Richard Spiers

I’m not doing any portfolio reviews this year and ending my mentorships. Apologies to those I didn’t get to but here’s things I found myself going over multiple times: > Most of you were graduates. Your universities failed to prepare you for the industry. Most of you didn’t know basic industry workflows and the most common thing was to point you to YouTube/discords to help you learn things that should have been foundational. Your degree means nothing when applying for a job and if you don’t have a job within 6 months of graduating consider binning everything you have and starting over fresh. > 32/38 portfolios I reviewed were from artists that had no idea what they wanted to ‘be’. Nobody actually had a conversation with them as students about what sort of job they really wanted. This should be the first thing to consider when building your portfolio. You NEED to be passionate about the work you do as it shows in your art. > The reality is that there is soooo few entry level jobs right now and I had to tell most people they simply weren’t good enough yet. It’s competitive but not impossible. Nobody had been honest with them before. Being an artist does require some thick skin, you need to be realistic about your skill level and if it’s at all useful to a quality team. Don’t let it put you off. Keep improving, keep doing art. The only way you won’t succeed is if you give up. > 3/4 great pieces is better than 20 mediocre pieces in your portfolio. > generalists are useful in most teams but don’t see it as ‘master of none’ but being adept at a broad range. Being kinda mediocre at everything doesn’t mean you’d be a good generalist. > few studios will give a junior a visa. If they do it’s usually for specialists. > blender is fine. > if you post work on a public discord and don’t take feedback well, chances are the professionals in those servers will notice and write you off if they see you apply to their studio. > fanart is fine but stop slapping big franchise logos on your art to make it look official in the thumbnail. > Don’t model from AI generated concept art. If you use human made art you can contact the artist about their intent if somethings confusing. Most concept artists love supporting 3D artists. I’ll add to the thread if I think of others