Ready to build an awesome concept art portfolio?

Great! This mentorship is about getting the most out of your images and how to show hiring art managers that you can think like a designer, and not just an illustrator.

It's a very pretty thing to have a portfolio full of beautifully rendered drawings, but when it comes to concept art this doesn't help the people looking to hire you see how you think.

This mentorship will cover the specific types of images and breakdowns that hiring managers will want to see to show that you can be part of their production workflow.

This will be a games-focussed talk, although there will be many principles that have crossovers to other contexts (film, illustration etc) as well. It also leans more towards character/props creation, although there will be principles here that will apply to environment artists as well.

We'll be covering questions to ask yourself before embarking on a new project/portfolio piece. You must have an answer to these questions to be able to design effectively.

1. What is the format that the design will be presented to the viewer in? Game/Film/TV/Illustration?
2. What is the intended usage of this character? End-level Boss? Audience-relatable protagonist? Rare trading card?
3. Who is your audience? What are their expectations re: cultural/entertainment tropes?

The process will be broadly broken down into the following:

• Research:
  • Notetaking - broken down into easily referenced digestible bullet points
  • Resource gathering - reference image collection
• Design:
  • Thumbnail sketch process
  • Sketch development
• Design expansion:
  • Development towards portfolio piece
  • Anatomical breakdowns
  • Clothing breakdowns/material call outs
  • Level of rendering
• Presentation
  • Final touches for flair/professionalism
  • Which elements of the development process to include in your portfolio and which to leave out

There will be a Q&A as well as a portfolio review session at the end.