freelance portfolio review
polycounter lvl 19
It's been a long time since I've asked for any portfolio critiques. I've had a few small jobs but I haven't really put myself out there because my portfolio feels a bit sparse, a gigantic chunk of my work is old school, diffuse only stuff.
The URL forwards to my artstation portfolio
www.artbyjustin.com
The URL forwards to my artstation portfolio
www.artbyjustin.com
Replies
I would also remove this line "I've never played or watched Pokemon so I apologize for any inaccuracies." from the pokeball description. It can only be taken as a negative.
The Torch and resurrection shrine feel as though they'd go in the same environment so I'd have them on the same page, less navigation.
I see a few different things that don't really tell me what your aiming for in terms of work. I see handpainted and realistic styles which is fine but depending on the type of job your applying for you should make sure the style they use/ want is in your key pieces.
What type of work would you like to get into? In my experience its best to stick to 1 thing and get really good at that, some people like to show that they can do a multitude of things but when your against other artists that are dedicated character artists or environment artists it doesn't make you stand out as much.
To me your folio shows your good at handpainting and your understanding of materials, color and tone is good but what I dont see is a direction to your work.
I'd suggest you work towards one thing (characters, handpainting or environments)
Some props are so basic (torch, pokeball) that they look like something that a newbie would choose to model due to not having skills to make something more complex. Showing 10 of such props together would convey that you can make stuff with consistent quality but if it's a whole page for one prop that's nothing more than a ball, it doesn't make a good impression.
Professor spaceman, shark and frank's monster look best IMO, unfortunately artstation seems to blur pics above certain height and frank's monster suffered from it.
Spaceman has some nice details on the back but his back is only shown with wireframe which makes it hard to focus on art.
btw I'm not sure if artstation portfolio thing is the best choice of hosting. A few years ago deviant art made a similar portfolio module and there was a flood of portfolios that used it. Artstation portfolio feels equally generic and i think that even their 'community' page would work better.
However, as you stated, your portfolio is not representative of a veteran. You have some good work, but almost nothing from your previous work experience beyond the few pieces from Pirate 101, and that's from back in 2013. That's totally fine as not every studio gig or freelance assignment is going to have you producing content you would feel comfortable/proud to display within your portfolio, but you have to take the time to produce additional work you DO want to stamp you name on. Your Frank's Monster is an excellent jump in that direction (and I loved seeing your PC thread for him), but the struggle is eternal and ongoing for us as artists. Until we have so much work that we're deciding what to get rid of is when we might...MAYBE...consider taking it easy.
So next step? That pokeball experiment look rad, but it's obviously only a test so now it's time to apply that to a full model. Show us what you can do with Substance Painter and apply it to something new.
It's all about that next big project.
The Substance test balls (all of em!) are really cool and would be a great series to display your material knowledge. The frank piece probably should be top front and center. It's really polished looking and presented really well.
Quick fix, typo under resume summary.
" MMO an mobile "