It has been an insane week to be sure and the response to the Shatner Project was huge,,, Thanks for all the links images and fantastic models sent over. There were skills and talents on all levels of excellences from the beginners to the hard core 3D-ers. When I have time I have to organize everyone and everything sent over so the next time a project comes thru I can send over your links to the project bosses. I mentioned earlier this week that these jobs come all the time and I am so glad that I can start passing on your info as potential hires. The Shatner project is fairly small and in the begging stages but has the potential to be a big project. There was a lot of great stuff sent over in a whole variety of different ways and formats. unfortunately it is hard to show what you are capable of with one or two images and with little to no personal information or work ethics and programs used . As a word of creative advise to anyone who wants to seriously use your talents to get work. A real nice organized web page with a bio, work history, and what and how you work in, followed by some of your best images would be the ultimate force in pushing what you can do to get onto future prospects. As discouraging as it can be to not catch a job, never get down, or give up. Keep making your stuff better and learn from others on how to keep current, reinvent yourself as things change, and find the best way to present yourself. We can all learn from each other here and I can’t think of a better group of talent to be surrounded with. In a quick note this project will probably go to one of these guys,,,,Deg, Matt Boardman, or Vector. The producers were very impressed and their work was right in line with what they were looking for. next week i’ll try to send over a note to everyone individually in regards to all that has been received and I already have a couple of projects in line for some of you. Thanks again and keep the stuff a coming!!!
01
May
09
Eavesdropping with Johnny 
John I know how hard it is to getting to the industry, as I tired for British TV. Even trying to start out as a Tea boy. LOL
Even though I have not gone in for this project, (I will try for another one later down the road) I appicate that you have opened a door that could make it easier for us to get in.
So I will say from all of us a Big Thank you!! 😀
glad to hear it and look forward to your big unavailing!!!
Good advice, John. This has reminded me how much I need to update my portfolio site. It’s such a drag to update it that to show people my newer work I usually just link them to my blog or dA page instead, but that’s not very professional of me.
I’m gonna start brushing up on my texturing skills now so I’ll be able to enthusiastically put my name forward next time. 🙂 Thanks so much for recommending artists who post on here, it’s really amazing and unexpected. Good luck to the guys above, too.
Those guys do kick-butt work, so you’ll get great stuff.
Thanks John! 🙂
And just a word, yeah guys, get your stores in order for the future. I was caught long ago with my pants down when I first started doing graphic design (oh the pain, I looked like such a bone-head,and lost the opp., I’ll never forget it!), and I learned my lesson WELL, and VOWED that day that I would NEVER ever be caught unprepared again. And I haven’t since, as I took the time had effort to make sure my work (my graphic design work then, and now my 3D work) had the needed polish (and EASE to the viewer) of presentation to also match its own inherent level of quality.
So get those sites together, and work polished up nice ‘n’ pretty, as you never know when opportunity will coma a’knockin’, as when it does, ya gotta be ready for it, eh.
Look forward to seeing what you guys come up with next round. 🙂
LLP,
deg
Thanks Don! Your stuff and presentation is tight as well!
PLL,
deg
I’ve put all my projects on hold now whilst I sort my website out. I need to work on a unified backdrop to use on all my models, so its less messy, I don’t think a blog type site will cut it really since you need 1 main page with 5-6 images in it, then some links to other work and a bio if you’ve caught the persons attention, I’m assuming thats the way to go right?
I’ll probably get a thread going at SFM so I can get feedback on it, if any of you guys have looked at my blog and can offer advice and much appriciate it, afterall, as most of you guys know, as nice as a ‘thats awesome comment is’, its sometimes nice to have some critique so you can find out stuff you need to improve! 🙂
http://suricatasblog.wordpress.com/
Your right!!! I love critique especially the hard ones as long as it’s honest and constructive.. there are a lot of bitter belittle-ers out there who’s comments don’t even merit a listening.
I think its cool to have a site to display your own work, but I also think its pretty important to KNOW someone first and second have amazing work, thats all. I did a test for a company along with another ex colleague and both our final animations looked nearly identical in terms of quality as far as I could tell, but he got the gig because he knew someone on the ‘inside’ and here I am a year later with no job. The march goes on..
that is key to know somebody. I always am pushing my stuff on people I like but don’t know, and keeping them apprised of what I am doing all the time so when the door opens they will remember me. i used to watch the credits and gather names when I was trying to break into Hollywood, and then send things and call just to introduce myself and in the long run it has always worked!
Nice I never thought about that but Im getting to that stage of desperation heh Thanks John!
http://www.vimeo.com/4431322
Thanks so much, John! 🙂 To even be considered is awesome! 🙂
Thanks, Don! I agree with deg! Pretty good stuff coming out of your corner as well!
my pleasure Mr. Matt
Wow! Today is a good day. 😀
I’m continually impressed with all the talent that exists out there among people who aren’t even a part of the industry per se but aspire to be, and the response to this project has been a great illustration of it. I thank you again, Mr. Eaves, for offering such a fantastic opportunity to all of us.
I am also one of those people who hasn’t dedicated enough time or effort to the presentation of my work, even though mass amounts of it are scattered all over various art and 3D modeling forums. Ironically, just within the last couple of weeks, I converted my own ancient, kludged-together and long-neglected website into a blog format and started trying to get my house in order, but I still have a lot of work to do. I’m thinking now might be a good time to get on with that!
you and me both,,, outside of my portfolio that is hard bound i am doing the same,, building a website and trying to get a portfolio set up for the same reason. I have this ridiculous pile of images that I email for interviews and it is so non professional,,, mostly because the images sent get printed and passed on so who know what anything looks like when it gets to your hopeful future boss up until a year ago that hard folio did the trick and I had back ups to mail but everyone I have encountered for an interview asks; what’s your web site address so I can see your work. You can here it in their voice after you say I don’t have one that you have just axed your chances!
Ouch. So how does a blog like this one serve as a portfolio piece? Is it too loosy-goosy to make a good ‘official’ presentation piece?
John,
If you ever need help building your website, I’d be happy to help! Here are a few that I’ve built:
http://www.majordickwinters.com
http://www.stuntrek.com
http://www.giaparker.com (in progress)
http://www.onthreephotography.com/test01.html (in progress)
http://www.startrekunity.com
Just wanted to stop by and cheer on my good friend, Matt Boardman. Way to go, my friend! 🙂
As for using a blog for a graphics portfolio, it is doable. All one needs to do is pick a photography WordPress theme. A good example for people who are using WordPress-hosted blogs like John’s blog here is called “Monotone” (you can see it in action here – http://monotonedemo.wordpress.com).
In addition to making your images the focal point, the page display changes colours to accentuate those seen in the picture. Below the image, you have the text space to to write a description about the piece in question. Also, you can create pages to help divide the work (eg work projects, hobby work, freelance, etc.) so your viewers can better navigate through the various parts of your portfolio. And here’s the best part – all of this can be done for free. No web hosting costs, etc. WordPress.com takes care of that for you.
Only thing you’ll need to look out for is making sure you keep the image sizes low since WordPress only gives 3Gb of webspace. Obvious workaround is just to use an image-hosting site and link-back to your blog.
Hope that helps you guys figure out how you can kick start your portfolios. I know I’ve been bugging Matt to get one going for him. Maybe now he’s got the kick in the pants to get that going. 😀
Again, congrats Matt. Proud of you and you deserve it. 🙂
Thanks for the tips on using Wordpres for portfolios. I’ll be sure to try it out.
John,
My name is Jia and i am a young concept artist based in L.A. I was originally slated to work on the shatner project, designing the other parts of the project but ultimately had to forgo it due to scheduling conflicts with existing projects.
I have been following your blog for a while and just wanted to thank you for sharing all of your wonderful work, and so regularly at that! I am a big fan of your work and am a little bummed i wasnt able to work on this project with you. However, if you have the time and interest, please feel free to check out my portfolio website at http://www.conceptsbyjia.com and i would love to get your opinion on my work! Thanks in advance, i can be reached at my e-mail which is jiat83@hotmail.com, if it would be possible to get some feedback or a crit. All the best!
Jia
http://www.conceptsbyjia.com
Looks awesome to me and I’ve worked with a lot of concept artists in the game industry, yours is right up there with the best of them I think?!
Perry
Animator-http://www.vimeo.com/4431322
Thanks perry for the kind words. Your demo reel is quite impressive too!
John Eaves:
I recall, my old partner and I were up for this really big gig doing fine-art giclée reproductions for big name artists, and I was the tech/talent and my partner Joe, he was the “mover/sales.” So this great opp. with this big artist talent agency came up and we were asked to come downtown (Chicago), as we got some word-of-mouth rec. from another artist we had done some work for.
So we go downtown, into this big fancy hi-rise, plush and slick beautiful offices, aka lots money. We had created/printed-out a giclée of one piece of the artist’s work, to now show to his agent. That’s all we had with us. That and smiles.
We walk in the door, and there is this reception/waiting area and a table where all the previous vendors have left their leave-behinds; fancy six and seven color, die-cut, varnished, tri-fold, folder-pockets, etc. you name it as to the fanciness of print and polished design, all manner of super-slick printed promo leave-behinds. We look at all this stuff and swallow hard. Ut oh. What do we have? Nothing. Biz cards, that’s it. And our one giclée sample. And smiles.
So, we are sent into this board-room, and there’s the artist’s agent waiting for us, this Asian gal, business-nice, but hard and sharp, no-nonsense, type of gal. My partner later calls her “The Buzz-saw.” I thought she was fine, just a pro not wanting to mess around.
So we unroll our sample print on the table and show it to her. She looks it over, while her and Joe are kinda biz-small-talking. Then she says, OK, that’s some pretty nice work. So do you guys have a brochure you can leave with me? We both look at each other and then back at her, Uh, no, actually. She responds, OK, do you have a website I can visit to learn more about your process and set-up? Same thing, Uh, no again actually. She says, OK, do you have anything you can leave with me? We were like, Oh sure, here’s our business cards. And here’s the cherry-on-top. We are going in as color-analyst experts (me anywho, as the talent), recreating top-end color for major artists. And for other companies I had been doing this for years already for major artists like Thomas Kinkade, and others. I knew what I was doing. I started the Kinkade repro line that went one to make him a bazillionaire. So we both throw down our cards, and they land on the table half-way one on top of one another. And here it is; our cards were fancy yet clean designed (my own) and (supposed to be) on bright-white heavy stock, corner rounded die-cut on bottom left and upper right. Nice cards, and they land on top of each other, BUT one is printed on bright-white stock, and the other on off-white stock! And there was no mistaking it with them on top of one another. Joe had had one of our guys print out a new batch of his cards, and the kid loaded the printer with off-white stock, and gave them to Joe. And Joe, being in a perpetual hurry, never bothered to QC them, or have me QC them, he just grabbed ’em and ran, as was his MO.
And there we were, color “experts” pitchin’ ourselves, and poorly pitchin’ even up to that point, and then, our two off-color cards, layin’ there on the table! We were DONE!
It was surreal, and a true comedy of errors! I laughed my ass off at the pure absurdity of it all as we drove back to the shop. Joe FREAKED out as was Joe’s way. I got him to laugh a bit about it, as we drove. A bit. Anywho, I learned well from that moment, and that was it. Never again would I maneuver myself by any means or lack thereof, into such a surreal, yet perfectly professionally ridiculous humma-na humma-na humma-na, experience again. That was bad enough, that feeling (you HAD to laugh though). But we lost a HUGE gig to boot.
Hope sharin’ my tale of professional lunacy helps others perhaps avoid the same bizarro, yet 100% humbling, experience. 😉
LLP,
deg
Yeah, my website is definitely old and crusty (and was never a real professional style anyway). My demo reel is reasonably up to date, but I definitely need to dig into the website.
A friend of mine has been nagging me for years to set up my own website, but I’ve always rebuffed him. “I just do this stuff for fun,” was my usual reply. Then I posted some of my stuff on YouTube and soon after some (very small) jobs started trickling in…and now it’s getting to the point that I may start doing the CGI stuff “for real” rather than “for fun.”
So I guess it’s time for me to heed my friend’s advice and build a website, especially after reading about deg’s comedy of errors above. Yeesh!
Congratulations to deg, Vektor, and Matt Boardman! You guys do incredible work and you deserve this opportunity. Your stuff inspires me to improve my own skills. John, please keep those future possibilities coming because one day I hope to be one of those chosen. Thanks so much for thinking of us for these projects. It means more than you can know.
Yes, definitely congratulations to deg, Vektor, and Matt Boardman. Good Luck!
Hi John,
when you have time, could you describe how you approach certain concept and how you realize it. Do you start drawing by hand and at what stage of the process do you move to digital sketching and painting? What software do you prefer yo use and so on.
Thanks,
Kamen
Another great way to be show work is to take advanntage of some of the free online portfolio sites out there and psot your work in addtion to a website. And of course there always a blog site like blogger or wordpress
Self promotion is a never ending thing. Good luck on this project to everyone involved.
Deg
I can relate to your story. When I was a fresh noob out of art school, I went on dozens of dog an pony shows. Getting the appointments to get seen wasn;t an issue…getting an actual job was alot more difficult.
I would get all kinds of reactions from art and creative directors, from “you;ve got a very good book, but we are fully staffed right now” to “this stuff isn’t what our firm is looking for” and everything in between.
And it was the same portfolio.
I didn’t take it personally but I won’t tell you I got a little down after several rejections.
I eventrually did get a job, then I started freelancing with graphic design, and have been doing that for 20 years, but I have learned that even with a killer book, and no matter where you are in your careeer, you have to keep getting word out about your work.