For an internship, companies are typically looking for any school project or extracurricular work. They usually understand that you probably won’t have anything outside of school projects or personal work at this point in your career. Needless to say golden rule still applies quality over quantity. Even if you only have one piece you are really happy about that’s better than five pieces that are mediocre and you would have to do a LOT of explaining around.
A typically college student’s application usually should consist of:
Resume
- 1-pager describing projects and part time jobs that you have held, dates/responsibilities are most important
- Always describe the job regarding what YOU specially worked on or tasked. Do not start off your professional career with plagiarism
Cover letter
- This is a letter of intent, “Aspiring game artist seeks internship opportunity at company X because I’m awesome, work hard, etc….”
- Read the companies’ description of the internship and tailor your letter to it
Reel
- Video
- H.264 encoding is pretty standard
- Don’t spend time on an audio track, most folks will watch it on mute
- Make sure your name and contact info is on this video at the beginning and end
- Website
- Can be project website, art dumps, or a personal artwork page
- Show drawing, show applicable and relevant sketches
- Show relevant communication methodology, ie: how do you problem solve visually
- Work examples (.PNGs for mobile friendliness)
Contact Info
- For gosh sakes PLEASE get a professional looking email…if you still are using DUDEartOMGi’msoAWESOME@dkaslfsd.com then just buck up and get yourself Lastname_Firstname@gmail.com already!
- Additionally, go pay for yourdomain.com it’s like $9/month from GoDaddy or one of the bazillion websites out there. If you want to be a pro, start acting like one!