Portfolio improvement - Fatih Gurdal Character Artist

fatihG_

Hey Guys,

Decided to improve my portfolio, eliminating the weak entries. Replacing some with newer more polished work. And improving the presentation of some.

In July 2012 I started a new portfolio site, and haven't really updated it since(, untill last night). Back than I based it on Hazardous' and Anuxinamoon's with a few twists of my own.
I am pretty satisfied with the overal design of it, not really going to focus on that at all, but if there are any no-no's that I have missed, do tell. =]

Anyway I have started working on the Gameloft Arttest I did a few months ago. The current presentation is kinda... bland, the character isnt posed and what not. So I worked on the pose yesterday, made lots of vertex edits as well. (I suck at rigging/posing -_-)
Did some lighting and presentation right now, and this is what I have:




I am planning on replacing the "bilalos", the low poly stuff with the huge round heads, with another lowpoly handpainted character I am currently working on.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1780243&postcount=435


I am also not too happy with the quality of the fantasy dude holding the sword and axe and the mole like giant. But I don't want to simply remove them right now and have very little on my portfolio.
Made a couple of new models since than, that have better quality imo. But I cant show them yet. So I will just need to wait to replace them.

Other than that I feel like I should have something more creature like, a quadruped perhaps.

Anyway any thoughts on what I am planning at the moment?
And What do you guys think of the posed female character and its presentation (vs what is on my portfolio right now, or just in general)?

Gannon

See if you can find an Auto rigger and Try referencing fashion models or just the overall type of person you want your character to emulate.

RMeeks

If the low poly is under 10k tris you can autorig it with mixamo for free.

fatihG_

Thanks for the tips guys.

I was actually using Mixamo's autorigger, but I am not too happy with the rigs it created. There seem to be some stuff that dont work properly. Some limbs collapse when you twist them for example. Plus the fact that you cant see your wireframe when placing the joints, and not being able to control the weighting of joints allot of time your final rigged character feels like rubber. On top of that, the script that they provide to add a control rig to the rigged character didnt seem to work properly for me, so I still had to do allot of things by hand. I dunno, maybe I just screwed something up or didnt understand the rig that I downloaded.

I still had to use Mixamo's autorigger, because I suck at it. In the end it saved me a bunch of time, so that's good I guess.

For the low poly handpainted character I am planning on doing next, I plan to actually rig it properly. I figure rigging/animation might be a plus in my skillset.

Anyway, here is the final presentation shot. Tried to recreate it as good as I could in Unity, so anyone interested in seeing in realtime, http://www.bb0x.com/unity/GLU/GLU.html




I went ahead an completely changed my website.. Probably will be allot of broken links on the interwebs.. but meh. New start =].

Ill be slowly adding stuff when I finish updating/creating them. Unfortunately the backup I made of the site isnt properly showing up as I used absolute paths/urls instead of relative ones.

RMeeks

I stood up and tried the pose your character is in. It feels kinda uncomfortable. It could be that I am an out of shape artist. Maybe try it out.

fatihG_

Yeah, I noticed it too.
The hand on the hip is probably what is the uncomfortable part. It shouldn't be like the handpalm is stuck to the hip.. for lack of better words. Would have been more natural if only the index finger and thumb where touching the sides instead of the palm.

Apart from that I don't think the rest of the pose is uncomfortable? I feel like it's a somewhat relaxed pose, Maybe she is pushing her boobs and ass out a bit too much.. but hey.. that's not too bad right? :P

Anyway I should stop being lazy and fix the hand.

killnpc

Great model, uncomfortable and unnatural pose.

fatihG_

Ugh.. I had "fixed" the pose and than decided to redo it from scratch.
Ended up being similar anyway..

So yeah, here is what I have now. Tried to go for a more relaxed an natural pose.


Let me know what you guys think. =]

garriola83

hey hey found your thread. yeah your model looks fantastic, materials are great, i am jelly of your materials, modeling is great, but the pose could definitely use some work. im just not seeing the inner movement, gestural lines from within the model itself. maybe something like this could help you out.

usually find the subtlest S-curves on the body and try to emphasize it just slightly. like bridgman always said, find that innner line of beauty and youre set. good luck!

fatihG_

I difinitely need to study poses more. Anyone know any nice online resources concerning posing?

For now I have moved on though. I need to flesh out my portfolio as it is super empty right now, since I am not pleased with the quality of my existing work.

Anyway here is my next character:


Have been working on this on and off in my free time. Will be trying to finish this this week. It is going to be a hand painted model. Haven't done any "pure" low poly modelling in a while and wanted to give it a go again.

Model wise, everything is pretty much done except for the head.

RMeeks

The first thing that comes to mind as far as websites for poses are
Posemaniacs.com
Pixelovely
or one of the 3dsk sites like
the comic art one

fatihG_

Cheers RMeeks!

The comic art one looks useful. I found that allot of pose resources focus too much on traditional art class like poses, not very handy for presentation shots. The comic one is nice though.

Maybe I should model a weapon for the character, so I can do more with the pose.
I wanted to model a futuristic like katana based on one of the design from Metal Gear Revengence anyway. =D

fatihG_

Finally had some free time to finish this model. Time for some unwrapping.
Even though I put in some hard edges and what not, they wont show anyway as it will be fullbright.



Also.. here's a little something.. someone might find usefull?

fatihG_

Hey guys,

I registered a new domain and transfered my portfolio over, updated it while doing it.

www.fagurd.com

Now I have gotten a few replies that the website is broken.
People are not able to "scroll to the right", or do not see a scrollbar underneath the images. Even scrolling with the arrow keys on the keyboard does not work, as they claim.

I have tested multiple browsers, Firefox, IE, and Android's native mobile browser. All of them work just fine.

I was wondering if some people could test if the site works or whether it really is broken.

So please head on over to www.fagurd.com and confirm/deny that it is broken.

Thank you. =]

Fnitrox

I didn't see the horizontal scroll bar at first too... then i noticed i could scroll vertically and saw it. The images are just too big to fit in a screen , and i'm on a 1920x1200 monitor.

I guess this would create some misunderstanding in the user.

Also i've got to say that even if it is a nice idea to have a horizontal scrolling, people (and possible employers) might not be used to it and skip looking for a solution altogheter : / which is a shame since your stuff is really good!

Shiniku

I think you've got some strong work!

Your website is a mess to navigate, and lacks focus I think. I'm not sure what you are trying to specialize in - characters, illustration, concepts?

The horizontal scrolling is pretty rough. I found myself zig-zagging all over your page and scrolling all over the place and in the end I wasn't sure i saw all of the images. It just doesn't seem very intuitive.

fatihG_

Thanks for the input guys.

I think I'll just make a couple different pages than, instead of trying to put it all on a single page.
Have the characters, props/environment and 2d stuff on separate pages, and send out a particular page depending on the job.

Having everything on separate pages I dont need to use the gimicky horizontal carousel thingies either.

I've been trying some smaller studios recently and wanted to show that I have a broad range of skills instead of just specializing.

fatihG_

Alright.

I have updated the site.

Feedback would be appreciated. =]

cowboynoir

cool model! but the female character's hip seems a bit unnatural....