Looking for portfolio critique - Junior 3D Artist

Dethling

Hi there,

I'm currently looking for a position as a (junior) 3D artist (prop/hard surface/weapon) and already applied to a lot of game studios (unfortunately without any success yet...)

I want to make sure my portfolio did not contain any major "no-gos", so I would ask you to take a look at it and give me some honest C&C.

Portfolio link: https://www.artstation.com/artist/dethling

Thanks in advance to all of you.

Ashervisalis

I can't tell you why you're not getting calls back. I can tell you, however, that your steam powered stake thrower is pretty kick ass

Zeist

I'm in the same boat so you can take my opinion with a grain of salt but since I'm shirking my own job hunt right now I wanted to give some blunt input.

I think the presentation of your work sucks and is doing a disservice to your models.

Basically -

• Each DP cuts off most of the model and gives the viewer a hard time knowing what each piece is before clicking on it. Zoomed in shots for DP aren't necessarily bad, but right now all of yours don't highlight anything of interest on any of the models.
• No consistency in presentation - it's a minor thing and probably not that important but I think but if you have a re-occurring/recognizable layout imo to a degree makes you appear more organized and professional. Stuff like a watermark/signature always being bottom right or centered text, black bars, etc across your body of works.
• Your backgrounds vary between over-powering and dull. The GDI rifle lacks any contrast to the bg plate and with the lack of proper care for the lighting has killed a really nice piece. Air-con unit too is really dull and boring with the lack of light and blends into the bg. Alternatively the stake gun I believe is being killed and over-powered by the bg details & brightness.
• Composition - Once again, GDI rifle - the first render with parts of the gun cropped out along with the wasted space up the top right. Kind of better off just cropping your images with disregard to inconsistent image size between renders compared to wasted negative space.
• Text - Each image has it's own vibe regarding the font to fit with the style of the piece, not necessarily bad but it doesn't sit well with me personally and feels a little silly.
• Tri's or Verts - Another little thing - personally I'd go with displaying tri's over vert. I'm just more used to seeing a tri count rather then a vert count - irregardless of performance related info.

Some other minor things/opinions -

• Topology waste - I don't get why you cap all your cylinders with a row of vert's in the middle and some other minor things here and there that I feel if it's for games feels like bit of a waste and could be done via normals instead (Most notable I guess would be on the Starcraft rifle)
  
• Try some more organic hard surface stuff - like a sweet motorbike or something
• Might be worth considering showing some in game engine shots of models within UE/Unity despite using Marmo as primary.
  
• Substance designer & Zbrush in your software lists - I don't see any work that has utilized either, consider some pieces that show off your skill in either software.
  
• Your personal DP - Been noticing some people recently changing personal photo's into logo's and wondering whether that was related to avoiding bias. It's a minor thing, but could always potentially be a deciding factor as silly as it may seem - don't mean to make you self-conscious
• Artstation banner - That particular shot bothers me for the above reasons listed above.
• Texture/Materials work - Personally I think you need to work on these a bit more. Stake launcher and Warhammer rifle in particular. The feel kind of boring and rushed. I suck at texturing so I can't really offer anything better to say about it.
• Summary page - "I you want to use.." Might want to fix that.

To clarify - I think your biggest problem isn't necessarily with the models but your presentation. Your models seem pretty competent, if anything is letting them down it's the presentation and in some cases the textures.

Dethling

Thanks a lot for the honest feedback.
I totally agree that the presentation is not the best and that there is room for improvement. Will tackel this soon and also add some "in engine" shots.

Regardng the different "info styles/fonts", I noticed this before and tried to get this unified but after I tried some different "templates" I decided that the individual presentation styles simply add some flavour to the models.

Regarding Designer & Zbrush: I only have some generic pieces there (rocks, tiling floors substances etc.), so nothing fancy. So I decided not to add these "boring" pieces. But will see if I can get something more intressint there and add it to the portfolio.

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