Characters & Assets Portfolio Review

kboomthepot · Mar 2015

Hi guys,

Portfolio - www.cristianpall.com

I would be grateful if you can review my portfolio and give me some advice on how can I make it stronger i.e. what can stay and what needs to go, what is missing, what is your first feeling when you view my portfolio.

I am looking for my first job in the industry and find it quite challenging to get feedback from game studios thats why it would be really helpful if I would know where I stand in the crowd.
Cheers!
Chris

BradMyers82 · Mar 2015

very cool work man. Id get rid of the weapons you are showing, they are very low quality compared to the rest of your work. The first character you have there that is all hard surface is your strongest piece by far. Very clean looking. I think the texuture could be pushed a bit further tho and the lighting improved as well in your renders, but that's pretty minor stuff. As for your other characters the thing that hurts them the most is the skin and fur parts. They just don't read very well, and make the characters look a lot less realistic imo. So if you focus on improving anything I would look at that first. I like a lot of the shapes you use in your characters tho, so thats def. a strong point. Nice work overall man.

slosh · Mar 2015

Your stuff isn't bad but it's not really good either. I would say all of your characters are mediocre quality. Some of them suffer from proportion/anatomy issues, some lack material definition and are low texture quality, some lack UV efficiency, etc. And all of them lack proper presentation IMO. You haven't taken the time to pose them, give them personality, and show them off in optimal lighting. Also, you need to axe the wall of text before each character. Either shorten it SIGNIFICANTLY or just get rid of it altogether. No one is going to read that stuff. That grey gun also looks like ur best weapon but looks completely untextured...and where's the highres? You also have like 10 renders that can done in one image. Your environment stuff at the bottom is probably the most polished but there aren't many renders of those at all. If you are going for character work, I would axe those environments though. As for characters, the pig is probably your strongest piece followed by the scifi suit guy. Pose them and give them proper renders. Look at what other people have done for turnaround renders and do them justice. Also, include a zbrush render...why are those missing? I would keep the shaman, pig, scifi guy, and the bugs vs aliens stuff and get rid of the rest.

dand3d · Mar 2015

Ok so I'll start off.
Where to start...
First thing that kind of threw me off was the scrolling header. That is a way for me to select your art work, Likewise I can look at your art by actually clicking on the thumbnails below. Get rid of the header make one static image and stick with it because you don't really need two ways to see you art.

But oddly enough when I click on the scrolling header the page it sends me to I like much more then the page clicking on the thumb nails send me to.
I think you should replace the pages so when you click on the thumb nails you go to the page you have set up for the headers. There is so much I could say about the thumbnail pages that I would change that it would be easier just to replace them with the header pages. But if you do change them, do not keep the paragraph of text before each model... I did not click on the thumb nail to read I want to look closer at the models. Also each thumb nail page has a miserable header image fix that (the header pages header images are better) (does that make sense?). For the love of God and all that is holy get rid of the line of emojies at the bottom of the pages.

Secondly, when you mouse over the thumbnails get rid of the little pop up thing that says the name of the model. It was distracting and I might be just old but I at first thought I could not click on them because of it.

Are you a character artist? If so get rid of the environments, you won't get hired as a character artist because of your environment pieces, in fact you might get passed because the character lead would see something in them he/she does not like.

A pet peeve I have is that none of your images have your name/ email/ website on them. So if a potential employer wants to hire you because they found your image and it does not have your info on it, they might, not take the time to find where this image came from, and thus you could loose out of a chance of employment.

Most of your characters seem to have no spec maps on them at all. If there is a reason that is all good and dandy, but the fact that only one or two characters have spec is a negative. You have normal maps but no spec which is very odd. The point of having a spec map is to help to different materials so leather looks like leather, metal like metal and so on.

Hope this is a little bit helpful.

Felixenfeu · Mar 2015

The comments about your art cover pretty much what needs to be corrected.

The website though.
You have way too many pictures of turnaround of your character. You could get rid of all these, or make one beauty shot + one picture with differents sides. There is too much scrolling at the moment.

Use bigger pictures if you can on your main page, it looks empty and you don't want that. It looks shy to be honest. Don't be shy, be proud, make it big. It doesn't matter if you have only 5 pieces, just use bigger pictures so everything it clear. Look at how it's presented in other people websites:

http://www.felixcharacters.com/
http://www.mariempepin.com/
http://www.adamskutt.com/
http://mdadela.format.com/

And the text. Get rid of it or keep the essential. Like, do a bullet list of software, name of project, etc. Keep it simple.

kboomthepot · Mar 2015

Thank you really much guys for your feedback! I already started to change the website and from tomorow I start pose all the characters and put them in a better light.

I will come back with an update when happy with the result.

I know that all the changes will make my actual characters look better but in the same time I do believe that for my next characters I need to work harder to get a better quality.

Cheers and thanks again!

tahakitan · Mar 2015

Even though there is room for improvment, your art has good qualities as stylized art but it depends on what studios you are applying for really. different studios look for different styles or a variety. look up character artists from the studios you are applying for and see what type of stuff they are making. if the games they make and there portfolio are realistic character art than obviously you wouldn't show them stylized. etc...

kboomthepot · May 2015

Hi guys, thanks again for all of your advices. I took advantage of them and make some big changes to my portfolio as you can see.

www.cristianpall.com

Characters & Assets Portfolio Review

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