Rafal's folio - C&C welcome and appreciated!

Loginus

Hi,

I have recently uploaded a short demo to YT and and made my portfolio website - I wanted to ask you all for some feedback on it. Any comments on the works themselves, is the re anything you would rather not show, anything you believe is missing? Some overall first impressions, does it look just bad and amateurish or do you see anything in it?

Feel free to be brutal if you think its appropriate, I want to consider all feedback and incorporate good advice as I'm starting to work on some new stuff. Here we go:

RAFALK.CO.UK

One more thing. I wanted for a change to make some more environmental pieces next and I wondered if for someone currently aspiring for an entry level artist position would it make a good impression? I mean, does it show a diversified skill set or rather a simple lack of focus?

Thanks in advance for any replies, after seeing some awesome work on polycount I'm certain you guys know what you're talking about

Peace,
R.

Btw, I wasn't certain if this post belongs in pimp and prev or in general, I posted here since the folio is almost exclusively a bunch of 3D models - sorry if I posted in the wrong place though!

Ahoburg

Depends on what is this portfolio is intended for. . Take your favourite modern game, look at how detailed and awesome those models are, then look at your stuff. If your stuff doesn't come close to that level, then you need more training and studying. I will be brutally honest, your models are crap. They would be decent in early ps2 era, though.

And it's generally not the best idea to do both character and environmental art. Nobody really cares about how diverse your skill set is if it's unrelated to the intended field of work.

For starters, I recommend you to study anatomy more. Some books about that wouldn't hurt. For a general anatomy, you won't find a better course than Scott Eaton's "Anatomy for Artists". It is incredible. Maybe take a look at some 3d scans, they are incredibly helpful in learning forms and how things actually look in 3d. They can be expensive, but well worth every penny. Then hard surface and subd modelling. To learn how to do complex and cool hard surface shapes, visit Polycount's The Weekly Hard Surface Challenge.

What you want to do is to try to reach the sky. Few years of intensive practice and studying, and you'll be golden.

LSheridan

In addition to what Ahoburg said, I would recommend taking the exercises off. Regardless of quality, unless it is nicely drawn figure studies, I think it takes away from the portfolio as they aren't completed work, and don't resemble any kind of ideation process. The fact that you've gone as far as completing this much work and have everything setup is a great start though. Just keep at it!

toren3d

I would suggest replacing your index.html with your portfolio.html so that rafalk.co.uk goes directly to the portfolio goods. I'd also move the paragraph of verbage you have on the current 'home' to the contact page.

Popol

First my critics about the layout and presentation of your portfolio :

- get rid of the Home page, it's completely useless, and make the portfolio page the main page. When I go on a portfolio, the first thing I want to see is big pictures of the guy's work.
- Change the header, no need to write "online portfolio", I already know it. Instead write "Character artist", "Environnement artist" or whatever you are.
- Make bigger thumbnails
- Show textures and write the polycount and texture size somewhere for each piece.
- get rid of the showreels, it's useful for animators but not for still work. Screenshots are way better for the kind of work you showcase.

Now about the quality of your work:

- I wouldn't say it's crap like Ahoburg but it's far from professional. Your characters have a nice silhouete and a good topology but your texturing is absolutely horrific! So work on this.
- Pick a specialisation. You can't be good at everything, so pick something you like (characters, props, environnement,...) and work on it everyday until you are amazing at what you do.
- Don't show drawings and paintings on your 3D portfolio unless you are very good at these, which isn't the case =/

In short, I wouldn't keep anything in your portfolio and work on improving your skills. I think you have potential and if you work hard you can make professional stuff in a year or two. It may sound too harsh but I hope it will help you improve, good luck!

Kimon

Like others have said, your texture work is horrible. I'm certain all of the models would look better with just ao, nrm and a flat colour.

Personally, I wouldn't show any of that to any studio, so keep working hard and get some new GOOD work on there ASAP. Also, portfolio itself feels like a bad sci fi movie from 1995. Change those colors.

Some positive stuff: You clearly already know the basics and your way around a bunch of programs so that's a huge time saver. Now you just gotta study better peoples work and become better yourself!

Good luck man!

Loginus

get some new GOOD work on there ASAP

That is the whole point of showing it here, isn't it - so I can make the following stuff look better.

Regarding the portfolio itself - that is right, when I update it with new stuff I will simplify it to just portfolio and contact info, as well as limiting the amount of pieces shown to probably 3-4.

@popol, kimon

Textures - yes, I know that is the main focus now as I've done it the least. It would be cool if you can point out what is in your opinion the worst aspect of it though - details, colours, do the normals look wrong etc?

Regards,
R.

Kimon

Kudos for taking criticism the right way! Shows great maturity and professionalism.
I think may main problem with the textures is that it feels like I'm looking at a flat, muddy diffuse. I can't really make out any spec, gloss or even normals. So I would say that the main problem is that they lack material definition. Looking at that soldier for example, I can't really see any difference between skin, metal, cloth or anything else.

Popol

Like Kimon said, the number one problem with your texturing is the very blurry diffuse and the lack of material definition.

But to give you any good pointers it would help a lot to see the texture flats of one of your characters. And in what engine did you render these?

Loginus

Hi again,

I started working on some new stuff with improving texturing as main priority, C&C welcome as always.

https://skfb.ly/zVCv

models would look better with just ao, nrm and a flat colour

From what you pointed out here I could understand that there are significant shortcomings at later stages, like texture extraction and painting? To illustrate, would you say that this WIP looks more promising that the final model turned out?



I rendered everything within 3DS, using mainly quicksilver but I think I'll get Marmoset Toolbag for upcoming models though.

Kimon

Yes, I would say it looks much more promising!

PyrZern

Same issue I current am having.. Clay-render looks better than final textured model. The curse of having good imagination :P (jk) Well, actually, more like it has the potential to look better. Sometimes our mind start filling in the emptiness with details that good texture can do. We just can't make good texture to actually fill it yet.

nukes

hey man keep up the good work and definately keep an eye on other people's stuff here on the forum :thumbup: