Starting a Mobile Game Portfolio, but don't know where to begin...

LadyDustBunny

I've done a bit of 3D work using Maya and recently, I've been wanting to be able to enter the mobile games/apps area with artwork. Does anyone here know of a good tutorial or two on the art development process involved in mobile games?

I want to be able to develop a good mobile artwork portfolio, so I'm wondering what the general specs in creating artwork for an iPhone (figured I'd focus on this one device first) are? Also, I presume that generally, Illustrator is used over Photoshop?

FANTOMAS

While I have no idea, I can recomend you to post this exast same question in the "Artists Corner" side of the forume, in a thread called something like Questions & Tutorials, or a similar name like that, also post it in the Chat thread. (just dont make a new thread without proper artwork in it).

Good luck !

CelestialBadger

I imagine that the process and application varies by company. Mobile games companies will probably want to know you can do good 3D work with low amounts of polys.

TychoCelchuuu

These things vary quite a bit - even different iPhones have massively different capabilities, of course. When you're working with such a low ceiling the answer to "how many polys per character" depends as much on what else is in the scene as it does on any one size fits all criterion. I'd just work on showing people that you can make things at under 1k polys reliably and still have them look good. I don't know why Illustrator would be used more than Photoshop. I'd guess more people use Photoshop but I don't really know.

NightDragon

Yeah, definitely head over to the Artist's Corner and ask that question in either the Chat or Questions thread. You might also want to hang around http://www.polycount.com/forum/ ...there are a lot of videogame professionals and skilled hobbyists on that site, and you could learn a lot by just lurking, even. And like Tycho said - what a company is looking for can vary widely. I haven't heard of Illustrator being required as often as I've heard Maya knowledge, 3Dsmax, or Flash (I assume if Illustrator is used at all, it's more for UI and not for the assets that make up the game itself).

Another tip is to look up mobile gaming jobs for artists. After checking out a dozen or two of them, you get a better idea of what they're looking for, overall (and the range of things they might be looking for, too).

bowen

As a key advice to any high demand job, having evidence of your work being used in a production release is aces.

Work on open source projects, provide artwork, etc.

This goes for a lot of fields. Programming is another one that benefits highly.