Pyxel-Perfect Portfolios #3: ANIMATION
Working across gaming recruitment is a truly exciting experience across the board, the people you meet and the processes you find yourselves involved are always going to keep you on your toes. At Skillsearch we genuinely pride ourselves in our ability to assist artists and developers along the recruitment trail, both through helping them across the interview process and advising them on their portfolio approach.
There are many stages to making games entertaining to play, from rich environment creation to colourful characters, but the thing that connects all these elements is of course animation. At the heart of every great IP lies a hotbed of detailed animation ideas, with movement being the thing that truly brings a game to life. Without great animators doing what they do best, how can a good story move forward? To continue our Pyxel-Perfect Portfolios series, we are this month looking at what makes a great animation portfolio.
Working in recruitment in games is such a fascinating space to explore, with most of my day to day being spent looking through a combination of portfolios and showreels. Now, when I am hunting animators in games, the range of skillsets is often quite remarkable, but having spent a tonne of time in qualification calls with AAA studios about animation positions, there are three main factors that will continue to stand out. Therefore, based on our experiences these three simple steps can drastically help increase your chances when hunting for a new position.
Always have a showreel ready, even if it includes screen-recorded clips
On a very simple level, 99.9% of the time, if you do not have any reel to show, a studio will reject you almost instantly. Therefore, I cannot stress enough how important having a useable showreel is. A showreel, in theory, should be the best showcasing of your animation ability, but having as much up to date material is the first thing studios will look for. In our experience, actively mixing gameplay screen grabs with in-engine recordings is the best way to showcase your range and having this immediately available will get your name to the top of the pile.
If you are a gameplay animator, show some gameplay
It sounds like quite a simple one, but in our professional experience, the common situation for showreels is to focus almost solely on cinematics, even if the animators in question actively work only on gameplay. Although cinematic animations can look a lot grander, focussing on gameplay clips if you are a gameplay animator will automatically open a lot more first stage doors. This is of course valid in the opposite direction as well, if you are going for a cinematic animator position, do not fill your reels with gameplay clips.
Keep your portfolio updated as you go, but keep your previous clips
Making sure you have an up-to-date reel, as you can probably tell from above, is easily the best way to get your name to the top of the pile. In our experience, the best way to do this is to have your clips saved into an individual folder on your desktop, then as you gain new material, return to your reel project and sub the new clips in for the older material. This also means, that if a studio asks for a specific type of animation clip, you may also have it available.
These three simple tweaks to your portfolio, in our experience, can make a huge difference in your appeal to your potential future employers and at Skillsearch, we are always happy to help advise you further.
Are there any specific art-based roles that you would like portfolio advice on? Feel free to get in touch through my LinkedIn or by sending me an email on JRM@skillsearch.com
Keep an eye out for the next instalment in our Pyxel-Perfect Portfolios series coming very soon...
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