Conceptart.org

I just noticed that I spend some much time on ConceptArt.org that I tend to assume everyone knows about it. Well, a lot of people know about it (according to Alexa ranking, it got 51,558 pageviews yesterday) but it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t keep spreading the word!

The locals call it CA and while the name might be misleading, it is home to armies of pros, amateurs and students of concept art, fine art, illustration, animation, 3D, sculpture and comics. The focus is on illustration, concepts and painting. Artsy fartsy conceptual paint splats are not very popular on CA.

Dedicated artists answer questions, post tutorials and organise weekly activities and highly competitive art fights! We even have a budding line of instructional dvds.

Come for a visit! We don’t bite… too much.

Great site about freelancing

Just a really quick one, I found this link on Conceptart.org… pretty interesting little blog/resource site about general freelance work:
freelanceswitch.com

Art and Audio assets portal?

Here is the premise: Lots of indie, casual or hobby developers are struggling to acquire decent artwork. Free artwork isn’t always up to par, artists willing to work on project for free are scarce and art resources can be expensive if no clear revenue stream is fore-casted for the project. I have been interested in selling pre-made art for a while but when ArtPakz came along I thought the market was saturated. Not so! I have seen a lot of interest in ArtPakz products but not much updates on this side, besides, there are a lot of developers who have not been reached yet and many artists with different styles and skills who can contribute.

Here is the plan: A portal where artists can publish packaged pre-made graphical 2D game assets, like a map pack, a sprite pack, tile packs, or themed pack like, all the art needed to make a XYZ game. Later I would add the possibility of audio assets. I’d rather not have to handle the business/publishing side of the thing and concentrate on making the art, but if no one else is doing it, I guess I’ll have to dive in and handle everything. It should also have an affiliate program and the rights to be transferred would be (just thinking out loud): All rights for use inside a video game, which could be released commercially, and for direct  promotion of the game (ads, banners, website) but not for website or ads not related to the game, or for merchandising or other uses. When the license to the art is bought, the name of the game is specified and you buy the rights to use the art in that one finished product, you can use it as placeholders in as many prototypes as you want.

I need to work on a business plan/ market study to see if this is feasible or desirable. Which is why I’m testing the water by posting the idea in public and trying to get feedback.

The key is that it’s 2D, there already are portals like that for models and 3D assets. GarageGames and TurboSquid don’t seem so interested in 2D. I might be mistaken but as far as I know, not one focuses on 2D assets and maybe on casual/indie friendly sound assets (not sure about the audio part.)

So I want to hear it from devs and artists, are you interested in a product like that?

Storked!

I’m working for Michael Gnade on a game called Storked! It’s about penguins rolling an egg because something happened to the stork. He posted some screenshots on the GreatGameExperiment as well as on his blog. I’m really happy with the graphics and the whole look on the thing so far and I can’t wait to see it finished.

Another Portfolio rant

One of the question that comes very often on forums is what to put in a portfolio, how to build a portfolio, how to present it. I already posted some web building tips and a link on what NOT to do when building a portfolio web site, now I’m going to talk about the content.

First, you have to know your market. Who’s going to be looking at your portfolio? If you are aiming at a staff artist job, chances are the art director or lead artist will be looking at your portfolio. If you are aiming to do freelance logos and menus for restaurants, chances are restaurant owners are going to look at your portfolio. Why does that make a difference? Well, I would expect art directors to have a sharper eye for details, you would be better off putting much less art in your portfolio and putting just the cream of the crop. Customers off the street however want to see that you have a lot of range and experience but won’t be as picky on the details on each one.

I had my portfolio critiqued by the nice folks over at Gamedev.net who basically are my target audience. I received lots of useful advice but what I didn’t expect, is to be told that I needed MUCH more content. So I’m working on it continually. Every time one of my projects go public, I add it to my site. Now, I’m looking for freelance work from independent game developers, I wouldn’t do that if I was looking for employment or work from art directors.

If I was looking for work from art directors, I might add studies or life drawings to my portfolio. Now I’m not going to do that unless they have a high level of polish. All because one interviewee at my old job was once told by the HR person who was in charge of hiring artists (you’d think she would know something about art) that her life drawings were “not finished.” The person doing the portfolio reviews actually didn’t know what a life drawing was and was all disgruntled to see “unfinished” work. I’ll give most game developers more credit than that, but I’m not taking any chance that life drawings pass for unfinished sub par work.

Great art, bad portfolios, 2 exemples.

I went to the Montreal FIMA this weekend. I saw all kinds of artists and artisans’ work. I saw bad stuff but I also saw really impressive art. I grabbed the business cards of two of the artists who impressed me the most. I came home and right away went to check their websites. Oh… what a dissapointment.I’ll post the links here, not to mock the artists, because their are truly master painters in IMHO, but because they are prime exemples of what not to do if you want your portfolio to look pro.

Jean Chainey (link in french), I’ve been going to the FIMA for some years now and I’ve seen his work every time but I had never made the link between his older and newer work until I saw them side by side on his site, so the site makes a good job of showing work over a period of years. I also has a dedicated serious sounding domain which is good. But I have two issues with the site.

1. All is newest work that was breathtaking and showcased at the FIMA is NOT on the site yet. The painting on his business card is NOT on the site. I wanted to post a link to his site to push my friends to go see his stuff at FIMA, but then, what I wanted to show them is not on the site. I know he was probably busy finishing as many pieces as possible for the show, but when you give out business cards at an event, people are going to check your site soon after, not 3 months after.
2. The guy can paint like a mofo, but his paintings look strangely kitsch against the website that looks like 1998 design. Garish colored borders around the images, aliased picture of the artist with a photoshop filter logo full of compression artifacts. The news page and the artistic statement page look like ragtag afterthoughts.

The second is Terry Hsu, a painter from North York. His animals look so real, they probably look more real than photos. However, the first problem I have with his site is that it’s not really his site. When I saw the domain name http://www.tiantrade.com/ I thought maybe it was the name of a galery representing him or something. But no, it’s a swimsuit company. Then you can click on a link to the art side of the site and be presented with trinket jade sculpture or masterful oil painting. There is a neat little bio but the design of the site his horrendous. It doesn’t make you think this artist is really serious about his work.That said, if you can ever see their work in person, you’ll be impressed. I’m certain.

Edit:Terry Hsu updated his page since this post was written, it’s now a bit better than it was and does a better job at explaining it’s purpose.