Personal Branding Part 2

Exposing your work and yourself to social media and the internet is something that can greatly assist you in creating contacts or even just being noticed. 

One of my final year projects in university was to get together in a team of artist and programmers and develop a game in 12 weeks. We were under a lot of pressure, because we had very strict deadlines, which resembled working on a game title in the industry. We had to develop our own idea for a game from scratch, with all the mechanics, story line, gameplay etc. At the beginning of the project were given only two requirements, we had to use the VR Oculus Rift with a back seat player type gameplay and the game needed to be based on the theme Escape.

Taking all this in to consideration with my team we started early on to thing about the marketing side of things as well and how can we get noticed by others, so we started posting our work online on forums, make our twitter page and youtube channel that were regularly updated. Using youtube didn't prove to be that useful, because in my opinion there is not much exposure and people will not find your channel unless you build a huge amount of followers and become more popular. If I upload videos I might use youtube just because everybody has access to it and its free to access and for you to create your own channel.

After we finished the development of your game we create our own web page for of the game, with link to twitter and youtube, but we also added our own personal details separately, so all of us could be contacted by people.

We even made our game downloadable, so people can test and have a feeling for the game, not just watch videos and image of it.

We also took part in the Autodesk contest Game of the Year on which we got to the final round but unfortunately we didn't win the contest. However, the game was mentioned in a live Twitch by Epic Games, who were showing what students and people have achieved with their game engine. This was amazing for all of us, because that live Twitch was view by hundreds or maybe thousands of people that had the chance to see our game. A few months later our game was in Epic Games community spotlight, which was displayed in the Epic Games Unreal Engine 4 Community.

What I learned form this experience the more your expose and market yourself the higher the chance for you to be noticed, I will try and take the same steps as to creating a Twitter page on which I can post my work and work in progress, probably will do the same in Facebook, because that way I can create small community of follower and expose my work to a lot more people. I might take part in contests in the future just so I can see on what level I am in comparison to other artists. 

Personal Branding

Personal branding is something that companies and self-employed individuals have to be aware of, because that is how others will see them. This is something that I have given a lot of though, because I will graduating university soon and will be on the job market looking of a job in the games industry as a character artist. I don't have the financial capability as a company that has an entire marketing department that is branding the company and selling the company as to what they have to offer and I don't have the connections in industry like people that have worked there even for 1 year, but everybody had to start from the beginning.
Through my research and what I have seen as examples of how other artist have used social media, like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin to create there own brand and make their mark in the job market. Some artists like Torfrick and Maciej Kuciara, have created a Facebook page or profile on which they post images, tutorials etc of their finished work and work in progress. They also share information on projects they have worked on and might mention other artists that they have worked before. This is a very useful way of creating connections and getting yourself noticed in my opinion and is something that I would like to try.
What I think is the best thing to do, is to create a Facebook page on which I will post weekly or monthly updates of my work in progress and images, research and videos of my previous work. This is useful, because people that will like my facebook page will begin to follow me and receive updates from me, which they can share and their friends can see that and also like my page, that way I can build a small community of followers, who can be casual people, other artists, requiters and industry professionals. Another way of using Facebook is by joining an art group on which you can post your work and get feedback and reviews form artists in different fields. I think that this way you will have to opportunity to create even more connections, because the more you put yourself out there the better chance you have that people will notice you and you will be contacted by a requiter or art director etc.
In the same way I will approach to use Twitter, to create a professional account on which I will post my work and this way when I follow other artists the people that follow them will be able to see my work and maybe follow me in return. Whenever, I tweet my work on my twitter account, people can retweet that and more and more people can see it and have access to it and my profile, so this way I can also create a small community of people. But the best part is that I can join these two communities on Facebook and Twitter and this gives me an amazing opportunity and chance to be noticed.
Another way that I have approached is by creating a Linkedin profile, but in my opinion this could be used on the more professional side of your brand, a bit of history about you that requiters will like to see. One way that I have found Linkedin to be useful even during my studies is that most of my lectures are ex or currant industry employees and they have connections with people in industry. Therefor, by connecting with them on Linkedin, I can have access and communicate with other people in industry from art directors to character leads to get feedback on my work or advice on a university project.
I made some researched and found that another good way to get noticed is by taking part in online 3D contests, like polycount, autodesk etc. I read an article which was an interview of a character artist in Unreal that got noticed by them after competing in such a contest and he was saying that this could be used to present yourself to other artists and people in this community whether or not you win you will still be noticed.
How I have decided to approach my personal brand is by creating my portfolio in Artstation, which allow me to follow other artists and they can follow me in the directory of the website. On this portfolio I will have links to my Facebook page and Twitter account, on which people will have access to a lot more of my work and see what methods I have used and research I have done in my work in progress. And I will use Linkedin to create a more professional profile of myself to which employers and requiters can have access to my CV, job experience, projects that I have worked on etc and used it to create connections with industry professionals to communicate with them and receive feedback.

Portfolio Presentation and marketing methods

During the week we had a task to get in to a team and review 5 good and 5 bad portfolios of artists be they in industry or not. This task helped me to understand a few things like, which is better for presenting yourself, quality or quantity, what type of layouts are good and what bad, what interests people about your work and draws their attention. These are all things that I have to consider and take in mind when I am working on my portfolio.
One of the key things for making a portfolio is to establish an identity, which could be done in a manner of ways, like making a logo, colour pallet or create a demo reel and online presence that will let your work speak for its self. One such example on the web is an artist named Torfrick who has made a simple portfolio with lots of big images of his work that are easy to access as shown in the image below.

http://www.torfrick.com/

His website has a simple layout that showcases his work and in the menu tabs above he has links to tutorials that he has done and also an art blog, which is really good to have in a portfolio, because you can include break down images of your work in progress and show how you have gone about doing something and how you have approached a problem that you had, which are all good things that an employer can see and will be interested in the way you work, not only the quality of the work and the final render.
However, one of the downfalls of Torfrick's portfolio website is the navigation between the different links and the reason that you have to go back and forth to what you were looking before that. But over all his work is the one thing that sells its self and maybe that's could be the reason why he is so popular.

For me as a character artist that wants to go in to the games industry a good way to show my characters in my portfolio is by giving examples of T-pose with wireframe that will showcase the topology of my characters ans also dynamic poses that can give examples of the personality of the character. A T-pose could be used to show a breakdown of your character and examples of topology in the different areas of interest in the character, like the head and how the topology is build around the mouth, eye and nose which are the key areas in the face that will move if animated. Creating a dynamic pose for your character could be useful to bring out more personality of your character. The pose of the character depends on the personality and look of the character that will determine if its going to be an action pose or a more natural pose.
I good example is some of the work that Adam Skutt, the character lead at Ready at Dawn that worked on the characters for The Order 1886, showed in the ZbrushCentral web page which you can see in the images below and on this link: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?193491-The-Order-1886-Team-Post

These images give a good example of posing your character in a more natural pose that is part of his/her character and personality.

And some of these images give examples of posing your character in a more action pose. Source is Alejandro Peraira, limk: http://alejandropereirastudio.com/?page_id=64#all

What Peraira has done is to pose his characters in to a more dynamic poses to showcase the personality of the character and his mood, as well as that some of these character sculpts are created to be used for 3D figurine, so the approach and final goal is different to creating a game ready character.