You post an environment artist role and get forty applications. A third link a portfolio you’ve never heard of, a third link ArtStation, and a handful link nothing at all. Which platform you post to determines who applies, and for art roles, the platform matters more than it does for almost any other kind of hire.
Software engineers apply through job boards regardless of where their GitHub lives. Artists behave differently. Their portfolio platform is where their professional identity actually sits, and a studio that only posts to the wrong one is invisible to a real segment of the talent it wants.
ArtStation is the default for games and entertainment
If you’re hiring for a game, film, or VFX studio, ArtStation is the platform most candidates already expect you to check. It was built specifically for game, film, media, and entertainment artists, and recruiters in the industry routinely ask candidates to send their ArtStation link rather than a resume — ArtStation’s own guidance material describes it as the standard portfolio format in entertainment hiring.
That makes it the strongest starting point for environment artists, character artists, concept artists working in games, and VFX generalists. It’s less central for roles that sit outside game and film production. A marketing designer or a UI/UX hire is less likely to have their primary presence there.
ArtStation’s hiring page calls ArtStation Jobs “the industry’s largest job board for media & entertainment art positions,” and names studios including Riot Games, Blizzard, Naughty Dog, and Ubisoft among the hundreds that use it to source artists. That’s ArtStation’s own framing, but it matches how the industry treats the platform in practice.
Behance covers the design and illustration work ArtStation doesn’t
Behance is Adobe’s creative network, and it skews toward graphic design, illustration, brand work, photography, and UI/UX rather than 3D game production. Behance’s own about page calls it “the world’s largest creative network,” reporting more than 50 million members — a population spanning far beyond games and entertainment.
If you’re hiring a brand illustrator, a marketing designer, or a UI/UX practitioner for a studio’s front-of-house work, Behance is often where that person’s portfolio actually lives, not ArtStation. Behance projects also tend to include process: sketches, iterations, a case-study writeup, alongside the final image. That’s useful when you’re trying to judge how someone thinks, and not only what they produced.
Cara is smaller, but it’s where some illustrators and concept artists chose to go
Cara is a newer, artist-run platform founded by photographer Jingna Zhang. It launched at the end of 2022, then grew sharply after Meta announced in mid-2024 that it would train AI models on user content: Cara reportedly went from around 40,000 to 650,000 users in a single week, then passed one million within weeks — a pace the small team running it wasn’t resourced for. The founder later wrote about hosting bills that outstripped what the platform could sustainably cover. The platform tags every upload “NoAI” by default, has integrated the anti-scraping tool Glaze, and states it won’t host AI-generated portfolios.
That stance is a meaningful filter. Some working illustrators and concept artists moved their primary presence to Cara specifically because of it, and they won’t necessarily show up if you only check ArtStation or Behance. Cara is smaller than either of the other two platforms, so treat it as a supplement for illustration-heavy roles rather than a first stop for every hire. For the artists who are there, that choice of platform tells you something small about how they think about their own work. Worth noting. Not worth over-reading.
Match the platform to the role, not the other way around
A useful rule: the more a role resembles traditional 3D game production, the more ArtStation-first it should be. The more it resembles brand, marketing, or UI/UX design, the more you need Behance in the mix. The more it’s illustration or concept art specifically, the more Cara becomes worth checking alongside the other two.
- Environment artist, character artist, 3D generalist: ArtStation first.
- Concept artist, illustrator: ArtStation and Cara, check Behance too.
- UI/UX designer, brand illustrator, marketing designer: Behance first, ArtStation as a secondary check.
- VFX artist, technical animator: ArtStation first, plus reels and demo work wherever the candidate hosts them.
None of this is precise demographic data. Platform user bases shift, and any individual artist might maintain a presence anywhere. Treat it as a starting allocation of your attention, not a rule that lets you skip the other two entirely.
The real problem is monitoring three inboxes at once
Knowing where to look doesn’t solve the actual workload. A studio hiring for a concept artist role now has candidates applying through your careers page, others discoverable on ArtStation, others on Cara, and a handful sending Behance links buried in a cover letter. Checking all three by hand, for every open role, is the kind of task that quietly stops happening after the second week of a search.
This is what ArtStation Sourcing is for. Canvider reads your job description, extracts the skills and software it’s actually asking for, and proactively finds matching artist profiles on ArtStation and Cara filtered by location, so you’re not relying only on who happens to apply. For candidates who do apply directly, running AI Score on their CV unlocks enrichment tabs that pull in whichever platform they linked: ArtStation, Behance, or Cara, with the portfolio, recent work, and software list on the same page as the rest of their application.
Be precise about what that enrichment does and doesn’t do. It summarizes style and job fit as a starting point for a recruiter who isn’t necessarily an artist, so you have something concrete to bring to your art director. It doesn’t score the art itself, and it isn’t a substitute for a person who knows the craft looking at the work. Canvider is the only ATS among the common alternatives (Workable, Personio, Lever, Greenhouse, Recruitee, Breezy HR, SmartRecruiters) with native integration across all three platforms. That’s the actual gap this closes: less manual tab-hopping between three places candidates already live, not a replacement for the judgment call.
Explore ArtStation Sourcing, then get started free.
Frequently asked questions
Should a game studio post jobs on ArtStation or LinkedIn?
Use both, for different reasons. LinkedIn reaches people who are job-hunting. ArtStation reaches people who maintain a portfolio because portfolio work is how the games and entertainment industry evaluates artists, whether or not they're actively looking.
Is Cara worth using for hiring if it's a smaller platform?
For illustration and concept art roles, yes. Cara's population is smaller than ArtStation's, but its anti-AI-scraping stance has pulled in artists — many of them illustrators and concept artists — who deliberately left larger platforms. If the role skews illustration-heavy, skipping Cara means skipping a real segment of that talent pool.
Do I need to check all three platforms for every art hire?
No. A 3D environment or character artist role for games is well served by ArtStation alone. A brand illustrator or UI designer role leans Behance. A concept art or illustration role benefits from checking all three, because that population is the most spread out.
What's the difference between sourcing on ArtStation and reviewing an applicant's ArtStation profile?
Sourcing is outbound: the ATS reads your job description and finds matching artist profiles on ArtStation before anyone applies. Enrichment is inbound: once someone applies and links their ArtStation, Behance, or Cara profile, the ATS pulls that portfolio into their applicant page for review. Most studios need both.