be even more extreme. You might want to look into gesture drawing.

Second, even though they are 2D and cartoony, all of the characters' parts feel like they are real objects that you could turn around and look at. They are mostly constructed of basic volumes like spheres and cylinders that are squashed and bent. Practice drawing basic volumes that look 3D. Add them together to make more complex forms. Squash and stretch and rotate them in space.

Third, the line quality and forms are really organic. One reason your work feels stiff is because all the lines are even weights that don't taper, there are lots of straight lines, and a lot of the lines are parallel. Doing quality linework in vector takes a lot of work, so I would try using more traditional materials for a while to get an appreciation for how to use dynamic, organic strokes well. Straight lines almost never appear in organic life, so they're a great way to suck all the life out of a drawing of a creature. Notice that in Rayman, they do use kind of straightish lines sometimes, but they are never parallel. Organic forms are never perfect tubes, they taper a bit.

Finally, symmetry and "twins." Take a look at your Kyle the Caiman and count the parts that are copied or reflected. The eyes, the nostrils, the feet, etc. All that symmetry flattens the character. Look at Rayman and see that his eyes are in perspective on his head (no copy paste for that), and his expression is often asymmetrical. His feet are drawn pointing two slightly different directions and rotated in perspective to help ground him and give him depth. His hands are oftentimes doing two totally different things, they're really expressive. Hopefully with all the work you did studying lines of action and poses, you'll try out different poses with your characters and you will naturally avoid "twins" and boring symmetry.

All of this stuff applies to your other examples, too. Paper Mario is stylized to look like a sticker, but all the lines on the drawing are super round and define 3D volumes. In your version, the bottoms of his feet are flat lines, but in the original sprites, they are round because they are drawn in perspective and help ground Mario. Earthworm Jim was created by Doug TenNapel, who draws ridiculously organic comics with pen and ink. His art translated to pixels, but you better believe he didn't start there.

Anyway, good luck. Look at art, read about cartooning and animation, draw a bunch, have fun.

[Tobers]

It's been said a few times here but it bears (sp?) repeating; quality over quantity. You don't need much work, but it has to be good.

I'd just work on a few pieces and REALLY polish them. For games work, make sure they're in the correct perspective, make sure the lighting is consistent, etc...

[Impossible Realms]

I attempted doing tapered lines and making the rear eye smaller. Ignore the lack of pupil in the rear, and the inside being transparent, I just wanted to see if it looked alright.



Does this look better than the eyes in my avatar? Took about an extra minute due to the way I had to fill in the shapes, but IMHO it's probably worth it.

[rj]

try drawing with a pencil in an organic way instead of using computer programs and then relearn how to use computers for art after you have that down

[davemakes]

Being an illustrator demands that you love art and you love making art. You should be content to draw all day long, because that's what being an illustrator is. That is the job. You show up every day, you draw all day, and oftentimes you go home and draw some more for fun.

I don't want this to sound snarky, I really mean this: If, after getting a bunch of feedback on your work, you sit down and only manage to conjure up two eyeballs and one pupil... maybe you're not that into this gig. Maybe it is not really what you want to spend all day doing for your career.

Good luck to you, though.

[Impossible Realms]

Being an illustrator demands that you love art and you love making art. You should be content to draw all day long, because that's what being an illustrator is. That is the job. You show up every day, you draw all day, and oftentimes you go home and draw some more for fun.

I don't want this to sound snarky, I really mean this: If, after getting a bunch of feedback on your work, you sit down and only manage to conjure up two eyeballs and one pupil... maybe you're not that into this gig. Maybe it is not really what you want to spend all day doing for your career.

Good luck to you, though.

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy drawing in Inkscape a lot, nor would I really mind drawing all day if I had too (heck, I've spent nearly an entire day, as in beyond 9 to 5 drawing graphics, albeit simple ones for Ludum Dare entries before), I just tend to enjoy programming more. I also doodle a lot whenever I'm not working on a big programming project or when I don't have access to a computer but have access to paper, but none of these are really worth showing unless they have some importance, like early concept art. I honestly just didn't want to draw the whole thing just to hear that the lines are still bad, and then start over from scratch, even when I think the current one is good. It's a lot easier IMHO to develop a style with more constant criticism, and its less not wanting to accept criticism and more becoming attached to the drawings or character design (heck, Master Grom still looks nearly identical to the original drawing of him I drew way back in 2009). That's the main reason I just drew the eyes, not lack of enjoyment, heck it was fun for me to experiment with different features of Inkscape I've never seen nor used before. I did, however, continue to draw a little past that point, though I still haven't finished the face. I guess if you want to see what it looks like when I get done with the face I could post it, otherwise, maybe it would be a good idea to stick with the current style I use until I have some more complete images to show...

EDIT: Nevermind, Windows as usual decided that there would be an update immediately with no advance warning. ...and because it was a forced shutdown and not a crash, there is no Inkscape autosave. Guess I'm starting from scratch regardless...