Featured Pro Portfolio: Frederic Daoust

Frederic Daoust is a 3D Character artist who has worked on several characters for Mass Effect: Andromeda and is currently working at Eidos Montreal on the Deux Eus franchise. Using the website builder was a breeze! Not wanting to choose, his portfolio uses a combination of the Vertical theme and the Mosaic theme for his artwork.

Check out Frederic’s ArtStation-powered portfolio website. 

For more on his work, advice and tips, read our interview with him below.

What do you think is the most difficult part about entering the industry?

The most important thing to enter the industry in my opinion is to have a kick ass portfolio. I think that nowadays there’s a lot of competition to enter the industry and the entry level portfolio quality is getting very high. The most difficult part is to have the time and motivation to put a lot of hours studying all the things related to the position you are aiming for. For a Character artist, that would mean learning all the fundamentals sculpting skills like anatomy, likenesses, folds, learning all the most recent softwares and how to use them in the most efficient way (Zbrush, Max or Maya, Substance, Marvelous Designer etc…) Learning some Visual Art fundamentals like proportions, contrast, composition, lighting, values, and color is really important too. If you can do all those things and work really hard, you’ll be able to stand out from the hundreds of others who are also trying to enter the industry just like you.

Tell us about one of your favorite projects.

It’s really hard to say but if I had to choose, I’d say that working on a redesign of Starscream was so much fun since it was my favorite Transformer when I was a kid. I even had one of those Hasbro Starscream toys.

What makes a portfolio stand out to you?

An overall good knowledge of fundamentals and projects that shows a broad range of skills. For character artist, projects that shows that you can do alot of stuff from organic to more hard surface stuff. Good quality textures in Game Engines is really important too and last but not least a great presentation with a good lighting setup is extremely important to sell the final piece.

What is the best art advice you’ve ever received?

The best advice I’ve ever received was to not be scared of trying stuff outside of my comfort zone. A good way to improve is to always try to find what your biggest weakness is and try focusing on that particular thing on your next project. Even to this day, I always try to find a meaning to my personal project before I start one. It could be anything from trying to learn a new software, improve your presentations, learn more about design or sculpt something you’ve never done before.

See more of Frederic’s work on his portfolio website. To learn more about ArtStation Pro websites, click here.