ohnoes a wild portfolio appears
polycounter lvl 5
I've been told I should remake my portfolio from scratch so I thought I'd just throw my stuff here and see if there is something I can salvage while getting any kind of new tips.
Here's the link: http://riccardomorgia.info/
Stuff after the first page is really old so venture at your danger.
pls destroy at your own leisure
Here's the link: http://riccardomorgia.info/
Stuff after the first page is really old so venture at your danger.
pls destroy at your own leisure
Replies
The forms of your characters are good (at least to my environment artist eyes), Your topology looks solid and you can definitely model.
Your materials could use some work, they are all very shiny, they lack subtle variation that really conveys material. Your textures are need better material definition.
Now, about your site in general. Change the white background to something grey. You also have too many images of each model, just present us with the best few images, maybe 2 or 3 beauty shots max, and some breakdowns. The more images you show us the easier it is to find flaws, also, we're less likely to look through them all. Don't give us dates, we don't need to know how long you took.
Also, this might help for your website
The faces of your characters seem very similar; the second & third characters' faces are almost identical. Add some variety; non-Asian females, males, etc.
Keep in mind that you will be judged by your weakest piece. Quality is much more important than quantity in a portfolio; cull everything except your top 3-4 pieces.
(funnily enough I went and cranked up the visibility of the skin variation on one of those characters by a bit and she already looks better, so yeah.)
@DWalker: it *might* be because I'm using Wordpress, and I'm not too practical with it.I'll dwelve a bit deeper into the options and see how (and if) I can add those features, otherwise I might have to scrap the whole site.
Heads still give me a bit of trouble when it comes to make them unique (oh god, the pudding), I tried a different method on my third character so that might why she looks different.
tyvm for your comments, keep'em coming
As for your content, perhaps try to show that you can so stuff other than fairly plain conventionally attractive females. LMP is right, the materials really need more variation (in things like the normals and the gloss/spec, too, not just the diffuse).
You could probably stand to show your maps. You also need to work on your facial anatomy a bit more. The forms of your Seiko piece are kind of flat and a little odd, and it seems to be because you don't have a great grasp of what's going on to cause those forms. Once you do some more study in that area and really understand it, you'll probably find that being able to make characters that look different/have different facial features will come more naturally. Maybe some sculptures that you don't really take beyond just the block out? Just to help you understand the planes of the face and the underlying muscle structure a bit more.
Ref: https://www.anatomy4sculptors.com/
And these renders on that neutral grey background aren't very flattering, you need to work on your lighting and at least use a gradient (I'd actually suggest more post-processing and a different color entirely but that's up to you in the end).
PS, not sold on the metallic paints. Try making it non-metallic, maybe... The paint may be on the metal, but that doesn't make it metallic.
BTW I already came across that site when I was looking for hand references and it was a game changer in that regard, guess I have to look deeper.
Oh, here's the same piece with a bit of color variation and the speculars changed around. I didn't completely remove the specular from the paint since I wanted a car-paint effect, but you guys were kind of right as it looked a bit silly.
Does she look better? You tell me, I'm the one that can't figure this out.
I wrote up a really long reply and lost it, I'm sorry.
Blunt Bullet Points instead. Hope you don't mind.
1. Epicanthic folds
Seiko's eyes are weird-- they slant upwards at the outer corners, but they appear to have typically western folds (or none, it's hard to discern). That's the opposite of what you want, as east-asian eyes have stronger folds coming from the inner corner instead of the outer (known as an epicanthic fold).
Ref:
http://www.behairstyles.com/pictures/Short-Japanese-Haircut-With-Bangs.jpg
https://welshjapanotaku.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/ayase_haruka2.jpg
Additionally, she's missing her caruncle. It's wigging me out, reminds me of those bead eyes that you put in Ball Joint Dolls.
Overall definition is a bit wobbly-- I get that she's fairly stylized, but... the forms are a bit all over the place. Try to really get intimate with the Planes of the Face.
2. Key Overhangs
She has a hell of an underbite, while also having a receeding jawline. Kinda unappealing. See above for ideal insets for upper/lower lips and eyelids.
3. misc.
In regards to previously mentioned receeding jawline, I feel her chin should be a little more shapely. Her ears are also quite flat to her head (though I can see this is partially FOV issues, which you should fix btw) and a bit far back. Her skull is also a bit tall + not far enough back. Hard to tell with that FOV, but see the redline.
An additional note, a number of the facial features here are very... flat. Like, they're on a flat plane. Facial features conform to the skull, so they're very curved/fitted to the shape.
See this:
Finally, my interpretation of what her face/head could look like (with toony eyes because it's getting late).
There's a thousand other ways to go about faces, a million different things you can approach uniquely, but I think with a little more study and work, you could do so much better than what you're doing right now. And what you have right now isn't bad mind you, I just think that you have more potential.
Keep it up, hope to see you progress (maybe post WIP projects here, those threads are always good).
Her epicanthic fold is baked into the normal map and I don't know how much I can work on that since the sculpt now differs from the lowpoly cage quite a bit and rebaking it might make it look weird (I might just overlay it after drawing it as a bump map, but idk about that).
And yep, the ears weren't visible because of the FOV, lol. Here's her fixed head with the correct FOV:
And here's a turnaround of her head with the same FOV as the old one so you can compare.
New:
Old:
Guess it's time to transfer the rig to her fixed head, fix the materials up a bit, redo the renders and call it a day.
Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious that anatomy isn't my strong point and that I really should work on it. Thing is that I don't like overly realistic creations and I really dislike extremely cartoonish stuff, so I'm kind of caught in the middle which means I have to both learn anatomy and learn when it's too much.
It's not exactly an easy task but I'm working on it.
Thanks for your honest opinion.