[Portfolio] Kary Black
polycounter lvl 18
www.karyblack.com
I would like critiques on both the content and the structure of the site.
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Bit of an odd situation: I had a lightning strike last Thursday. It is amazing how powerful lightning is; the tree it came through has a huge scar down the side, you can follow where the electricity flowed under the ground via the uprooted roots, and see where it jumped from an outbuilding into the telephone line. Either it was too much for the phone portion of my surge protector, or jumped between cables. I lost my computer/tablet/etc, but am kind of happy to come out unhurt -- the woman three doors down has light burns on her legs, as she was at her computer when it happened.
Which is a long winded way of saying I have a clean slate to deal with holes in my portfolio that need to be filled.
As I'm going to be on an older computer for awhile I hope that I can get away with smaller pieces. My plan now is to draw out a modular architectural piece, while I wait for a tablet to arrive, then finish that up in 3D and do another sample taken from photoref. If I get those done would it be in line with a starter environment / prop artist portfolio?
The M32 and the airship that I did in July best represent my current work (the airship page will be cleaned up when the textures arrive). I kept them at the top and nearest my name. There are a few pieces that I will take out when I can replace them with something, but I hope none are distractingly bad.
Thanks.
I would like critiques on both the content and the structure of the site.
___
Bit of an odd situation: I had a lightning strike last Thursday. It is amazing how powerful lightning is; the tree it came through has a huge scar down the side, you can follow where the electricity flowed under the ground via the uprooted roots, and see where it jumped from an outbuilding into the telephone line. Either it was too much for the phone portion of my surge protector, or jumped between cables. I lost my computer/tablet/etc, but am kind of happy to come out unhurt -- the woman three doors down has light burns on her legs, as she was at her computer when it happened.
Which is a long winded way of saying I have a clean slate to deal with holes in my portfolio that need to be filled.
As I'm going to be on an older computer for awhile I hope that I can get away with smaller pieces. My plan now is to draw out a modular architectural piece, while I wait for a tablet to arrive, then finish that up in 3D and do another sample taken from photoref. If I get those done would it be in line with a starter environment / prop artist portfolio?
The M32 and the airship that I did in July best represent my current work (the airship page will be cleaned up when the textures arrive). I kept them at the top and nearest my name. There are a few pieces that I will take out when I can replace them with something, but I hope none are distractingly bad.
Thanks.
Replies
Its really up to you if you want to go for environment art or both....Im not really in a position to offer the best advice since I am looking to get work like you, but Ive read n been told that there are two schools of thought on this so you could go either way...just a matter of what you're passionate about
look forward to seeing more stuff from you!
Some suggestions:
Try to make the sizes of the thumbnails smaller so that the entire page can be loaded on the screen without a scroll-bar on the side (I viewed it at 1280x1024 res and it has the scroll bar).
Also, align the contents of the site to left, not right, so that it reads more naturally.
I don't think you need that link to your WIP, most of the stuff there is in your portfolio anyway and you only want to show your best work.
I do think the m32 is your strongest peice. The renders of the winged hi-poly character are too small, try to get some bigger ones there so that the viewer can see the details; same thing with the motion workshop peice.
Cool stuff.
Thanks for the kind comments on the m32. Not sure why I didn't lead with that piece before, but I've got that at the top now. I'll rearrange the page order to match the index in my next update.
Both disciplines are very interesting to me. Much of the skills overlap now, the ever ambiguous "eye", hardsurface modeling in both (so much kit on characters these days), and organics in both (there are opportunities for sculptural detail now). My characters don't have the immediate sense of life and personality ala someone like Bobo, but I hope they show overall sculpting experience. The sense of scale and place is interesting in architectural work, but I'm finding that the history and 'how it works' part has incredible depth.
Eraserhead:
I didn't realize that the right align felt unnatural, I've moved the text and top thumb over.
The WIP section is almost a mirror of the site right now, but that normally isn't the case. I bumped a few images to the main index after the lightning strike. Normally I do an optical backup monthly, or when a project is finished, and a backup to a second harddrive daily. So I grabbed the images I was planning to polish from the WIP section and put them in place until I find out what has happened to those drives. Since I have started to do more complete coverage in my portfolio pages I guess that area might be irrelevant now, I'll take another look at it later.
I'll fix the thumbnails and dig up the optical backups of the gate high poly tomorrow. I have been looking at the site at 1920x1200 and the height had been okay. Now I'm using a 1280x1024 monitor and the scroll bar is a bit annoying... nothing like as annoying as the colour quality on this LCD, but what can ya do.
Thanks guys, I'll get after those issues.
pics or it didn't happen
From that drainage pipe it went about 5 feet into a few sumacs that can brush against the telephone wires under the right wind. The hydro crews were through in the spring and put in new huge poles for their lines, but Bell kept their stuff on the old ones and... well here we are.
I was able to hack together that pic with my new tablet today (glad I paid the extra 2cents for expedited shipping). I thought that intuos3 and 2 were supposed to be nearly the same, but this Intuos3 one feels way better then my used Intuos2. The brush feel is far lighter, has a much better range and that zoom stripe is cute.
Vig: Thanks, easy to use it what I'm shooting for, glad it's coming across that way and the art is okay.
I would be interested to hear what you have to say on posing. Caveat: I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. The highpoly challenge piece is ancient, and the Domwar piece was hobbled together very quickly. They represent the second and third time I've tried to skin and pose characters and I think they're pretty babyish. Likely better then flat bind pose, but pretty bad. One of the wrist positions on the Domwar character makes me cringe, most of it has no weight at all.
To improve on that, once I am no longer geographically impaired, I am going to take up figure drawing again, and try to get some gestural skills together. I'd appreciate knowing about fundamentals you'd recommend though, best to start learning without heavily ingraining bad habits and I need to improve.
EricV: Ah I did misread that. 'OR both' would be a great situation. Not sure if that scenario is available at the bottom tier, but it would be nice.
I think the layout works fine, though the border colors on the thumbnails (link, visited, and hover) seem a bit garish to me on the neutral background. Minor complaint, but it was probably the first thing that stood out to me.
I took out the base orange colour and switched it to the rollover. I like orange as an accent colour, but that was too much -- good point.
I've taken out a spacing row and some padding to tighten it up a bit. Still semi debating the thumbs -- if I had another 2 rows it would be a big scroll, but doesn't seem too bad as is.
The format feels tighter now and it looks like a bit more solid content would be the main thing now.