Portfolio advice, from a lead who hires Concept Artists

(This was originally a twitter thread I wrote before the site self imolated, hense it's strange structure.) I wrote this after a weekend of portfolio reviews - 1. Like a maths exam, please please show your working. I want to see thumbs options, mid options and of course a final design.

2. Arrange your portfolio, I don't want to bounce about between subject matter and pipeline. Your portfolio's narrative should be as strong as your work... 3. Please make worlds that excite the viewer, make them want to go in and explore them, explain to them the interesting parts of the town, or the way the character's hat unfolds. How will this draw the viewer in? 4. As I've said before the majority of your project work is explanatory not mood, make sure your portfolio contains explanatory work. Explained here -

5. A lot of beautiful post apocolyptic paintings, , but 80% of realistic games and film, we just give the environment artists photo ref, they are capable artists in their own right. Different work in stylised where you do need to create rules for how things can be translated. 6. Production art contains call out sheets, material references and flat graphics. This doesn't have to be your final image, but it should support it.

7. Design characters on a swatch(es) of the environment they will be viewed in. Not on white. I make swatch backgrounds from screenshots, it avoids assumptions that damage readability. 8. Reverse of this, put people in your environments, show me the scale.

9. It's not a deal breaker for a review, but if you intend to get a job, please show me your work on a screen larger than a smartphone (print outs probably the cheapest option with the best battery life). 10. Please have your contact details clearly visible, and by that I mean email address, I will not pass your social media contact on, I cannot input your form into my tracking system. EMAIL ADDRESS emblazoned and bake it in, sometimes recruiters do funky stuff to pdfs

11. Your portfolio will never feel done, not to you anyway. You will have learnt from your latest pieces and want to apply it to older work. But we know art is a journey. Send your portfolio anyway. I've been in the industry 10+ years and my portfolio is still not 'finished'. 12. If you are applying to an environment centric Concept Art position then please vary your times of day! Golden hour is cool but show me some happy sunny days, looming overcast days, what about at night? Vary your weather too! Sunny snowy day? Rainy Spring day? Stormy night?

13. If you are applying for a character centric Concept Art role then please ensure your portfolio shows a variety of body types and ethnicities. 14. Designing characters for games? Please show back views and feet (!) Many potfolios contain only front views. This is a problem because:

15. If you are entry / graduating and looking at Portfolios to compare content and standard of yr own work too, look at hired grad/junior artists as opposed to seniors Seniors and leads often have old or personal work in their portfolio which isnt representative of the day job. 16a. Show clearly the intended use case for your Concept Art. Mention the game type in the description. Are these player character designs for a 3rd person adventure game? Then more back views please. Bonus points for diagetic ways of showing health / equipment / role etc.

16b. Are these designs for an FPS? Then really the player view of the gun needs to sell the player style/ choices, in an FPS your weapons are almost your character. Are these world designs? What's the view distance? For an RTS your shapes need to read from above & a distance. 16c. The lack of clarification means I am judging the design in isolation, which both harms the design (you might be considering the backview of a char as the main adventure character.) Or an NPC, their waist up expressions may be important for conveying exposition and mechanics.

16d. Concept art is not separate from gameplay, great concept art serves the game team before it is a good illustration.

17. Play games. A variety of games. Think about them. IMO to be a good concept artist you need to understand the common language & references used by your peers. Also understand the principles and common language your audience are used to. FPS design rules are v.diff from RTS.

18. There are many skills that are needed in concept art, please show them. For example: Graphic design - logos, liveries, typographic use etc. VFX concepts - Abilities, Ambience, motion concepts. Architectural knowledge - How buildings are built! & more but I'm out of space :O

This is way better. Grab yerself the Tampermonkey extension, stick this bad boy in there, breathe a huge sigh of relief. Thank you @dragongirlsnout, you are absolutely AMAZING.

kill the shift manager in your brain

you are not wasting time you are vibing. you are not being unproductive you are literally chilling. make a grill cheese with cheddar cheese and slather a piece of the bread with some honey and maybe you'll relax

Innes Keeper's Formula For Fantastic Grilled Cheeses (for nearly no extra spoons!)

Are you hungry? Do you have a hankering for grilled cheese sandwiches like, way more than a normal person maybe? Great news! I am about to give you the secret knowledge I stole, like Prometheus himself, from the Akashic Records—to bring back to Prudencia! And I’m even doing it without a ten hour long lecture about how the Akashic Records makes me think of idfk, 9/11, and how that relates to sandwiches.

I will, however, briefly say this: You gotta trust me when I say cooking grilled cheeses via this formula WILL grant you Bloodborne Insight. There is no fucking reason that making a grilled cheese this fucking delicious should be this fucking easy. I feel like I’m cheating God every time I do it because it takes (nearly) no extra spoons. And here’s where I show you why.

INGREDIENTS — SEASONINGS -butter, i usually use 2 or 3 tablespoons per sandwich -garlic cloves, I use 3 usually -a source of heat, like red pepper flakes, or szechuan peppers -a source of spice OR a source of sweetness, such as dijon mustard or honey. slather that motherfucker on a slice of your bread. -a source of herbiness, such as oregano, thyme, sage, rosemary, etc in any combination that goes well together or on its own. if someone tries to tell you that you need it fresh, they’re fucking lying, the 2$ crushed powdered sage is fucking great. experiment with other spices such as ground turmeric if you're spicy

INGREDIENTS - THE METAPHORICAL MEAT OF THE SANDWICH -two slices of bread per sandwich. this is actually a massive influence on your sandwich taste and texture as a whole. a basic white or wheat will still be fucking delicious because like I said, I stole this from the Akashic Records cookbook section and found it under “fucking perfect grilled cheeses forever”. However, if you CAN—getting bread like brioche, texas toast, brown bread, rye, or sourdough will make a sandwich already being elevated super easily to “pay 23 dollars at a fancy restaurant” level of elevation.

-one to three types of cheese per sandwich. you can get away with one type but really try for two or three if you can swing it. this is also one of those massive influences over the sandwich—listen, i know, that’s obvious, but stay with me—what matters isn’t the SPECIES of cheese, it’s the TYPE of cheese. getting the deli at your local Safeway or Walmart or whatever and asking for the cheese they gotta cut (or just in general the fancier, better-quality cheeses) is literally the only major requirement that I ask of you. If you are on SNAP/EBT programs, me too, and I promise you: Please do this. Please trust me when I say do not get the cheap Kraft-type cheese because it’s less money. I know it’s a bit extra but it’s only a bit to get like 1/4 or 1/3lb and you have no idea how much I’m actually getting a little emotional about this, because the “rice with butter and beans or top ramen every single day” life is soulsucking and sickening and it is genuinely one of the greatest sources of suffering to human beings I can imagine, I’m serious. Following this formula will genuinely change your life/mental health just a bit because you know that you have one meal that is super delicious, super filling, pretty damn cheap when it comes to how much you get, and super easy to make on days where the idea of doing more than just 15 minutes MAX is gonna make you wanna die.

super sorry for that paragraph btw i just really cannot overstate how this is a lifechanger especially when youre poor/low spoons/depressed. delicious food makes me not be as depressed. this is that.

METHOD

That’s literally it. I really hope this helps.

outta my way gayboy im making this sandwich

oh. oh my god. holy fuck. what. how. why. this is delicious. i kinda burned my bread and my cheese didnt melt all the way but it's still the best thing ive ever tasted?????

oh my god. this is so fucking good. the butter melting and absorbing the spices and herbs already smelled amazing, but then i threw the bread on and it started smelling EVEN BETTER. then i took a bite. holy FUCK this is better than sex. i legitimately believe that Innes Keeper stole this shit from Prometheus, there's no other way to explain why this is so easy to make, yet so FUCKING good, other than cheating a god.

I didn't steal it from Prometheus he's my trophy husband!

ok me and my partner went back and made this. exact words upon eating were “we’ve cheated god” and “i feel like my world just got rocked” and then we were both energized to get back to drawing. proof:

please make innes keeper’s scientifically proven perfect extremely easy grilled cheese

I'M PUTTING THIS ON THE FRIDGE (WHERE I KEEP ALL MY CHEESE)

women should lift weights because it prevents osteoporosis in old age and makes you a more capable person in everyday life please shut up about butts and waists and hourglasses i'm going to fucking kill

;___;♡♡♡♡

genuine question from someone who would rather chew their arm off than go to a public gym, and also doesnt have a lot of money: how do you safely get into strength training? are there youtube channels, apps (android), etc anyone recommends that makes it approachable and don't lean into diet culture / body shaming?

also the biggest thing that keeps me from working out is that I already have joint and spinal issues and moving the wrong way can fuck up a knee or a shoulder or my spine for days. I really don't want to injure myself, and have unwittingly done so before. resources that are extremely clear on exactly how to move and offer gentler / alternative ways to move for people with limited range are vital.

Okay, so this may not technically be strength training, but muscles are dumber than bricks and cannot tell the difference between your own bodyweight and actual weights.

So, may I recommend:

He runs a YouTube channel where he goes over how to work your way up to more complex exercises (for instance, his pull-ups videos start with using a door jamb and moving your weight back and forth) so it's good for easing yourself into things.

You also don't have to fork out for expensive weights and such if you don't want to/can't. Substitute with stuff you either already have at home or can get from the supermarket and build up the weight you can exercise with. 500 gram cans of butter beans then 750 gram bottles of pasta sauce. 1 litre drink bottle then your 1.5 litre milk bottle. 3 litre bulk-buy bottle of laundry detergent. Etc. One of my dogs weighs 13 kilos and I pick her up on the regular (to her delight). One weighs 16 kg and I pick him up too (to his consternation and mild disapproval). You don't have to fit out some fancy home gym before you can start strength training.

I second Hybrid Calisthenics, that's the program I use. It's run by one guy who's taken it upon himself to make exercising more accessible and it's completely free! Each exercise has different variations based on your ability and each variation is further divided into different levels of difficulty so you can work up to where you want to be. If you can't do a single push up for example then this program will help you work up to the point where you can, and if you're a master of push ups then there are more advanced body weight exercises you can tackle so you can keep moving forward in your training without stagnating. The routine offers a full body workout with absolutely no equipment required for the beginning levels. The only reason you would need to buy anything is if you want to work up to a full pull up, at which point you would need actual pull up rings

Here's his actual website which I feel is easier to navigate than the YouTube channel on its own and organizes things in a way that's easy to understand. He explains everything you need to know about the routine and each individual exercise has both a text description and a video tutorial

When I was a kid, my dad hated when I hung up anything on my walls. My art, band posters, movie posters, anything. Not with taxks, not with tape (it “ripped the paint off”) not with anything. At one point in 5th or 6th grade he came in my room and found me hanging up a Diary of a Wimpy Kid poster with tacos and he was like “EVERY HOLE YOU PUT IN THE WALL TAKES $10 OFF THE VALUE OF THE HOUSE.” so when I was mad at him, I’d insert tacks into the wall in places he couldn’t easily see just out of spite. Whoever owns the house now is probably wondering about it.

bro didn’t even know you could just fill holes with toothpaste 💀

I know this is about an owned house (that you should be touching up and repainting the walls of before reselling anyway???) but for ppl who are paranoid about putting holes in rental walls: don’t be. Put up posters. Shelving if you need it. Have hanging plants. Invest in a studfinder. Spackle kits are cheap and everywhere now, or you can use white toothpaste, glue, or even soft air-dry clay to fill holes. Scuffs and rub marks are considered normal wear and tear and landlords can’t charge you for them. Most places will have you fill holes but will have to repaint between tenants anyway, so even if the spackle doesn’t match the walls, it’s not a big deal. Check your state laws about what is considered normal wear and tear. Most states have laws covering everything from paint to flooring. For instance, in my state, carpet that is 3+ years old is considered past its normal life cycle and therefore any damage to it cannot be charged for because the landlord/management is expected to put in new carpeting. Before any move-out, check local laws considering paint, flooring, light fixtures, appliances, etc. Landlords and management companies make BANK on people not knowing that they’re paying for paint rubs that they’re painting over anyway and carpet that has been paid for 6 times over.

Reminder: they’re never ever ever ever going to give you your security deposit back no matter what you do. have fun with life.

Actually, if your landlord isn't giving your security deposit back without good reason (in new york, they gave to give you a itemized receipt listing why they deducted from it) bring them to small claims court. Don't let the bloodsuckers get away with your money.

Our last landlord tried keeping all the deposit and charging is for more. When we moved in, I took a whole lotta pictures. I took pics when we moved out and did my research regarding local laws and looked at how frequently tenants win in small claims court here. Over 80% of cases are in favor of tenants.

So I wrote a very professional letter to the landlord and property management company. I provided this information and sent a CD with copies of before and after pics of the place with notes, like the place hadn't been cleaned before we moved in, there was a hole from the second bathroom to the outside, large enough to fit a fat raccoon, husky fur everywhere, nails, hooks, and tacks in the walls, footprints on the ceiling, human hair on the walls and ceilings of the main bathroom.

I informed them they had 60 days to return our deposit or we will take them to small claims court. Local laws state that if a tenant wins, we receive 3x the deposit, and the landlord pays all court costs and fees. 58 days after sending the letter, we received our deposit with an apology for "confusion."

These people are dependent on ignorance. Be aware, be knowledgeable, and make them afraid.

some fob livejournals to peruse while ao3 is down:

patrickxpeter - 4003 entries

peterick - 83 entries

midnight_party - 767 entries

damagereport - 72 entries

dead_on_fic - 443 entries

andylovesjoe - 232 entries

damnyouwentz - 3366 entries

falloutboylove - 10483 entries

+ bonus gabilliam livejournal - 2003 entries

Color Saturation guide by AlaiGanuza

quick tutorial on how I shade with solid black (a lot of people ask, hope this helps)

prints | patreon  

Glaze is out!

Tired of having your artwork used for AI training but find watermarks dismaying and ineffective?

Well check this out! Software that makes your Art look messed up to training AIs and unusable in a data set but nearly unchanged to human eyes.

I just learned about this. It's in Beta. Please read all the information before using.

Art thieves already hate it:

Dude, if you're stealing, you deserve to have the data poisoned. Because you could have asked and you didn't.

The link is only in the original post inside an image, not as text, so here it is as plain text: https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/ and the paper about how it works: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.04222

As links (because some of us are on mobile and can't easily copy and paste to our browser), those are:

https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu

&

A bit of a TLDR for some questions I saw in the notes:

The team that created Glaze is from the University of Chicago. Their names are each listed in full on the Glaze download website. (This group of students/professors did this for their SPRING BREAK 😱 so go give them some love lol)

It is free to download. No, they won’t ask for or raise money from/for this project.(stated by one of the lead professors of the project).

Glaze is designed to protect artists’ STYLE--which a bunch of ai people have been deliberately fine-tuning their models to mimic (and specifically of current living artists--small or big).

It currently does not protect against composition/trace-like theft (as seen when run through img-to-img) but that would be protected by copyright anyway while STYLE is not.

The University Team has stated that they are dedicated to continuing to improve the tool, like fixing bugs (like overheating older computers by taking up lots of energy when Glazing--it currently runs on CPU so they’re trying to change that to GPU, I believe) and expanding the type of protection given to artists (like working against img-to-img theft).

It currently only works directly on your computer (phones not advised due to current overheating issue, no tablets, or iPads, and no website runthrough since that would be insecure to breaches/scraping/hacks)

It currently works best on painterly artwork, but can still be used on other forms (team is working on improving this)

IT WORKS BY calculating the changes each image needs for the best protection against style theft by AI, and adds tiny changes throughout the piece, so that your style will, for example, confuse the ai into seeing van gogh. But the ai thieves will see a regular image in your style, feeding it into their model labeled as your work (thus starting the “data poisoning”).

Do not post the original unGlazed piece of your artwork after posting your Glazed version (obviously)

The Team worked directly with over 1,000 artists that were being impacted by the ai theft. Because the team listened to those artists, Glaze accounts for regular art thieves too (i.e. Glaze can’t be removed/cropped etc. like signatures or watermarks when reposted. It’s just part of the image, so even if it ends up on another site and scraped, the Glazing is still in effect)

When you run your artwork through Glaze, no information is sent back to the Team. (Aka, no scraping on their part. The app receives information from the Team (like updates) but no information from you is given to them through the app. Basically Team servers ---> You and NOT Team servers <--->You) One-way data street.

Brief misunderstanding happened over an open-source license for the front-end part of the app. (Used open-source coding for front-end, not knowing that code’s use-license states it is only for other open-source uses, not closed-source (the back-end code of the app is private to prevent counter-counter measure developments)). The Team took down the app until they replaced the front-end code with code written from scratch by the team. They are now not in violation of that open-source license since they are no longer using it. (you have 30 days to remedy a license breach once informed; they did so in 2)

The Team is currently in touch with Japanese artists to better expand the tool for use to protect their art styles

From what I understand of it, Glaze is an AI tool designed to be anti-AI (Think Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: one Terminator robot vs. all the other Terminators 😂)

You can download it from their website and also contact them through email there with any questions, problems, or bugs. The website: https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/

reblogging this every fucking time it comes across my dash

some graphic design resources cause im bored and itching to write something but i cant write anything i'm happy with--- anywayssss

idk ilu all have fun!!!!

heres a few more :D

...I guess now's a good time to post about my dropbox of livejournal peterick fic (because i hate the experience of using lj now, and wanted to preserve deleted fic), the link to it is in my pinned post.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1eQx_UiPvEvI4ZZECoPOuRrLhIE_6XbBy

google drive file of 3k+ pixels/gifs, backgrounds, dividers and big images/gifs!! (★ᴗ★) look up colours or keywords for anything you're looking for!!

lol

hey netizens! i'm not sure how many people are aware, but youtube's been slowly rolling out a new anti-adblock policy that can't be bypassed with the usual software like uBlock Origin and Pi-Hole out of the gate

BUT, if you're a uBlock Origin user (or use an adblocker with a similar cosmetics modifier), you can add these commands in the uBlock dashboard to get rid of it!

reblog to help keep the internet less annoying and to tell corporations that try shit like this to go fuck themselves <3

Where do I copy-paste these to? "My filters"? "My Rules"?

'my filters'! if you look closely you'll notice the format is different between the two pages. the (website)(##)(additional text) format goes in filters

This sucks, so I'm going to take the time to remind everyone to check out NewPipe, a service that allows you to use YouTube but without ads, with more privacy, without making you have to give personal information to YouTube to access age restricted material, and doesn't give you a personalised algorithm. It's super helpful, it's been so much easier using this than YouTube directly so I highly recommend checking it out.

Seen a couple posts on the dashboard lately about writing with ADHD. So, for the ADHD and neurodivergent folks who like writing but struggle sometimes… check out StimuWrite.

You can set it to make little sounds as you type (or leave them off), and emojis pop up in the corner. You can change the background, dark and light themes, set your word goal, and it gives you a percentage and total word count at the bottom. Though it’s more meant for getting a draft written up, so it doesn’t have spell check or anything like that. You’re meant to just copy and past what you write here into Google Docs or Word or Scrivener or whatever else you use and go from there. Honestly love it when I’m struggling to get words down, though. And apparently there’s an update now for StimuWrite 2?👀

Anyways, give it a try if it looks like it may help. It’s currently name-your-own-price.

Yo I just downloaded this thing and hammered out 3000 words????? Which is more than I’ve written in years????????

Hey I’ve accidentally written 20,000 words in six days.

artist tips

don’t save as jpeg

as a former yearbook editor and designer, let me explain this further

if youre only planning on posting your art online, them please save it as .png ;this is also better for transparencies as well

BUT

please, if youre planning of printing your art, NEVER use png. it makes the quality of the image pretty shitty. use jpeg or pdf instead. and always set your work at 300dpi to get a better printing quality - this means, the images are crisper and sharper and theres no slight blurriness. i had a talk with my friend who is currently taking design, and pdf is much better to use when youre working with a bigger publishing company because it still has the layers intact, but if youre only planning on printing your stuff at staples or at some small publishing store, the jpeg is the way to go.

this has been a public service announcement

I’ve replied to this once before but I see it’s doing the rounds again.

This is all utter bullshit.

I’m sorry but if your qualification is working on the school yearbook, you have no qualifications. Do not pretend otherwise. As a former professional photo manipulator for advertising brochures, I can say that you’re not comparing apples to oranges here - if anything, you’re comparing fruit to farmyard machinery:

This has been a Public Service Rebuttal.

FUCKING THANK YOU

As a designer who’s worked a few years for a newspaper, I cannot begin to tell you how much OP’s post (edit: response, technically) made me cringe. I would have killed to get a photo as a TIFF for once instead of having to tear apart PDFs only to find a 50x100px 72dpi shitty JPEG inside for the 5 millionth time…

JPEG and PNG are best suited for web formats (and it is perfectly fine to save your web version as JPEG, that’s what it’s goddamn for). You will make a designer cry if you send a web-safe JPEG for print, however. And if you have a vectorized logo saved as EPS (or even better, AI), you will make that designer’s year.

I think if i put into words how happy this type of image makes me I would get diagnosed with something

my favorite clip studio assets!

since i’ve been using csp a lot more now i thought i’d make a post of the assets i use the most for ppl looking for good stuff!

general brushes: Pen + Caspar Pen (かしペン＋カスレかしペン) (my fav pen for sure) Erase Along Edge (YOU NEEED THIS ERASER YOU NEED IT!!!) Freehand Style Brush Set (フリーハンド風ブラシセット) (cant recommend this one highly enough, i use it for all my backgrounds) Bong pen OBONGBONG’S PEN Halftones (スルスル塗れる5線刻みトーンブラシ) A non-shin pen (しんでないペン) SU-Cream Pencil Noisy Ink Brush v2 Simple Retro Halftone Brushes Smeared Paintbrush (べっとり絵筆) A breather pen (一息ペン) Aj’s Pencil Set Watercolor set (수채화 세트) T-marker Wind Brush Set (Tマーカー風ブラシセット) Watercolor marker ▲ ■ and texture set (水彩マーカー●▲■とテクスチャーセット)

special effect and decorative brushes: Tights Pen (タイツペン) Glitch Brushes 2 (彩塵ブラシ(Prism Dust) Hand-painted effect set No. 2 (手描き効果セットNo.2) Oriental Emblem 11-20 (동양 문양 11-20) (this creator has so many amazing assets ive downloaded them all) Ribon brushes (りぼんブラシ) Lace Set レース セット Ornate lace Bramble (rose-玫瑰叢) Loose hand-painted sprinkle brush (ゆるゆる手描きのふりかけブラシ) Bush pen (수풀 펜) Fantasy Papers Pearl Brush (真珠ブラシ)

gradient maps: Gradient map set for hologram (홀로그램용 그라데이션 맵 세트) Yunywave★ Gradient Set cb gradients 3 ONG SET

3D: The Only Perspective Grid You Need! 3d sketch head Movable horse 1.8 A (可動のお馬 1.8a) Sitting poses collection (便利かもしれない座りポーズ集)

misc: Raiku RGB Shift Hand-drawn Rags tool Set (手描きのボロ線ツールセット) VHS action set

@xenolith1245

Ooooooooooooo gunna just hang onto this - thanks @atimerz