I did an “Ask Me Anything” reddit post about getting into games!
Hi everybody! For those not familiar with reddit, it’s [essentially] a website where people post links, create discussions and comment on them. There are tens of thousands of small communities there, one of which is called “AMA” — short for “Ask Me Anything.” Sometimes they’ll have celebrities, or politicians, or people in interesting lines of [...]
Why you should blog what you know.
Artists: Having a great portfolio and blogging about what you know is gold. However, I’ve heard of people selling art critiques and trying to charge for basic information. I’ve always made everything I write 100% free, and here’s why: If your blog is for people that have the time to do what you’re teaching\explaining, it’s [...]
User interface artist tip: Three tips for a better portfolio
Hello, UI artists! I’ve been going over a lot of UI artists’ portfolios — particularly contractors, hint hint — and I’ve noticed three things in particular that I love to see in a good UI artist portfolio. Wireframes. It helps me get a sense of your talent, planning and user experience sensibilities when I can [...]
Artist tip: First impressions matter. Buy a domain and email from there.
Something I see from a lot of artists (and even some studios) soliciting their services for artwork is people with MSN, Hotmail and Gmail addresses. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se. To be honest, my primary email address is still with Gmail, but only because I’ve been using it for seven and a half [...]
Presenting the CrunchCast!
Hi, everybody! I wanted to pimp out a game development video podcast my good buddy Chris Holden has put together. I’ve been a guest on it several times now and I’ve had a blast with him talking game dev, portfolios, breaking into the industry, and so on. The language can get pretty salty. I present [...]
The Art of Getting Noticed – video speech and text
Hi everybody! I spoke at the IGDA Microtalks a couple months ago on the subject of job-getting, being noticed and generally how to market yourself better as an artist. I had a great time and there was a fantastic lineup of speakers, all linked from the video below and all of which are worth watching. [...]
The Art of Getting Noticed
Hello, all! Here’s article for artists seeking employment, contract or full-time. It focuses on using basic marketing techniques to stand out in the crowd, give hiring managers something to notice and remember, and filling out your portfolio most enticingly. This article is based loosely on my Marketing for Artists article from years back, but I’ve [...]
How NOT to hire an artist
[edit] WOW! Absolutely unbelievable level of response to this. Thanks SO much everybody. BTW, I’m @jonjones on Twitter. :) [/edit] I was browsing Reddit earlier today, as is my morning routine, and I came across an article called How to hire an artist. This article has been widely panned and criticized by artists and people [...]
Google Browser Size – Great tool for portfolio design testing
This is extremely cool! Check out Google Browser Size. Essentially, this web tool will draw an overlay map of your website marking the different resolution boundaries and showing you how likely people at different resolutions are to be able to see different parts of your website. Some people with low resolutions won’t scroll down to [...]