Critique Requested! Making portfolio pieces to be an illustrator on the Hearthstone team

ChrisR

Sup! Right now, I'm tailoring my portfolio to apply as an illustrator at Blizzard. I'll be attending Blizzcon this year, and they have a portfolio review+recruitment booth, so up until that point, I'm working hard to make sure I have a kickass portfolio to present to them. So far, I have two pieces, and I would love some honest and awesome feedback on them to really make them shine. I haven't illustrated any characters from Blizzard's IP's yet. These are characters from my own world I've created. What I plan on doing is making a few more pieces demonstrating my own world, and then making pieces of characters from World of Warcraft that are designed to be on a Hearthstone card.

 

lotet

Its a solid start. I say your "only"  major problem is rendering, so Id double down studying that.

ChrisR

lotet said:

Its a solid start. I say your "only"  major problem is rendering, so Id say double down studying that.

Yeah, my most recent piece was the first one, and I'm more proud of how that rendered our compared to the second one. Later on I'm gonna render out the second piece more and make it look less flat and muddy. 

lotet

yeah, the first one is absolutely better, but you still have some ways to go even with that one.

this might feel unfair, but comparing yourself to professionals is a good way to improve. I hope you dont mind me doing this. Im comparing your gorilla image to "Trogzor the earthinator" by Mike Sass.

Overall its holding up descent, Id say maybe limit your color range a bit more, If you look at the Trogzor card compared to yours its using a much more narrow range of colors.  I tried color picking more from the Trogzor but It was honestly hard to find more then what I got.


Next up lets look at some rocks, you have the overall rendering and textured nailed down, what your missing is the actual shapes. The rocks on the right have a lot more shape and structure, while yours are mostly a flat plane with textures on it.


The same goes for the Forrest in the background, its lacking depth and structure and maybe a bit of love



Hope this helps, your definitely on to a good start!

ChrisR

Woah, thanks a bunch! I love it when people are willing to go the extra way to critique. The visuals help a bunch. And I absolutely appreciate it that compared my work to the professionals. After all, those are the people who I'm trying to be with. 

I'll definitely give more love to the backgrounds for sure. I was afraid of giving them too much detail, but now I have a better understanding on how to achieve that better. Also I have a better idea how to build up the rocks.