Best Of

Asking for feedback is sensible - the downside is that occasionally I have some free time to give it ;)

I don't see any glaring technical problems with your work.

There are two main things you need to improve on from my perspective (its been 5 years since I was last hiring artists at a first party studio so might be a bit out of touch)

1: show scenes or dioramas, not just individual props . ie. make a set of related things, compose them into a little group that makes sense and take some nice pictures. We like that, it shows that you are considering the context in which your assets will be used and have a capacity for worldbuilding.

2: I'm not seeing much depth of thought in your surfacing. The asset pictured below looks pretty good at first glance but on closer inspection I'm wondering a few things ...

Why is it so clean in the areas I've indicated ? The rest of it is rusty which means it must have been exposed to moisture. Moisture collects in areas where separate parts meet , dirt sticks to moisture, moisture brings rust and so on...

Further - there's a belt drive so if this thing is still functional would there be rust where the belt rubs on the pulleys? You'd need to grease or oil the pulleys to keep it working nicely too - I'd expect some of that to squeeze out or be spilled and stain the surfaces - similarly, anywhere there is a moving part you'd be seeing grease stains as it works out of bearings or bushings.

I could go on in the same vein for a long time but you get the idea

Here's a couple of bits of advice I've given out many times over the years..

1 : I find it helps to make up little stories about the history of the object - maybe it broke down one day and the engineer got angry and hit it with a wrench - that might leave a dent and crack the paint which would lead to a rust patch forming and paint bubbling off etc.. Maybe parts have been replaced at some point - meaning that there is a much fresher component somewhere with less rust or a mismatched colour..

2 : I'd advise against using built in filters in Painter while you work on this sort of thing. Commonly people apply these, erase some bits and call it done. Instead I'd suggest manually and thoughtfully painting areas of wear/dirt and applying the filters to what you painted - this will force you to think about every mark you place and encourage you to question whether it should be there or not.

Anyway - Good luck with the hunt. The first one is the hardest to get