Portfolio critique for aspiring 3D character artist please

KingTomislav

Hi, i'm Tomislav. I'm self learning 3D artist who started learning 3D from scratch 10 months ago. I feel like i have make a great progress, but i still feel like i miss something. Knowing what you need to do next can be very hard for us self learners. That's why i'm asking for your help to review my portfolio. I mostly do characters, and you can find some of them are from polycount's monthly character art challenge. I know i need to have more work to fill that rather empty portfolio, and some of work there i don't like and i will remove it as soon as i will have better stuff. I'm very self critical and self aware. But i haven't had my portfolio honestly reviewed by anyone so far, and i'm sure some more experienced people among you can see some flaws that i can not.

Portfolio: https://www.artstation.com/artist/tomislavveg

artbychien

Hello Tomislav
it was a huge progress for just 10 month. It's a good start, keep it up.

You would like to work in the game industry as a character artist?
I thought you should make more beautiful shot in real time render such as Marmoset, Unreal Engine or Unity, and I would suggest to put more energy for the lighting, it will make your works looked much better.

I would suggest you to watch more tutorials for texturing as well, some of your textures' color looks not that alive to me. And the Forest Troll's anatomy for me is not right, since I am not a character artist, I couldn't judge.

But overall, your modeling skill is good.

jhoythottle

Looks like you're making good progress. My feedback is to always work from concepts and post your process on Polycount with each new project. That way you can get more critiques on every step of your process as well as have a concept for others to compare your work to. Your anatomy is off in places, but better than most beginners. Also, always replace old work with new work. Never hold onto a piece for the sake of nostalgia (My first ______). You may be proud that it was your first character, but employers don't care about that. They will only look for flaws. At this stage, your best bet for improvement is to keep finishing new projects and removing old ones until you have a firm grasp of the pipeline. After that you can start focusing on things like lighting and rendering. For an easy and cheap solution to this, I would follow artbychien's advice and look into Marmoset Toolbag. It's a simple way to learn how to plug textures into a game engine and will give you much better lighting.

KingTomislav

Thank you so much for you critique. It was more helpful then i thought it will be. I know now that i will really really have to sit down and learn that texturing. I already slowly started to dive in to magical waters of substance painter. I'm also in process of learning Unreal Engine (not the coding part of it). But working in it gets me frustrated cause my hardware is not that good for it. So i will probably give marmoset a try.

Character are my passion, or should i simply say organic modeling. Working in game industry is one of my dreams, but i don't shy away from animation and even 3d printing industry. I don't have fixed goal, i just work and improve until some opportunity comes up.

artbychien

Substance painter is an awesome texturing software. If you are interested in hand painted texturing, give 3D coat a try.
Unreal engine takes some time to get used to, I really like their node based shading system, it is very powerful. 
I totally agree @jhoythottle to look into Marmoset toolbag, it's easy to learn and will help you understand how to plug textures in game engine.

and I believe you will get there

KingTomislav

I'm refreshing this thread after one year have passed. Now i also have one year of freelance behind me. So things are happening for me. But it is always nice to have your portfolio reviewed. What you think is not good here and/or should be better: https://www.artstation.com/artist/tomislavveg

tnx.

Tomislav Veg