Student Portfolio (Sophomore)

Streak Thunderstorm

Hey Polycount. I've been lurking around here quite a bit and I'm just amazed at the quality of work shown here. I recently finished my second year at SVA in NYC and we were required to put a portfolio together.

I'm looking for any advice you can offer on how to get better. I originally wanted to be a character animator but I have since realized that I definitely prefer modeling, rigging and texturing characters more. I'm not very experienced with texturing so far. I've messed around with Substance Designer and I enjoy it but I aspire to walk amongst the hand painter Jedis we have here. If you have any tips on how to improve what I have or if you have any suggestions on which direction I can go to pursue texturing, I would love to hear it. Thanks for your time.

http://www.jaime-silva.weebly.com

SwdPwnzDggr

The main advice I can give with texturing is to start with the basics in photoshop. Once you learn how to correctly make your maps in something like photoshop and understand how it comes together then branching out into something like substance or dDo comes much more naturally.

Also one of the big issues with character modeling is topology, so if you show off some of your characters wireframes people will have a much easier time giving you critiques.

Good start so far though, and good luck

Streak Thunderstorm

I appreciate your feedback. I'll be putting more wires up eventually. Would anyone else mind throwing their 2 cents in?

Envart

Your robot is spinning a little too quickly to clearly look at the details. Your portfolio seems to be a generalist type affair, but if you were wanting to get into games, you may want to create something more specialised when applying for jobs, unless they're generalist ones of course.

What you have now is cool for showing off the your academic work, but if you want to be a character artist you need to be working towards creating a solid portfolio. There are a fair few threads on pc about learning character art and portfolio construction.

http://www.hazardousarts.com/ - example of an artist's folio
http://www.jonjones.com/2005/10/07/your-portfolio-repels-jobs/ - the classic

Streak Thunderstorm

Nice. Thanks for the suggestion Walrus. At SVA, we're taught the generalist approach for our first 2 years. I guess its to be "Well rounded" in terms of the technology out there. I'd really like to focus because I get the most enjoyment out of making characters.

I'll take a look at the examples you've given and try to shape my stuff towards character art.

Streak Thunderstorm

[sketchfab]024f5f2987a24e188ba7b56e35bd3564[/sketchfab]
Adelaida by StreakThunderstorm on Sketchfab

Here's a model I did. I'm trying Sketchfab out.

Tobbo

If you want to do characters, even stylized, you need to study human anatomy. Don't wait!

With regards to hand painting, check out http://www.ctrlpaint.com/
Just practice painting in 2d. Focus on form, values, and study color theory as well.

Best of luck!