How to prepare your portfolio when applying to Wooga
An inherent part of applying for an art position at Wooga is presenting a portfolio that showcases your best work. A portfolio can make, or break the application — it is the first thing that hiring teams will consider and look at.
We have asked our artists, what are they looking for in a portfolio, and what would they advise to candidates applying to Wooga. We compiled it in the list of tips and tricks, which can help you land your job in our studio!
A portfolio is a selection of your work that represents you best as an artist. Your portfolio should stand out, demonstrate your artistic skills, creativity, flexibility, and craftsmanship. So how should you go about putting it together?
Check out what we do
Crucially, when looking at content, remember that you are applying to be part of a team that must all work in a particular style and solve visual problems together. Therefore, before you start working on your portfolio, have a look at what we do. Play our games, look at the characters, background, colors, shape, style, etc. and see if you have similar pieces in your portfolio. If so, make sure to show it! If not, keep reading!
Read through the job requirements
Have a look at what it takes to succeed in the advertised position and show the artwork that would best showcase that you are the best candidate. Try to show the style of the game or the craftsmanship of the tools that we use! And if you use different software, fear not. On default, we use Blender or Modo, but if you are i.e. Maya or 3Ds Max user, we will be happy to provide you the training once you join.
Start with the best
Make sure to choose the best pieces as the first ones that the hiring team would look at, to impress us.
You are an artist at the beginning of a career and do not have many pieces to show? Fear not! Show us your best piece, we often have open positions of various seniority.
Quality over Quantity
Your portfolio should include your strongest, most effective pieces. You do not need to show us plenty of them! Choose the few that you are most proud of and that is the best fit in your opinion. If we will need some more, we will ask!
If the artwork does not represent your actual level of skills — i.e. the piece was made 5 years ago, take it out. :) Better to focus on a few pieces, than many mediocre ones. A good sense of values, shapes, and composition is always the baseline!
What, if you don’t have many final pieces?
We like seeing both, in-progress and final renders. Showing part of the process is appreciated, as it reflects your general workflow and approach. At Wooga, there is a lot of communication and feedback between artists via sketches, so definitely show us. Did you try several sketches for the given piece? Add it too!
Show us your style and sense of story-telling
A good portfolio does not have to be made out of only commercial pieces. We would love to learn more about you as an artist and see your personal artwork showcasing your personality, style, and decision making, while not being limited by external factors. And show us the variety of your work and a good sense of storytelling in your work, as both are important.
But what about the format?
Just make sure your portfolio is online and can represent your work in the best way — lighting, color balance, and format should be working in your favor. These days it’s easier than ever to get your online portfolio up and running for the world to see. There are various mediums and platforms that you can create your portfolio in, including artstation, behance, or as simple as google drive or attaching a pdf file to your application.
We are very ecstatic to be looking at your style, variety, and craftsmanship soon!
Take a look at our open art positions here.
And learn more about a Day in the Life of a Wooga Artist in this video