A portfolio review is fast and frequently happens on a phone between other things. Everything about the page should be built for those twenty seconds.
This guide covers ordering, cutting, and the image sizes that decide whether anyone sees it.
The first three pieces
An art director opens the link, looks at the first image, and forms an opinion before the page has finished loading.
So the ordering is not chronological and not thematic. Strongest first, and strongest means most relevant to the work you want, not most recent or most personally significant.
If you want environment work, lead with environments. A portfolio that opens with characters gets read as a character artist regardless of what is further down.
The floor is what gets judged
This is the counterintuitive part and it is consistent across hiring.
A portfolio of thirty pieces where six are outstanding and eight are mediocre is judged on the mediocre ones, because those show what you produce on an ordinary day. The outstanding ones could have taken a month.
Cut anything you are not sure about. Fifteen strong pieces beat thirty mixed ones, every time, and the edit is itself a skill being assessed.
| Thirty mixed pieces | Fifteen strong pieces | |
|---|---|---|
| Judged on | The weakest | The work |
| Loads in | Several seconds | Under one |
| Reviewer reaches the end | No | Sometimes |
| Shows editorial judgement | No | Yes |
Image size is the difference between seen and unseen
Concept art files are enormous. A portfolio serving them at working resolution takes many seconds to become useful, and reviewers do not wait.
Serve a screen-sized version on the page, with the full-resolution version opening on tap. Load images below the fold only as the reviewer scrolls to them.
That combination usually takes a portfolio from several seconds to under one, and it is the single change that most affects whether the work is actually seen.
Keep the tap-to-enlarge version genuinely large. Reviewers do zoom into craft, and a portfolio that only ever shows small versions reads as hiding something.
One line of brief
An image alone is a nice picture. An image with a line of context is evidence.
What it was for. What the constraint was. Whether it was personal work or a commission.
Studios hire people who can solve problems within limits. A striking image with no context does not demonstrate that; the same image with one sentence does.
A little process
Three or four pieces with their thumbnails, iterations and a note on what changed and why.
That is what a studio is actually buying: how you get there, whether you can take direction, whether you explore before committing.
Keep it proportionate. A portfolio that is mostly process reads as a student exercise; a portfolio with none reads as unrepeatable.
Unreleased work
Studio work under agreement should not be published, and doing it anyway is the fastest way to become unhireable.
Keep it at a private address, share it deliberately when someone asks, and be explicit about what is restricted. Studios respect that and they notice the opposite.
Two neighbouring cases are worth a look: An HTML portfolio template that opens in seconds and How to build a copywriter portfolio.
Put it at an address
Strongest three first, cut the uncertain ones, serve screen-sized images with a large version on tap, add one line of brief per piece, and keep restricted work private.
Then the twenty seconds are spent on your work rather than on a loading indicator.