10 Portfolio Tips for Tech Artists

 

Hey there tech artists! It may not seem like much, but I learned a ton in my first year in the industry. For instance, there's a lot of info about portfolios that you were probably not taught in school. I initially posted this on my personal Facebook feed and got a lot of positive responses. Other tech artists wrote some useful additions which I also included here.

 

1) Don't neglect your skinning. Especially if you're applying for position where you'd be *ahem* making skins for characters.

 

"Great rig bad skinning = bad rig" - Chonlawat Thammawan, Animator/Rigger at Magnopus

不要忽视你的skining

 

2) Be mindful of what your peers are putting in their reels. If employers see the same octopus rig 30 times, your reel will seemingly drop in quality if your octopus is not as good as the others. Besides, employers get sick of seeing the same thing over and over again. If you put something different (and good quality) in your reel, it's more likely your reel will be remembered.

 留心你的同伴在他们的reel里放了什么。如果雇主看到同一只章鱼折腾了30次，如果你的reel不如其他人的好，你的reel的质量似乎会下降。此外，雇主们厌倦了一遍又一遍地看到同样的事情。如果你在你的reel里加入一些不同的(高质量的)东西，你的卷子就更有可能被记住。

3) Showing how controls/features work is usually good, but don't take too long showing how your rig works. Try focusing on a few controls and/or speeding up the clip in a video editing software. If you can, try giving the rig to an animator to test it you. That way you can troubleshoot any problems you haven't encountered before, and you can fill your reel with better animations.

展示控件/功能如何工作通常是很好的，但不要花太长时间展示你的钻机如何工作。试着在一个视频编辑软件中集中精力于几个控制和/或加速剪辑。如果可以的话，试着让动画师来测试它。这样你就可以排除你以前没有遇到过的任何问题，你也可以用更好的动画填充你的reel。

 

"While an experienced rigger/TA/TD can separate the animation from the rigging and judge the rig on its merits, most people that will see your reel won't be able to, especially the recruiters and HR people that tend to filter out what is sent to the hiring manager or Lead. Partnering with a good animator helps you both out." - Luke Steichen, Lead Technical Animator at Turn10 Studios

 

“虽然一个有经验的装配员/TA/TD可以将动画从装配中分离出来，并根据它的优点来判断装配，但大多数看到你的作品的人却不能，特别是招聘人员和人力资源人员，他们往往会过滤掉发送给招聘经理或领导的内容。与优秀的动画师合作可以帮助你们共同走出困境。”——卢克·史泰钦(Luke Steichen)， Turn10 Studios首席技术动画师

 

4) Always strive for industry quality work in your reel. After all, you might be competing with people who have been in the industry 10+ years. Strangely enough, they don't always have good reels, so don't let that discourage you! Opportunity is out there.

 

"TA/TD/Rigging work is HARD to show off well in a reel. Also, once you have been in the industry for a while (especially if you have been at the same studio for a while), it's easy to get out of the habit of keeping your reel up to date. Never let your reel be more than a year out of date, no matter how much you love your job and would never dream of leaving. Layoffs happen, it sucks, and having a stale reel only makes it suck more." - Luke Steichen

 

始终努力在您的卷轴上进行行业质量工作。 毕竟，您可能正在与从事该行业10年以上的人们竞争。 奇怪的是，它们并不总是有很好的卷盘，所以不要让它灰心！ 机会在那里。

 “ TA / TD /索具的工作很难在卷轴上很好地展示。此外，一旦您从事该行业一段时间（特别是如果您在同一工作室工作了一段时间），就很容易摆脱困境。 保持卷轴保持最新状态的习惯。无论您对工作有多热爱，也绝不会梦想离开，都不要让卷轴过时一年以上。 让它吸得更多。” -卢克·史蒂琴（Luke Steichen）

5) If you have the time, make stuff on your spare time. Experiments with mocap, rigging scripts, etc. It sucks when you're burned out (trust me, I've been there and it cost a lot of my mental health) but unfortunately that extra step is mostly what got me my first job.

 

"Side projects are key to a good portfolio and reel. Honestly, most student/recent grad portfolios and reels look very samey, so having that awesome rig/project/tool that you did on your own will be a major differentiator." - Luke Steichen

 如果有时间，可以利用业余时间做些事情。 使用mocap，操纵脚本等进行实验。当您精疲力尽时，它会很糟（请相信我，我去过那里，这花费了我很多心理健康），但是不幸的是，额外的步骤主要是让我找到了第一份工作。

7) "NEVER STOP LEARNING. Ever. Invest in yourself. Take online classes from Rigging Dojo and other places. Learn how to write plugins. Learn about meta nodes." - Luke Steichen

 永远不要停止学习。永远。投资自己。在Rigging Dojo和其他地方上在线课程。学习如何编写插件。了解元节点。” -卢克·史蒂琴（Luke Steichen）

8) If you’re currently employed under an NDA, make a "for later" folder of sorts; save at least one thing from your project every month to put in your portfolio when the project is released. (I got this advice from Luke Steichen himself!)

 如果您目前受NDA的雇用，请创建一个“供以后使用”的文件夹； 每月在项目中节省至少一件事，以便在项目发布时将其放入投资组合中。 （我从Luke Steichen自己那里得到了这个建议！）

9) "I've learned that in games where you have a lot of characters, your scripting experience is heavily valued. In addition to rigs, stress any tools you have made that make your work faster. One comprehensive auto-rigger is better than 100 cool rigs."

- Rowan Tidwell, Technical Artist at Hardsuit Labs

“我了解到，在拥有很多角色的游戏中，您的脚本编写经验倍受重视。除了装备，还要强调您制作的任何可以使您的工作更快的工具。一种全面的自动装备胜过100酷 钻机。”

 

10) Be nice! Everyone knows everyone in this industry. People absolutely remember who is nice and who isn't when they see familiar names pop up in applications.

That's a piece of advice you'll hear a lot, and I'd like to add a personal addendum to it:

Being nice does not mean accepting harassment.

If someone makes you feel uncomfortable in the workplace, you don't have to ignore it in order to "avoid burning bridges". If anything, the person or group making you uncomfortable are the ones burning it.

对人好点！ 每个人都认识这个行业的每个人。 人们完全记得，当看到熟悉的名字出现在应用程序中时，谁是好人，谁不是。

 这是您会听到很多的建议，我想在此添加个人附录：

 友善并不意味着接受骚扰。

 如果有人在工作场所让您感到不舒服，则不必为了避免“烧毁桥梁”而忽略它。 如果有的话，使您不舒服的人或团体就是在燃烧它。