Junior Artist Portfolio Suggestions by Peet

Junior Artist Portfolio Advice:
When building a portfolio as a new artist, its incredibly important to show range in themes, styles and materials. Create a checklist of things you want to show your proficiency in: 

• Styles: Realistic, Toon (cell or flat shaded), Hand painted 
• Themes: Realism, Fantasy, Sci-fi, etc.
• Materials: Wood, Stone, Metals, Foliage, Cloth, liquid, etc.

Avoid wasting time with overlap. Once you have shown a good example of hand painted cloth or realistic stones, there is little point to making another scene or asset that shows the same ability. Make sure to show a range of poly counts as well. (very low to high)

When creating stylized work for a portfolio, I always suggest finding an existing game that you think looks great and building assets that would fit within that style. Analyzing and studying games with solid Art Direction is the first step to making good choices.  This not only helps with consistency, but also allows you to focus on making good, creative assets in stead of worrying about what stylized wood should look like. This will also help you with color harmony, lighting, detail levels, scale cues, etc. Ok, now lets get into some of your work.