Humbly Requesting Portfolio Critique: Brian Choi
high dynamic range
Hi Polycount:
My name is Brian Choi, and I'm a Junior at USC's Interactive Media Division.
With the summer internship season coming up and GDC rolling up in March, it's time for me to get a (first ever) formal portfolio critique, I'd imagine. Especially since this more or less is my last summer to do an internship.
My portfolio: choib.blogspot.com
In regards to my goal/purpose:
- I just want to work on a solid team as a summer intern doing 3D art and opportunites to work out 2D concepts as a priority, and (the unlikely dream) at a place where the art culture is efficacious, be that a lot of people or working with someone who'd be willing to actually teach me for a short time. Previous work experience has mostly been blunt in terms of learning experience, and mostly just throwing me at the wolves (which has been fun), but I wonder if there's a place/person who'd be willing to really show me the ropes, in a strictly craft skill sense. Understandably, internship philosophy varies between groups.
- The very stupid, shot-myself-in-the-foot career dream is to be a Concept Art / 3D Character? Artist ninja, someone who can stay on a development cycle for more than several months and hopefully till ship, supporting/working with an awesome family of developers.
- In regards to short-term objectives, it's clear that the big guns who do have fairly consistent internships (Blizzard, Riot Games, etc) are unlikely at the moment. I'm not averse to environment stuff, even though my overall artwork schema seems mostly directed at characters.
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Some critiques I've gathered already: (Feel free to extrapolate, provide solutions for, or reiterate the following)
- Lacking fundamentals everywhere in all my pieces.
- [2D] Not confident mark making, lacking material definition, just keep practicing fundamentalsm understanding of light, and anatomy (Jacque Choi sacrificed some time for a lowly person like me to provide that critique, of which I am grateful for)
- Get a real URL and make a real website. Wordpress is easiest solution. Organize it better.
- Gotten several comments that my (hand-painted) 3D has promise (of course, it's not majestic by any means)
- Focus the whole portfolio better, right not I cannot tell what I can hire you for or what role you're aiming towards. Generalists don't get hired as often as you'd like.
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So, I imagine overall right now it's an operation to prune and get to the point where I can show my best with the handful that I've pared down to. What those pieces are, I don't know. And I do understand there are bigger guns than me in my age group, so it definitely feels like a salvaging operation. Trying my best to sell myself though
=============================================================
If there's anything I've missed, please feel free to tell me.
And lay it on.
My name is Brian Choi, and I'm a Junior at USC's Interactive Media Division.
With the summer internship season coming up and GDC rolling up in March, it's time for me to get a (first ever) formal portfolio critique, I'd imagine. Especially since this more or less is my last summer to do an internship.
My portfolio: choib.blogspot.com
In regards to my goal/purpose:
- I just want to work on a solid team as a summer intern doing 3D art and opportunites to work out 2D concepts as a priority, and (the unlikely dream) at a place where the art culture is efficacious, be that a lot of people or working with someone who'd be willing to actually teach me for a short time. Previous work experience has mostly been blunt in terms of learning experience, and mostly just throwing me at the wolves (which has been fun), but I wonder if there's a place/person who'd be willing to really show me the ropes, in a strictly craft skill sense. Understandably, internship philosophy varies between groups.
- The very stupid, shot-myself-in-the-foot career dream is to be a Concept Art / 3D Character? Artist ninja, someone who can stay on a development cycle for more than several months and hopefully till ship, supporting/working with an awesome family of developers.
- In regards to short-term objectives, it's clear that the big guns who do have fairly consistent internships (Blizzard, Riot Games, etc) are unlikely at the moment. I'm not averse to environment stuff, even though my overall artwork schema seems mostly directed at characters.
=======================
Some critiques I've gathered already: (Feel free to extrapolate, provide solutions for, or reiterate the following)
- Lacking fundamentals everywhere in all my pieces.
- [2D] Not confident mark making, lacking material definition, just keep practicing fundamentalsm understanding of light, and anatomy (Jacque Choi sacrificed some time for a lowly person like me to provide that critique, of which I am grateful for)
- Get a real URL and make a real website. Wordpress is easiest solution. Organize it better.
- Gotten several comments that my (hand-painted) 3D has promise (of course, it's not majestic by any means)
- Focus the whole portfolio better, right not I cannot tell what I can hire you for or what role you're aiming towards. Generalists don't get hired as often as you'd like.
=============================================================
So, I imagine overall right now it's an operation to prune and get to the point where I can show my best with the handful that I've pared down to. What those pieces are, I don't know. And I do understand there are bigger guns than me in my age group, so it definitely feels like a salvaging operation. Trying my best to sell myself though
=============================================================
If there's anything I've missed, please feel free to tell me.
And lay it on.
Replies
For cheap and decent web hosting, try holeinthewallhosting.com its $20 a year (plus $10 for a domain name a year).
The white banner and black background have too much contrast.
Each one of your images has a different "branding style" and text on it. I'd create a standard way of presenting and labeling the images.
Like you've mentioned, and Zac as well, it's hard to figure out what's going on. Just the general flow of your portfolio and how it reads distracts from the quality of your work, like you're forcing my eyes to go from one decent character, to a prop, to what looks like a game concept, to a speed sculpt, to another character, etc. Specializing is one thing, and readability is another. Beyond the work changing in terms of context from one image to another, you spend a lot of real estate framing your work - which is changing from one piece to another - and that's also becoming a distraction. You don't need to create a template or anything like that, though it wouldn't hurt, but I'd just tone down on the filler and focus on your game art. To be honest, I'm not going to read your last panels - I'm not really in a position to care. I want to see game models, done well, no bullshit.
If you could bang out a few more assets that match your leading piece, and focus the folio on 4 - 5 characters and props I think it would be pretty solid. As for concepts, I dunno, it's a nice thing to have but if you're not a rock star I wouldn't let it distract from your headlining work.
Another thing is that you're focusing on a handpainted process - something that would fit into WoW, DotA, LoL, etc. That's fine, but you need to understand that it will limit your marketability as an artist. You don't need to create "Generic Dude A" with all of the dx11 bells and whistles, but as a person working on titles that does have a less stylized look - it may be harder to see the connection between you and their company. Like how much training time you would take, where your interests lie, etc. Again, not horrible - but just realize that it can be a problem. I've been turned down in the past because my work was too stylized - so - I'm speaking from experience :P
If I were you, I'd just get a cheap host and make a one page set up with all of your info and more consistent renders laid out. More work like the first piece you have, nuke the concepts and design panels. It needs to be quick and easy. Basically, most people looking at your folio don't have a ton of time - so - avoid causing more work for them.
Cheers,
Gav
Edit> just realized you have separate tabs for concept and illustration. It was a 3rd read detail for me. But - i stand by what I said above - don't distract from your strongest ability. You can be a character artist who happens to be able to draw and paint, but you don't need to spread yourself thin.
http://i.imgur.com/SjcyL.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/tJ5Dd.jpg
The 3rd and 7th image on your 3d page are obviously lower quality than the rest of the work because they look like thumbnail sketches and speed sculpts.
Anyways, I did a somewhat massive organizational change, trying to focus everything to mostly project-based pages or category pages. Modified colors and Graphic Design as well. (All of the above implementing critiques I've gotten from other people)
Any additional critiques from anyone?
1) That's awesome, I loved the IGF build. Such a fun game.
2) Can't say it makes a great portfolio piece, though. Much as it pains me to say it, the visual style didn't add anything to the game experience, and none of the assets are individually impressive. Such is the nature of school projects and deadlines, the art goes to serve the game and is seldom representative of the artist's best work. All things told, I think that should be the next thing to get replaced on your site.
Also, double check your site from your phone or tablet. I first saw your site as the mobile version and it looks completely different. If you go to GDC or maybe a meet n greet somewhere there is a good chance you might be showing your work on an iPad of some sort. Maybe look into a different template that looks good in both the mobile and desktop versions. But keep it simple. Don't make hiring managers have to click more than once or twice to see your best work. Good luck!!
And definitely needed that reminder about mobile versions T_T, heh.
Unless you are trying for a web development job, they are willing to look beyond a simple web design as long as it presents you and your artwork well. Having said that, since you are an artist, they will expect the web pages to reflect that - banner art, color selections, proportions and placement all say something about your skills and talents.
I'd also recommend testing from a variety of platforms and browsers. Explorer and Firefox/Chrome for the PC are still a given, but Safari on the Mac is also important, especially for artists. For mobile browsers, I'd try to use a tablet rather than a phone - phone displays are really too small to give an accurate appraisal of artwork. I'd also try to look at the site from a public browser - libraries are ideal; this not only lets you see it on a limited bandwidth system, it will also give you an early warning if something is blocked by common parental filters.
I'd recommend a web-friendly version of your resume - not only does it load more quickly without any concerns about Acrobat deciding to crash, it allows you to match it to the rest of your site and to have imbedded links - mail addresses, companies, work. You can certainly keep the pdf, but I'd have it as a link from the resume page.
You should have a mailto: link on most of the page. You could break your main banner image into multiple pieces - the top left section would be your name & icon, the right section would be text with a matching background color, and the bottom would be the green bar/bottom image. This would have two advantages - a clickable link, and the ability to change the contact information without having to create a new image each time.
You might want to include an "About" section; I'm not a big fan of talking about myself, but employers seem to like them...
Personally, I would remove the illustrations from the site as I don't think they have the same level of polish as your other work and may hinder you in the long term.
Right now, you seem to have a limited number of characters in your folio so if possible I would continue to build upon those (unless you prefer to go down the prop route) in which case you may have an easier time building a prop library rather than a character one.
Be careful when advertising yourself as a "Character/Prop" artist. This "may" be ok when you are advertising for a role in a smaller mobile/browser based company (where they might need somebody who can get his hands dirty with several disciplines) but if you are looking for higher end work then you will need to specialize yourself.
Of course, if you enjoy doing both props and characters, I would consider creating two separate portfolios, one for props and one for characters. That way you can promote yourself as a specialist in one or the other.
Good luck mate, enjoy GDC
I used an ipad last year (I'm doing the same this year) and it worked really well. The only people that I saw with printed folios were concept artists. I haven't used a mini, but as long as the images look good it should work just as well. I say just go with whatever you think makes your work look the best and is easy to flip through.
hope this helps!
Good luck! I'll be rooting for ya.
It's with a C.Wright, if that changes anything.