I feel a bit lost in the industry

RobinKarlin

Hello everyone!

I feel I need to ask the community about a problem of mine. See, the recent years I really been putting down a lot of hours into 3D. I guess I concider myself a modell, texture and render-person and I have completed two separate digital graphics-schools with a few years between them, two years each.
And as I learnt during the last school I went to, it's real difficult to find work as a 3D-artist nowadays. But still many of my friends have found employment. I know that the artistic and technical skills play a huge role, but I guess I need some guidance anyway. A question that appears often for me is if I'm focusing on the right thing. In my case; modelling things, making textures, rendering and ofcource applying to vfx/game companies. Also updating myself almost everyday on job-postings on various homepages.

So now I want to ask if someone, anyone with or without experience from the industry have some tips for me on how to move on so I can get employed or get more freelance work. I should also mention that I'm not locked to make modells and so on, I find it interesting with more technical things too, like making shaders, animation, dynamics and so forth.

Here I link my homepage and my reel (working on a new for 2016) so you can see at what level I'm at. Lastly I think it's a good idea to mention I live in Sweden.

Thank you for taking your time to read and reply in this time of need  

Dazz3r

Mate, lose the vespa, the truck and especially the character sculpt you have and stick with the other items.  Your reel starts off well, and it's those items that let it down.  Also, I couldn't access your homepage as it was being flagged by our firewall.

RobinKarlin

Dazz3r said:

Mate, lose the vespa, the truck and especially the character sculpt you have and stick with the other items.  Your reel starts off well, and it's those items that let it down.  Also, I couldn't access your homepage as it was being flagged by our firewall.

Thank you for your input, DAZZ3R! I will take your opinion into account to my next reel. Is there some special reason I should remove those objects? Too static?
Also I would be happy if you could post the error message from your firewall so I can fix the issue. I have the homepage on a friends server, so it could be a large one.

Dazz3r

Sure, dude.  The sculpt, is just not your strongest point, and the vehicles, while the modelling is good, you're not demonstrating any texturing skills of any kind.  That's my opinion, but others might tell you different.

I can't post screens from my work computer sorry.

Optinium

Dazz3r is indeed correct regarding those elements of the reel. In honesty I would ditch the reel entirely, unless you're an animator or full on VFX artist showcasing breakdowns there is no real need for them, not to mention most of the people who do the recruiting don't have the time/patience to view them.
As for the website, there is a massive mix of work all at varying standards.

Get rid of the 'Sketch', 'Nelson Mandela', 'Graffiti', DOTA2 Sword', '3Kronor Presentation film' and 'This is your life' projects as they bring your other work down and are a bit incoherent.

As for what's remaining, those parts need beefing up with wireframes, specs, texture layouts and so on.

Just be really critical of yourself and hone it down to a few great projects as opposed to loads of 'ok' ones. Look at peoples portfolios that you admire and think are good and take some tips from there.

Daew

This might be interesting to watch, it's Blur talking about portfolios
http://livestream.com/gnomon/an-evening-with-blur
They even gave interviews to people based on one still image (granted they were badass stills)

The Rizzler

Sounds like you're spreading yourself quite thin, you mention applying to vfx and games companies, when it's difficult to go for just one. Don't feel disheartened at removing some of the work you spent time on, you still have the experience from making it and if it makes your portfolio more coherent and stronger overall then all the better. I'd say make a decision on what you want to pursue the most right now, and really focus on that. The first being, "vfx or games?" As the two are so different, then it's "3D artist, technical artist or animator?" My recommendation is that you move forwards and focus on making one of your generalisms a specialisation essentially.  

lefix

Your portfolio is only as strong as your weakest pieces. So it is always a good idea to go for quality over quantity. Things like the sketch can easily go, and show us more stuff like the truck  
I also agree that you don't need a reel unless animation is part of your work. keep your portfolio simple, show us the highest quality work you can produce only. get a real domain and put the domain or email address in the images. get an artstation page going. try to present all your work in a consistent way. that's all advice i can think of right now

RobinKarlin

Wow, thank you all for the great and honest responses! I will start cleaning up the portfolio right away.
It's always hard to cut out pieces of the portfolio that you kind of enjoy, but I can really see the need for it.

Rurouni Strife

Yea cutting stuff sucks but the more you do it, the easier it is.

I think everyone else kind of gave you good advice. Rizzler is totally right too-it's better to pick either VFX or Games, and not shoot for both. Lotta kids out of school do that (I did) and it's because they really don't know any better and don't have portfolio's geared towards one specifically.

I specifically wanted to mention that I can clearly see you will be great one day. Your work improves by leaps and bounds from the early stuff to where it is now. So keep working. Just focus on one career path and then put your all into that.

Shrike

You need new work, better work, its that simple. The current pieces are not good enough yet. Dont overthink it, youre at the point where you very soon start making the good stuff and every new piece will be better than the last, just get to pumping out new stuff, thats all there is to it. Give yourself 3-4 months, show your portfolio again here, get some final fixes and then start applying.

RobinKarlin

Rurouni Strife said:

Yea cutting stuff sucks but the more you do it, the easier it is.

I think everyone else kind of gave you good advice. Rizzler is totally right too-it's better to pick either VFX or Games, and not shoot for both. Lotta kids out of school do that (I did) and it's because they really don't know any better and don't have portfolio's geared towards one specifically.

I specifically wanted to mention that I can clearly see you will be great one day. Your work improves by leaps and bounds from the early stuff to where it is now. So keep working. Just focus on one career path and then put your all into that.

 Thank you, Rurouni! Wow, it really feels like an impossible choice to choose between VFX or games. But this also feels like a necessary step to take at this point. I'm happy to hear the work seem to go in the right direction, I think you guys really help me back on the right path  

Shrike said: You need new work, better work, its that simple. The current pieces are not good enough yet. Dont overthink it, youre at the point where you very soon start making the good stuff and every new piece will be better than the last, just get to pumping out new stuff, thats all there is to it. Give yourself 3-4 months, show your portfolio again here, get some final fixes and then start applying.

 I think you are right too, there's no shortcuts. So I'll take all these great tips and just keep moving forward. I hope it'll get a bit easier now when I have some directions to follow.

Shrike

try doing one of those full workflow tutorials next, like the tracker knife one, theyll help you a lot and you get the full workflow down.