Portfolio Critique

nGreenroad

I just updated my portfolio and would love some feedback on how to make it better (both content and layout.) Please be as harsh as possible. Thanks!
http://nathangreenroad.wix.com/nathangreenroad

pixelpatron

Can't say I love any of these characters. None of them feel like they have a soul yet. Your lion head rocket hand dude is pretty cool, but his pose and model symmetry makes him less interesting. Materials/textures need work across the board. Anatomy not fully developed, and only slightly hinted at in places in attempt to skirt by. I'm not even an character artist and I can see these things.....you've got more work to do.

Lack of owning your own domain for your portfolio shows lack of commitment. Your attempting to get hired I presume, how can anyone take you serious with a free site from Wix? Blog fine, but your portfolio? Pony up the $100 bucks and own your profession. Your playing with the big boys, gotta level yourself up and get there if you want to play.

imthedan

pixelpatron wrote: »

Can't say I love any of these characters. None of them feel like they have a soul yet. Your lion head rocket hand dude is pretty cool, but his pose and model symmetry makes him less interesting. Materials/textures need work across the board. Anatomy not fully developed, and only slightly hinted at in places in attempt to skirt by. I'm not even an character artist and I can see these things.....you've got more work to do.

Lack of owning your own domain for your portfolio shows lack of commitment. Your attempting to get hired I presume, how can anyone take you serious with a free site from Wix? Blog fine, but your portfolio? Pony up the $100 bucks and own your profession. Your playing with the big boys, gotta level yourself up and get there if you want to play.

From what I've heard, possible employers don't care what website you use. They don't care if you use Wix or not because you're not trying to be a web developer. I do agree on the domain, though. Just pay the $5 a month to get a .com

While on the subject, I've also heard that the portfolio isn't all that big deal either. Most employers will only watch your reel anyway. Put together a very solid reel (1st piece best, 2nd piece last... fill in the gap with quality over quanity) and it'll get you a job.

pangaea

OP, should just use art station for a website.

Also, that about makes you look lazy or distracted. You talk about loving stories and playing piano.

It funny that you say you love sculpting, but you don't have any hi poly sculpts or likeness sculpts or anything that would show godlike sculpting.

nGreenroad

Thanks for the critiques guys! Looking into getting my own domain now. My next character will focus solely on showing off anatomy and replacing the crappy viking (the first character I did). Looking forward to putting in the work to get better. Pangaea, it's funny that you mention the no high poly sculpts. I was told by a few instructors that people don't want to see the high poly stuff on the main portfolio. But the more and more character portfolio's I look at, the more high-poly stuff I'm seeing.

4bidn

Hello Nathan,


I like the way the front page loads, it is simple and clean and easy to navigate. The grey rollovers are a nice touch. I like the vertical format for characters. I don't like how you choose to crop your characters. For the Jules character it looks fine, but the crop on other three it is unflattering and ugly. Each pane for the characters is the same size, but the space between differs.


I don't like seeing the environment in the background. It is a distraction, I think a clean solid color would look better for these characters. Pick your shots better for the thumbnails. The gorilla looks fine, but the shots on the others have lots of wasted space. On Jules, for screenshot6, this should be just a grey scale turnaround with no wires. Front, back, & side, making the best use of space. Wires will look best for closeups and on distance shots they end up not looking too good.


Oh, I don't like seeing the filename at the bottom of the enlarged shots, it looks bad and takes away from what I am there to see.


I hope this was helpful,
Cheers!

BradMyers82

imthedan: demo reels haven't been popular for over 7+ years now. When I got into the games industry people stopped making them and opted for high res images. Unless you are a level designer or something where you really need to show a fly thru of your scene, I think images are much better.

The problem with demoreels is people don't want to waste time. If you have have an image they can instantly see if its good or not and move on. Demo reels usually drag on and on and a lot of people don't even want to deal with them when they have to go thru hundreds of portfolios in a day. So I wouldn't waste time making a demo reel unless you have a very specific reason for doing so.

The website you are using to show off your work is quite bad though as others have pointed out. I personally hate those flash image things, and its not even evident how to get out of character "A" to look at character "B". One page with all your work lined up as images is what I would recommend. No fancy flash crap. You could go with thumbnails and a page for character "a" route too if you want. Its sorta what you have now, but its currently way too difficult to navigate and see things. I think if you switch to art station as pangaea mentioned and work on your organization it would be loads better. Good luck man.

BradMyers82

about the high poly stuff. Its not a good idea to have a lot of unfinished work on your site, but if you can present it in a way that looks clean and shows a very high level of skill or creativity I think its ok. If your site is full of sculpts it might mean your not good at finishing things, which is a bad sign.