Portfolio - Critiques please!

Meteora

Hey there, I normally hate showcasing my art because I think its not very good and worth showing on Polycount. But I'm having difficulties time (demotivating as ever) trying to find a job, so I was wondering if you guys could look over my portfolio and give me feedback on overall usability, quality of art, suggestions on what new models I should be working towards, etc.

Here's my portfolio: http://www.3dmeteora.com/

And yes, I notice the lack of vegetation art. I need to fix that.

Thanks in advance.

Edit: Oh and do you think I should work on new pieces of art or continue to refine what I have already, since the model is already complete?

slosh

Well, it's a nice start but your folio needs a lot of work. You have a good base but everything I see in your folio needs at least another texture/shader pass. The first 2 props are ok texture wise but still feel clean and uninteresting. You could use a bit more texture work...add some more metal scratches/grime. What really suffers is the shaders and lighting. Both assets are totally specless and have zero material separation...they feel extremely matte. Do they even have specmaps? The tunnel scene isn't bad but again needs texture work and probably another lighting pass. It could also use a couple nice props to add interest. The wood texture doesn't really look like wood so I'm guessing when I say wood. It's also painterly but nothing else you have is stylized so it's a bit odd to me. Try looking at some examples of other people doing really nice hand painted wood textures to improve that. If you're making it stylized, add more lighting information and color. The metallic wall texture is your strongest piece IMO. Everything else in your folio needs to hit that level of quality. The floor texture also feels flat. The dagger also needs a lot of texture work to be considered folio worthy. Good luck!

silver_hoodlum

It is a good start definitely but may want to push the lighting/rendering work. This is quite common in games industry, many great game artist dont know much about lighting and they try to trick the final results to overcome this.

Meteora

Thanks for the advice, I'll have to push up the texturing work considerably then. I think I was being really impatient and just wanted to push the projects out as soon as possible instead of spending more time making quality textures. It is a bit discouraging to hear that its not good enough, but I guess that's what I get for not getting feedback and just blindly assuming its good enough, much to my detriment.

djoexe

What you need to say to yourself is this : Can it be improved ?

If yes, then what can be improved to make it even more cool ?

Be harsh to yourself, be your own spiritless boss that always want better quality stuff.

When you're done improving the project you're working on, repeat the first question as above and make a decision if your improvement is good enough to be shown or if it still need more work again.

No one will ever achieve perfection and art is never done in any ways.

For my part, I would say as the other says above....it's ok but can be improved texture wise and lighting wise. Maybe you should try something more complexe to show because right now, your meshes are quite simple and without real details to show. Take all the time you need, life is a never ending learning path, you are better from day to day, so keep it up.

Meteora

You're right that I can get better day after day, but it is a bit demotivating that I still have lots to catch up on. The job prospects seem far now that I look at what I consider rather mediocre work. And I don't think I can stay unemployed forever, I may need to devote some time to a side job giving me even less time to try and break into the industry.

Maybe I'm just not cut out for this. :poly124:

On the bright side, my wrist injury seems to be healing up so I can work harder than I did previously.

Does anyone have any good suggestions on good complicated meshes I could work on?