7 Tips for a better Portfolio

⭐ Eye-catching Thumbnails
Something most artists totally ignore when it comes to showing off their work is the fact that the first thing people see is a thumbnail. For 3D Artists, it’s way more important because they normally have to show more than just one image to show a full project. (2D artists often just post one image and that’s enough) So what do we need? A thumbnail, an eye-catcher, as a link to get to the full project. You know the quote 'Don’t judge a book by its cover' but in the competitive art world, it’s highly important to get attention. If a movie poster looks boring, do you watch the movie? If a book cover has only one color, no font, no image, and no text, would you buy it? When you look at a portfolio, and you only see too dark images, chaotic messy overviews, or more backgrounds than the actual model, would you click on it? - Not really.
Important here is, to get the attention of the viewer in a second. You want the viewer to stay on your page longer and get excited to click on every picture to see the full project. Make the viewer curious within a short timeframe (because you only have a few seconds before they leave). Try to create interesting thumbnails, nice color combinations, and maybe your own style to bring a bit of personality and consistency to it. Tweak images for the thumbnail or render out a completely different angle just for this shot. You also don’t need to always show the full body of a model. Sometimes specific areas are way enough, so maybe use that as your benefit.

⭐ Only your best work
Well, for people who just starting out, it’s hard to say what is good or bad, especially when you look at a project for many hours, days, and weeks straight. Sometimes another eye can help to see your best projects and can help you to choose the ones that represent your current skills the best. As a beginner with less personal art, it’s normal to think, that it’s better to have an 'okay' piece on it than nothing at all. But I would still recommend having a look if you really did your best in a project or if it’s just random practice. If you put all your skills and heart into a project, load it up. If your next project looks even better, and you didn’t make the same mistakes as before, put the old project down and upload the new one. Do this until you feel happy with your pieces. 3 strong pieces are better than 10 'okay' pieces.
Also, don’t worry too much about the number of pieces you have uploaded. The longer you are doing this and the better your skills are, the less you need to put down old work and your portfolio and art gallery will grow organically.

⭐ Only upload work you like to get hired for
The thing is, you get 99% hired for the things you have in your portfolio. That's why it’s even more important to upload only pieces, that make you excited to work in the industry. Do you think prop art gets you a job faster than character, but you don’t really enjoy it? Then don’t upload it. I know it’s hard to find jobs sometimes, and often enough we have to do things we don’t like first, to get to a point where we can finally choose better options. But keep in mind, that people only see what you have on your portfolio, not what you want to do. So the best is, to only upload the things you like. If you like all kinds of art, then upload all kinds of art. If you only want to work on weapons? Upload only weapon designs. If you like Blizzard-style art? Then do your own art in a blizzard style and upload that.

⭐ Email clearly visible on every page
Time is money and in the industry, or business in general, nobody has really time for anything. So try to make it easy to contact you. Having your E-mail on the top of your site, no matter where you click makes it so much easier for potential clients to write a message to you. If you need to search for someone's email by clicking on 3 or 4 links first, then it’s most likely that the person will move on without giving you a chance. So remember, make it easy for others to contact you.

⭐ Name, Job title, and Description
Another thing I often see is, that when you go on a website, people don’t have their job title in the description or no description at all about them. If a client doesn’t know which position you are working in (character art, concept art, illustrator, vfx artist, etc), what you can actually do, or who you are, why should they contact you in the first place? Here is the same rule as before. Make it easy for others to know exactly what you do and what you can do. Type in your job and write a short info text about it, what your skills are, your experience, and what you are interested in. Everything that can be useful to know about you and to work together on future projects.

⭐ Breakdowns and Wip's
Most of the time studios or clients don’t even ask what your workflow is, or in which program you are working because they just don’t care. As long as you do a great job, and you deliver what they need, all is fine. But to see what you can, they need to see it in your current projects. That means, for a character artist working in games, you have to know anatomy, retopology, texturing, uv, and so on. Show your breakdowns of those steps and make clear, that you know what you are doing and that you can deliver what studios need.

⭐ Simple is oftentimes better than fancy and crazy
How you present your work is important as well. Most of the time, people get too creative when it comes to backgrounds, fancy fonts, and color combinations (often happens with resumes as well). Remember, people don’t want to see how good your graphic design skills are or how crazy you can go with the text. They want to see the model, the piece itself. So try to be more simple when it comes to backgrounds or colors and put the focus on the most important part - the model itself.
Yes, put your own style in your presentation but keep it simple, so you don’t scare away potential opportunities.