This weeks #TopTip comes from Assistant Art Director Andrew Hamilton - for modellers and texture artists:

Best thing to start with is one showreel/portfolio for each role, and each should be very specific. For example, if you are submitting a modelling reel, there’s no point in including animation or compositing, simply because when we look at reels for Modellers and Texture artists, that’s all we want.

There are a few basic rules that apply to all types of portfolios and showreels but especially for these two areas of work (they are more guidelines than actual rules!)

Keep it short and sweet
Portfolios and reels the world over should be as short as possible and display only your utterly best possible work. If that means that you have 2 models to show, or 2 painted textures that’s fine, as long as they are really good! We review dozens of portfolios and showreels at a time, so naturally if you want to make yours stand out you have to grab our attention quick, and if the portfolio or showreel is too long, generally it'll be tempting to skip through it - this never happens with strong and short ones. 5-10 examples of really good work in Modelling or Texturing is usually sufficient for us to see the strengths of a person.

Be honest with yourself
One of the hardest things to do as an artist is to be critical of your own work, but also to recognise when something you do is really good. This is very important when it comes to selecting work that you want to show to an employer. Sometimes we see portfolios and there are dozens of examples of work, but a lot of it seems like filler, low quality, quick things - these are usually best kept out of a portfolio, so you need to be honest with yourself and ask yourself: ‘Is this really the best work I can show? Can I do better? And I proud of this piece?’. But equally, try and recognise when you have done something great, and don’t be afraid to show it.

Label your work!
This is something that I rarely see and it can be quite frustrating especially when I see what looks to be a promising portfolio or showreel.  Sometimes people submit work that was part of a group project or movie, but they just send video clips or images, they never specify what they actually did. So for example, if I see someone who worked on an animated feature, and they just include a clip of the movie, or a still of the movie, it’s really helpful to us if there is a small bit of text saying what you did - ‘character textures’, ‘prop modelling’ ‘set lighting’. These are hugely useful when reviewing these types of submissions.

Ease of access
If you have a blog or a website that you are submitting, please make sure that it still exists (I’ve actually had links that went nowhere) and that it's easy to use/ laid out neatly. If you are linking to a blog, please ensure it is a portfolio only blog, where each entry is a good example of work, not your personal blog, where we have to go looking for the examples of your work. Flickr photostreams are great for this because it’s just a gallery of images, it makes it super easy to view.

Finally - soundtracks (applicable only to showreels)
A lot of the time I will mute a showreel simply because the music can become quite distracting, some examples are modelling reels that have industrial death metal playing on them (I have no problem with this music, each to his own!) but it’s not ideal for someone trying to review your work. And if you have music playing on your blog or website….please don’t.