[Portfolio] Blake Withers

bwithers

Hi, I've not actually posted here before. Thought I drop my portfolio in here. Comments, critiques, all are welcome.

it's all here at: my portfolio.


I finished Seneca's Game Art program a little while ago and I've been looking for work with not much luck so far. So I'm looking for some feedback on my sturf.


Thanks

djoexe

I really like your portfolio and being able to view your assets in 3d space is quite nice. As an environment lover, your The waste piece is really cool, extremely well composed and edited...good music choice too A++ work Inspirational stuff !

Ravanna

"the waste" piece is beautiful! I do like the shifting image system too.
Gun is ok, but the characters are weak, you're obviously a natural prop/env artist, create more pieces like that!

PixelSuit

The waste scene is your strongest by far and its the only one that can't be seen from the first page! If it wasn't for Ravanna mentioning it here I wouldn't have seen it. You should make this the main focus of your portfolio, have this as the first piece you can click on and make sure the image used for the link is one of the renders.

I don't really see the point of having the images that move on the first page, for me at least its really slow and distracts me from your work which is the most important thing. I would rather see a nice image of the scene or model I'm about to view.

You have some really nice work here, it just needs to be shown off better from the first page!

MiAlx

Hey bwithers! Cool stuff you've got there!

I like the presentation of your portfolio. Really sweet idea to use animated thumbnails, the mouse - over - wireframe image is also really cool imo.
The environment is also great! I like that one the most.
I like the video of the environment too, really fitting music and atmosphere etc.
The various guns look really cool, especially that combat sniper your character has in his hands.

Some suggestions:

I would definitely change Lucky's pose holding that sniper rifle. It's just that it's not a natural pose holding the gun like that and also he seems a bit out of balance and his right knee appears over-stretched. But maybe it's just the perspective.

Ariana's hair seems unfinished, especially in the close-up. Ariana's pose could also use some tweaking imo, I think her hip's got a bit of a too strong upper-twist. Maybe rotate the hip a bit downwards, shift her more towards her center of gravity and turn her left foot outwards.

A strong pose will help sell the characters.

Also, maybe it's just me, but I am not particularly fond of triangulated wireframes, since for me it's harder to get a good view of the meshflow. Of course I am no modeller (I animate) so that could be the reason.

I hope that helped, great stuff and keep at it!

DWalker

I second the recommendation to remove the animated images on the main page (with the possible exception of the one for the wastes - I rather like that one). At the very least, reduce the animations' speed.

I also agree that the wastes is your strongest piece, so I would probably position it as the first element - unless you are showing them in a chronological order. I'm uncertain why you have chosen the current order.

Placing the individual projects on the menu bar also seems a bit odd - you might want to either remove them or place them as drop-down elements under the projects entry.

The solid green texture for the hunting rifle's scope really hurts the entire model. Also, the lenses are inset by a considerable amount.


The text on each project page should also indicate the polygon/triangle count and texture map size, as well as which textures exist (e.g. specular, diffuse, normal). I realize the count is on the roll-over image, but it isn't readily apparent, and is often difficult to read (on Lucky, especially, the white text blends in with the light gray wireframe image.