Portfolio review - Stickadtroja

stickadtroja

Hi all!
I want to become a freelancer, and thus i put together a new portfolio.
i would be super happy to get some critique on it, all parts of it, content, layout, presentation etc.

portfolio

any comments are welcome, basically i want to know anything that lies in my way to land a freelance position.

also, i havent fixed the resume link yet, so no need to point that out.

edit: teaser image

stickadtroja

shameless bumb. surely someone would have something to critique, it cant all be perfect  

Shrike

Hm, there is some good stuff, are the concepts from you ? The replication in 3d could be better at places however and the presentation needs some work. All your renders are underlit and could do a lot better with better lighting. Try bring in some color in the portfolio so its not too creepy.
The first lame giraffe thing has kinda blobby undefined textures that look low res and the legs look kinda undefined, try add a detail normal or so , also AO seems missing which makes the transistion of the back scales odd. Try make more appealing poses for the portfolio than T poses, that degrades characters a lot. Cut the 3 oldest concepts. Put the chaos forge game logo on the image so you see that its commercial work thats worth a lot more, else cut it or at least dont place it on a white rectangle in T pose, its not as good as the rest. Cut zombie soldier concept.  Cut thin green man in T pose that has wireframe shown. Rerender furniture on larger image if the detail supports it, with a nicer background / ground that is one piece so you dont have a ground plane shown + a background. The round podests are not particular nice, either add some stones and foliage to make it nice and add some color, or cut it. Also dont do that metal border thing, its too thick compared to the model and distracting, also dosnt look too good. Better do like 10 cm of soil layer that can be seen at the border of the circle. The modeing looks decent and texturing good, just try to get away from this sculpted look where large surfaces have little detail aside of the big sculpt crevices, add more small scale detail. Also id strongly suggest to make more real life props in between, it just makes you more competitive and easier to compare between others.

stickadtroja

thank a lot for the extensive feedback! yes all the art shown is made by me, including the concepts.

"Cut the 3 oldest concepts" what do you mean by this? the three worst looking?

ackehallgren

I agree with the color issue. I think you should have more contrast and color on most of it so that it pops more. The bull-thing is the best example you have right now!

I also agree with maybe having stamps or at least proper logotypes rather than just plain text for the different games.

Other than that I think you have some really cool models going on.

underfox

Shrike said:

Hm, there is some good stuff, are the concepts from you ? The replication in 3d could be better at places however and the presentation needs some work. All your renders are underlit and could do a lot better with better lighting. Try bring in some color in the portfolio so its not too creepy.
The first lame giraffe thing has kinda blobby undefined textures that look low res and the legs look kinda undefined, try add a detail normal or so , also AO seems missing which makes the transistion of the back scales odd. Try make more appealing poses for the portfolio than T poses, that degrades characters a lot. Cut the 3 oldest concepts. Put the chaos forge game logo on the image so you see that its commercial work thats worth a lot more, else cut it or at least dont place it on a white rectangle in T pose, its not as good as the rest. Cut zombie soldier concept.  Cut thin green man in T pose that has wireframe shown. Rerender furniture on larger image if the detail supports it, with a nicer background / ground that is one piece so you dont have a ground plane shown + a background. The round podests are not particular nice, either add some stones and foliage to make it nice and add some color, or cut it. Also dont do that metal border thing, its too thick compared to the model and distracting, also dosnt look too good. Better do like 10 cm of soil layer that can be seen at the border of the circle. The modeing looks decent and texturing good, just try to get away from this sculpted look where large surfaces have little detail aside of the big sculpt crevices, add more small scale detail. Also id strongly suggest to make more real life props in between, it just makes you more competitive and easier to compare between others.

I know it's not helping much, but I subscribe to everything shrike said really.

SmilingMountain

I agree with Shrike, especially on the lighting I think you could add a nice three point lighting setup to your works to really make the forms pop. I also think that atm, it seems like a big mash up of 2d a 3d stuff without a lot of clear organization. I know art directors don't want to have to click more than a couple of times on a folio but IMO you should clearly separate your 2d and 3d stuff. Maybe a separate pages for 2d and 3d? You have some strong concepting skills going for you so I'd really try to emphasize that. Of the 3d pieces I'd say the strongest are your personal work (goblin dude), the chaos forge guy with a gun for a face (awesome), and the four legged mech. You could also include the female head and masks. The rest I would probably cut. Hope that helps. 

stickadtroja

thanks for all the critique! i updated now, not finished but i tried fix some of the stuff.

underfox: thanks, it actaully helps a lot. 2 peoples opinions weigh a lot heavier than 1, even if they are the same.

smilling: i updated the lighting for some of the models now, let me know what you think! not sure about separating the 3d and 2d though, seen a couple of kickass portfolios where they kept it in the same page. also a lot of portfolio-advice threads around here says to minimize the clicks to see your work.
will see what i will cut in the end, not sure right now, thanks for the opinions!

i have cut a lot of the 3d stuff, so there is more 2d now. seems a little bit weird since i intend to apply for 3d work. i just assume that freelance concept work is a lot harder to get.
i think i have to put some time aside for making a proper wow-piece in 3d. all of the current are made under the limitations of our project, which means lower-than-next-gen specs and not a lot of time spent to polish.
will keep working on this, let me know what you think of the updated one though!

Shrike

stickadtroja said:

thank a lot for the extensive feedback! yes all the art shown is made by me, including the concepts.

"Cut the 3 oldest concepts" what do you mean by this? the three worst looking?

Oldest = the one on the bottom of the page
Id keep the 2D stuff with the 3D things because they belong together, just leave the ones that have no 3d model away.
You can make the images smaller or make some kind of different presentation. make sure to write somewhere that both are from you

SmilingMountain

Lighting is definitely looking better, I like the fact you've separated the 3d and 2d on the page, looks much clearer now. When I try to download your resume I get a 404 error though, something to look into. Looking forward to seeing your wow 3d piece

stickadtroja

i fixed the resume link now, feel more or less finished, the next thing now is to make more content i guess.
thanks for all the help!