Help me improve

Bloodhound8784

Here are a couple of my most recent works. I am looking for any feedback that can help me improve, suggestions of areas that need improvement, anything. If you think it sucks tell me and let me know what you think sucks about it. I am trying to hone my skills to eventually be AAA quality, I know I am not there yet but any suggestions that can help me out are welcome. Thanks
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allknighter

just popped my head in briefly.
But the first things i noticed are:
1. you should still post picture and wires as sketchfab is a little slow, and doesnt move 100% like youd want.
2. onto the TMNT, the chestplate is very squared in its shape, and i think you can benefit from making it a bit more dynamic.
3. the woman, her pose says benevolent stride, but her face says scared. So im not quite sure what her emotion is supposed to be. And when i start the 3d view of the sketchfab, her eyes are all juttered away(back to my first point )
4. you should add some more apparent scratches in the shell for the turtles, and metal for the woman.
keep it up

Brian "Panda" Choi

Bloodhound, do you have any previous education or training (self or taught) in still life drawings, figure drawing, or painting with acrylics, oils, etc?

Bloodhound8784

I am pretty much self taught. I have taken a couple of Maya classes but for the most part it has been trial and error. I have also taken a few life drawing classes

Bloodhound8784

Thanks for the advice. I am still working on my faces and portraying emotions and character. I will also be working on my textures to bring them more believability.

Brian "Panda" Choi

I think what helped me, not only as a 3D artist, but a PAINTER was to take a concentrated crack at creating a handpainted character in the vein of World of Warcraft.

Why?

Because it force me to not only worry about material definition and good character design, but asked me to solve problems like "Where should the values create focus on the character? What is the color palatte of the character? How do I make certain details pop more than others?" And without dynamic lighting, you're forced to solve the issue on your own through raw painting.

You'd be forced to learn, in a brutish way, color theory, painting in terms of values, thinking compositionally. A lot of foundational art technique that people tend to forget if they only focus on modeling.

You'll be a better painter.

Right now, you're previous two models lack a strong sense of design. They're textured adequately, but on the design ends, the character lack strong form, silhouette, etc. On the texturing end, it could use more "body" and design work. This is less about rendering skill, more about how the character design works.

If you're not going to do photoshop painting studies and breakdowns of works from Rembrandt, etc (though I recommend you make a habit of it if you can, it could only strengthen you), try making a strictly handpainted character and push as hard as you can.

I know this is annoyingly "big picture" stuff and doesn't tackle specific problems on your models right now, but foundation drives a lot of things. You make your foundation kick butt, the challenges later on aren't so systemic and subversive.

Ok, there is ONE thing.

Skin on both characters. They're flat hues. Real skin has hue variation.

Case in point, color pick this image across different areas of a human body.

Because of blood vessels, blemishes, and fat, etc. skin will have different hues.