How do I create a video games portfolio?

The portfolio, or rather portfolios, have become essential tools for anyone wanting to get into a video games school, apply for a work placement or even start a career.

More than just a collection of work, a portfolio is a personalised showcase for your skills, your creativity and your ability to manage a project.

We’ll see that there’s no point in looking for a particular framework, or Template, because a portfolio needs to be adapted, personalised and multifaceted. There are as many portfolios as there are artists, projects and target readers.

What is a video games portfolio?

A portfolio is a file, usually digital, that presents your achievements in the field of video games in a visual, structured and, above all, commented way. It can include :

• Game projects (complete or prototypes).
• Graphic assets (3D models, animations, textures, etc.)
• Code extracts (scripts, gameplay mechanics, tools)
• Design documents (game design, level design, scenarios)
• Video footage or screenshots
• Sketches, storyboards or personal research

The format is not set in stone and can vary: website, interactive PDF, page on a specialised platform, etc. The key is to provide content that is structured, readable and easy to consult.

Why create a portfolio when working in video games?

A portfolio must meet several key needs, particularly when deciding on a post-baccalaureate path, looking for an internship, entering a competition, or applying for your first job.

Demonstrate your skills in concrete terms

Unlike a resume, which simply lists skills, a portfolio allows you to demonstrate them through concrete achievements.

It highlights not only the final result, but also your work method and progress.

Stand out in a competitive industry

Schools and studios receive hundreds of applications every year. A good portfolio helps you stand out by highlighting your uniqueness and ability to master tools and methods.

Showcase your passion and potential

Recruiters and teachers are not only looking for technical skills: they expect motivation, creativity, and the ability to collaborate and learn. A portfolio allows you to express this more freely than a cover letter.

Create a professional presence

From the early years of your studies, having an online portfolio allows you to establish a presence in the professional world. It facilitates contacts, constructive feedback, and opportunities for collaboration. It gives you the confidence that when someone searches for your name online, they will easily find examples of your best projects.

How to create an attractive video game portfolio?

Given the number of artists in the industry, it is essential to work on both the content and form of your portfolio.

Choose the right projects to showcase

There is no need to include lots of examples. It is better to present three well-documented, completed or well-analyzed projects than ten incomplete ones.

Each project selected should serve a purpose, i.e., demonstrate your skills.

Vary the contexts

It’s useful to show projects created in different contexts, especially if you’re just starting out. This will demonstrate your ability to adapt, your motivation, and your involvement beyond simple school projects:

• Personal projects: these show your creativity, independence, and motivation.
• School projects: these illustrate your ability to respond to a set of specifications or a game design document.
• Game jams or competitions: these demonstrate your responsiveness, team spirit, and curiosity.
• Collaborative projects: these highlight your interpersonal and organizational skills.

Important: Tailor your portfolio to the target audience

Portfolios should always be designed to meet the expectations of those who will be viewing them. Depending on whether you are applying to a school, a studio, or a company, you will not highlight the same elements.

Show your progress

Presenting an older project followed by more recent work can also be an opportunity to highlight your progress. This is often appreciated by recruiters and competition judges.

Structure your portfolio

Each project must be presented in a summary sheet containing the following information:

• Title and brief description of the project
• Objectives
• Context (personal work, group work, game jam, etc.)
• Personal role in the project
• Skills used
• Tools used
• Screenshots or videos (with clickable links)
• Link to the demo if available
• Problems encountered and solutions provided

A well-structured portfolio allows the person viewing it to find essential information quickly and easily.

Highlight your skills

Your portfolio should not only show what you have done, but also what you can do. This means explaining the technical or creative skills you have used in your projects.

Technical and artistic skills

• Programming (languages, engines, AI, shaders)
• 2D/3D computer graphics (modeling, rigging, animation, textures)
• Game design (game mechanics, systems, feedback)
• Sound design (ambience, sound effects, integration)

Cross-disciplinary skills, soft skills

Teamwork skills should not be overlooked. They are a key factor in recruitment, so be sure to highlight:

• Project management
• Teamwork
• Problem solving
• Documentary and inspirational research

It is always a good idea to link these skills to the projects you present: context is just as important as the end result.

Work on your visual identity and ergonomics

Even if you are not a graphic designer, your portfolio should be clear, easy to read, and visually consistent.

Here are a few principles to follow:

• Use a simple graphic charter (two to three colors, one or two fonts maximum)
• Spaced-out layout
• Intuitive navigation (especially for an online portfolio)
• Versions adapted to mobile screens (responsive)
• Fast loading of images and videos

Your overall presentation reflects your attention to detail and is often interpreted as an indication of your professionalism.

Add a personal introduction

An “About” section helps to humanize your portfolio. It can include:

• A brief biography or introduction
• Your aspirations (desired training, career goal)
• Your interests related to video games or design
• Your favorite tools/software
• Your contact details and links to your professional profiles (LinkedIn, GitHub, ArtStation, etc.)

This section provides a framework for all your projects and creates continuity for the reader.

Customer reviews

If you have worked in a team, completed an internship, or collaborated with a teacher or supervisor, feel free to include one or two comments, with their permission.

A few well-chosen sentences add credibility.

Mistakes to avoid when creating your portfolio

Here are some of the most common mistakes made by recruiters and teachers when looking at portfolios:

Too many projects, or incomplete projects

Presenting a large number of projects may seem reassuring, but it often gives an impression of dispersion. The recruiter or teacher may find it difficult to identify what really defines you. Remember that you are not writing a portfolio for yourself, but for your reader!

In addition, unfinished projects, or projects that have not been mastered, can give the impression that you are struggling to complete a project.

Essential advice:

• Prefer 3 to 5 solid, well-presentedprojects to 10 “ mediocre” ones .
• Only include projects that you are capable of explaining, defending and even re-enacting if necessary.
• If you want to show an unfinished project, present it as such, with a box explaining what you learned from it, why you stopped and what you would do differently today.

Disorganised or visually confusing presentation

A portfolio, whatever its content, must be easy to read. Too much text, poorly framed images, unbalanced pages or confusing navigation detract from the reading experience and give a muddled image.

Our advice:

• Use an airy layout, with headings, sub-headings and short paragraphs.
• Ensure that image formats are uniform (same resolution, same presentation style).
• Avoid superfluous graphic effects, illegible fonts or aggressive colours.
• Check the consistency between pages and the ergonomics if you are using a website.

Obsolete or unrepresentative content

Very old projects, carried out in an outdated school context or with no connection to your current objectives, can be detrimental to your application. They may give the impression that your portfolio is not up to date or that you are stagnating.

To avoid this:

• Select projects that are recent, or that are still relevant and consistent with the position or school you are applying for.
• Delete or archive work that is too dated, unless it shows an interesting development.
• Highlight your progress, with before-and-after comparisons if useful.

Lack of updating or monitoring

A portfolio that is frozen in time suggests that you haven’t produced anything recently, or that you don’t take your professional development seriously. This is often a problem in a field as fast-moving as video games.

Our advice:

• Plan a regular content review (every 3 to 6 months). For example, you can put a recurring reminder in your calendar to avoid forgetting.
• Update projects with the latest versions, patches or improvements.
• Add a last update date to your portfolio.
• Delete inactive links or items that no longer work.

Take into account feedback from recruiters: if someone suggests that you delete an item or expand on another, don’t hesitate to do so. Especially as the same person will be able to see, the next time they apply, that you have listened to this feedback.

Lack of information about the tools, methods or software used

A portfolio that lacks technical detail makes it impossible to assess your mastery of the tools. This severely limits its value in the eyes of recruiters, especially for technical profiles (development, animation, 3D).

Our advice:

• For each project, mention the software used (Unity, Unreal Engine, Blender, Photoshop, etc.)
• Add any languages or code libraries used.
• Note: This will also help with referencing thanks to the keywords used.
• Briefly describe the pipeline or method used: creation → testing → integration, for example.

Lack of adaptation to the target

The same portfolio sent to every school or company will lack impact. An independent studio is not looking for the same thing as a major publisher; a game design school does not expect the same proof as a 3D animation school.

To personalise your portfolio, here’s our advice:

• Adapt the content to the target audience: choice of projects, vocabulary used, level of detail.
• Add a personalised introduction if the portfolio is sent with an application.
• Highlight the most relevant projects according to the type of structure: gameplay for a design studio, storytelling for a script-oriented school, rigging or texturing for an animation school.

Failure to explain your role in collective projects

In a group project (class project, game jam, association, etc.), it is essential to specify what you actually produced. Without this clarification, it is impossible to know whether you were responsible for development, graphics, storytelling or simple secondary tasks.

Essential points:

• Clearly state your responsibilities: “motion programming”, “set modelling”, “menu scripting”, etc.
• Detail the tools you used personally.
• Mention the members of the team, if any, and what they have done to situate your contribution.

Finally, here are some other common mistakes to avoid

• Portfolio too heavy or slow: use optimised formats and reliable hosting.
• Broken links or unreadable videos: test all links before sending.
• Errors of language or spelling mistakes: proofread carefully, have someone else proofread.
• Lack of contact details or clear identity: always include your contact details, even if you are sending via a third-party platform.
• Use of protected or non-original elements without mention: never appropriate a collective work or use elements without authorisation.
• Fan art or non-original creations

Each element of your portfolio must have a precise function.

Anything that is “ vague “, redundant, too personal or too approximate should be discarded. A professional portfolio is based on a balance between relevance, readability, context and personality.

Creating a good portfolio takes time, but above all it requires rigour, method and the ability to put yourself in the shoes of the person who will be consulting it.

To go further in the analysis and design of a portfolio, we recommend the resources of Timothée Mathon (The ArtNest) , Art Director and Concept Artist / Art Mentor; expert in artistic portfolios in the video game sector.

His advice is particularly well suited to students and recent graduates:

• His LinkedIn profile
• The ArtNest – Portfolio Guide

These resources go into more detail about mistakes and good practice, and even suggest practical exercises to improve the quality of your portfolios.

Tools for creating a video game portfolio

There are many resources available for setting up your portfolio, from community platforms to website creation tools.

Some useful platforms

• ArtStation: widely used by 2D/3D artists
• Adobe Portfolio: widely used by 2D/3D artists
• IAMAG : widely used by 2D/3D artists
• The Rookies : widely used by 2D/3D artists
• Behance: ideal for a wide range of creative profiles
• Itch.io: recommended for publishing playable games or prototypes
• GitHub: useful for developers wishing to share their code

Creators of accessible websites

• Adobe Portfolio: specialising in artistic portfolios
• WordPress: more technical, but highly customisable
• Canva: allows you to create PDF portfolios or a mini-site

Note: a portfolio hosted online is often preferred for its ease of consultation, particularly by school juries or employers.

How do you promote your online portfolio?

Creating portfolios is just one stage. The next step is to make them visible:

“ Know-how and letting people know

Contexts of dissemination

• School applications
• Internships, work placements, student competitions
• Applications to game-jams, fairs and festivals

Visibility channels

• Inclusion in email signatures
• Publication on professional networks (LinkedIn, Discord, specialist forums)
• Participation in creative communities (Discord servers, Reddit, events)
• Contacting specialised websites to offer to promote a recent personal project or to interview you.

Maintenance and updating

A portfolio needs to live. We recommend updating it every six months or so, removing obsolete projects and adding new ones.

Conclusion

Today, portfolios are essential tools for anyone wishing to enter the video game industry.

You don’t need to be an expert or have years of experience:

A good portfolio can be made up of personal projects, class work or creations from student competitions.

The important thing is to show, at all times, your approach, your skills, your progress and your ability to produce.

In this sense, portfolios are much more than selection tools: they are your means of expression and your ability to differentiate yourself from other artists.