How can i become better ?

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I have been trying to improve myself to become a technical artist for some time now. I have applied for several jobs and internships, but I have not received any positive responses. I am trying to do something to advance myself further, but I am stuck on what to do. I am leaving my portfolio below. I would be very happy if you could give me some feedback. Best regards, everyone.

My Portfolio:
berketolunguc.myportfolio.com

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One thing is for sure: never stop working on personal projects. Try out different types of projects in various fields like rigging, even if you don’t enjoy it, or shaders, and so on. These might not align with your main skills, but they can be incredibly helpful once you land a job.

For example, I’m currently doing some rigging work, even though it’s not my specialty. Thankfully, I had done a personal project involving rigging many years ago, so I’m able to handle it now.

Takeaway: keep applying for jobs, but also focus on upskilling. In fact, prioritize your personal projects and post them regularly on ArtStation. This will help a lot.

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It’s a really tough time out there for everyone, at every level of seniority, even for tech artists. The job market seems to be flooded on a daily basis with an ever-growing number of talented developers.

That said, I’m a fan of the way you’re structuring your portfolio, and I’d offer a few suggestions on how to improve the layout and readability:

  • Include a problem statement in the descriptions of your tools. What problems are you trying to solve with the tool, and how does the tool solve those problems? Eg. “Users are often frustrated by X, so I built a tool that solves that problem by Y”
  • I think you can save yourself some screen real estate and cut the BP and Python code snippets. I’m not sure how much they add the everything and code samples for TAs can often invite unnecessary criticism. Good to have if someone asks for it, but otherwise I think you can leave it out.
  • You can lay out all the stuff you want to showcase on a single page so it’s easier for someone to navigate. You also probably only need one or two of your best pieces to showcase that you have any given skill. I don’t need four python tools to know that you can write EUWs with Python, I only need a couple.
  • To that, make sure what you’ve got on your page is your very best work. Hiring Managers and Recruiters are looking for the first reason to say “no” so they can close the tab and move on to the next portfolio. Don’t give them any opportunity to say no.
  • I know the games are prototypes, but you can improve the polish just a little bit if you run DisableAllScreenMessages command in your UE prototypes to get rid of all the printstring spam.
  • Relatedly, if you’re every demoing anything in the editor, you can disable tooltips with Slate.EnableTooltips 0.
  • I’d also recommend cutting out the bits where you hit “PIE”. Heck, you could even blot out the editor window entirely. A little video editing goes a long way here.

As for how to advance yourself further: this is a perennial challenge for tech artists because we’re fundamentally problem-solvers. In the absence of other peoples’ problems to solve, we have to make problems for ourselves to solve. I see you’re already building game prototypes, and I think that’s a great first step! Build a game, so that you have to make the tools you need to build the game. You don’t even have to show the game, necessarily, you can just talk about it as context for the tools you make.

To add to that, you can make problems harder for yourself by increasing the scope (Make 100 levels, instead of 1), and/or decrease the time limits (In an hour/day/month). You’ll quickly find that you can’t do things purely brute-force so you have to automate.

I’ll also second the suggestion of branching out into different disciplines as another way to make things harder for yourself, and you can do that as part of the games you’re making, too! Maybe the game you want to make is going to require a lot of animation, so you’re going to learn rigging and animation. Maybe you want a game with lots of sound effects, so you start learning Metasounds.

Hope that helps!