[Portfolio] - Kristof Minnaert, Character Artist

Maph

Hey guys,

I've been working for the past 5 years (3 of which as a lead) for a small independent dev working on not so interesting stuff, and I'm finally taking the final plunge to start looking for other work, preferably in the Character field!
I'm quite proficient in all things technical, and I know I'm not a bad artist; but I feel my portfolio is quite substandard, and I could totally have some pointers on how to improve it, what characters I should ditch from site and what to add, presentation and site layout pointers, etc...

Thanks in advance!

http://www.maphart.com/

Jeff Parrott

I really like your work Kristof. Your long rectangular thumbnails on the main page I think show the badassery of your pieces. You might want to either pick different thumbnail angles of adjust the size so the thumbs look amazing.

Also having multiple thumbs for each piece seems a bit much. Like char A thumb then it links to a bunch of images of char A.

I think that's just web design stuff and not a character critique. I think your newest work is pretty great. Just keep at it.

Obliteracure

Nice work Kristof, that scarecrow is awesome! Those beauty shots really help sell your work. I don't necessarily think you should ditch any characters especially if there from real games. I think it shows good variety of character style.

makecg

Love your work man nothing to crit on your work
but your website i would like to see the portfolio without the sidebar. so you can have the full width of thumbnails

ceebee

Yeah Maph I think I've already told ya but your work is pretty dope

Portfolio looks good. I agree about the thumbnails not showcasing your textured work as good as you can get em.

Hope ya find a character gig man, we'll all make it someday!

kevlar jens

Your work is quite nice, although I think the site's design could really need some work.

You got a modern background and header, while the wrapper is more vintage (with the torn edges and coffee stains and stuff). Both approaches are perfectly fine of course, but you should stick to one as it at the moment feels very incoherent.

Try hitting up Webcreme for example, if you need some inspiration

Dan!

Hey Maph - great stuff as usual!- I agree the web design seems disjointed -choose one- personally I like the cleanliness of the modern grey background.

Alberto Rdrgz

Love the work, bro. That elephant man is my favorite!!

woogity

cool work man i like the site, but at least in firefox, once i full-sized an image i couldn't undo it, might wanna take a look at that if its not just me. again ace work, love the scarecrow it came out great!


-Woog

Maph

Cheers for the pointers guys. I know the site is a tad schizophrenic and I'll fix that for sure!
woogity: Do you mean the lightbox overlay? Just click on the image to close it then.

daphz

I really like your stuff man, that scarecrow was one of my fave comicon entries! I don't know about that elephant character though, I feel like it doesn't stack up compared to your mortal combat entry and scarecrow. nice stuff overall though!

Maph

The elephant guy is the first one to go, to be replaced with this guy when he's finished (sometime this week)

Dustin: yip! I got that comment a lot. So I'm fixing that right now (see picture above, and there's a whole body attached to that guy ). From now on out, I'm only sculpting demons, monsters and realistic humans.

danshillair

I like how it looks. My only comments are the two separate style with the site header/body/etc. Also, (it would take some real-state) adding some separation between characters might be nice. For example, a horizontal line, or some space between scarecrow, your Brawl entry, and so on.

I love your work. I'm rooting for ya!

Roepetoepa

I like the skintones on the guy, are they made from photomaterial or handpainted ?

Maph

Sorry for the late reply Roepetoepa! The textures are made using a combination of hand painting and photo reffing. I made a base paintlayer, photorefs on top at normal blending and 50%-ish fill, with the same paintlayer on top of that but using linear burn on a very low fill.

Either way, portfolio update #1!
I updated my website with a slightly new layout, better art layout, removed the side and search bars, some font changes, etc...
Let me know what you think!
Next up, I'll be updating the actual content on there!

[click the image]


And thanks so much for the support guys! Much appreciated.

mr_ace

portfolio looks good, but 1 thing bugging me is the rendering of your deadwood guy. From what I can see, it looks like his difuse is set to 100% opacity, and theres no lights showing off any of his normal detail or anything like that, making him look quite flat. Your website looks good though, and your characters are great, I'd maybe wait and add 1 more before you're ready to roll

Maph

Yip, the shots from Al are all unlit 100% diffuse, should have mentioned that somwehere. But those will change either today or tomorrow. I need to get him finished before the 24th, so expect some in-engine shots soon!