[Portfolio] Joel Miller Tansley - Character Artist

jmt

Website

Hey everyone, I would appreciate some critique on my portfolio. My focus is on game character modeling.

The next thing I make will be a realistic male character, possibly sci-fi as virtually everything on my website is fantasy. It might be good for me to use someone else's concept, but I haven't decided on anything yet. I think the axe is by far my best piece currently, so I hope to achieve/exceed that level of coolness with my next project. Recently I've been working on redoing the presentation of some old models, but I need to add new work.

Thanks,
Joel

jmt

Bumping for more exposure.

jsargent

Loving that axe. The website is nice and simple,easy to see all of your work without many clicks. I would add a very small paragraph about yourself to your site and/or resume. Just a few lines about your main strengths and aims to set yourself up a bit. Im not a character artist so Im not going to crit that but it would be great to see some nice sculpts and more next gen stuff, you can obviously do it so it would be nice to see that in your characters too

Archael

Hi Joel,

You've got some nice work on there. I'd definitely agree that the axe is your best piece. I'd say the weakest is the dragon whelp (I like the texture but the head and body are a weird shape).

Some of your drawings are really good (the life drawings for example) but some on those pages are not that great. I'd get rid of half and just keep the best ones.

Your models are original designs but did you start from a drawing? If so I'd include it with the pictures of your models. It will show off your drawing skills and prove that you can interpret a design into 3D.

I'm not a character artist either but I'd say the skin on your pirate girl is too flat. I'd add a greater range of tones and blemishes/freckles etc. I think you need a better way to display your wireframe as it's hard to see against the textures. You can't see the topology of the head at that resolution either. Also I'd include a render with the normal map applied and not the diffuse.

jmt

Thanks for the feedback!

jsargent: I could try writing a paragraph about myself and see if I can come up with anything worth putting on my site. My next project will be a next gen character, and I'm going to try to do more speed sculpts. If any of them are good enough, I'll put them up.

Archael: It's too late to redesign the dragon, and others have told me that they like the shape, so I'm going to keep that as is. He is supposed to look ridiculous (pink scales + sparkle wings). Maybe I should cut some of the drawings from my 2d page. Most of my concepts are too rough and unattractive to post. They're enough to give me something to work with but not good enough to show off. I think the axe is the only piece with the concept included. In the future I'll try to make the concepts look good enough to be included. The pirate's skin texture has a lot more detail than is visible in those renders, but you're right - it looks pretty flat. It probably wouldn't be much work to add another shot with normal/no diffuse and a closeup of the head geometry. I don't want to spend too much longer redoing old work though, as I really need to do some new stuff.

SgtNasty

I agree that you need more next gen stuff, as jsargent pointed out. Something sci fi would be good. At the top of your site, the way the header and "Gallery" "Resume" options are all aligned looks a bit awkward. Everything is left aligned, the font and font colors change between the three lines, and the spacing is a bit wonky. It's a small thing but playing around with that stuff could make it a lot more snazzy.

mr_ace

agree also on the lack of next gen stuff, your texturing seems nice and the quality of your work is good, but if you're wanting to apply to next gen studios, you need to show zbrush and hard surface high poly work as well as 3d anatomy work, bodies and faces.

I would not bother putting a paragraph about yourself in your resum