Portfolio and Showreel Critique

CapoeristaKelley

Hello I'm a student in my final year and I was wondering if some people could I please get some critique on my portfolio and showreel please.
Thank you very much.

https://zephyrx24.wixsite.com/portfolio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox8lMQRa7Yk&feature=youtu.be

Nathan3D

First thing i would say is its extremely hard to put yourself as a generalist, you should figure out what field it is you want to go into, such as an environment artist or a vehicle artist or a character artist, it never really works out if your trying to be everything. then you should tailor your portfolio to that field, right now you have a total mix of everything and i don't know what it is your passionate about. from your work i would say environment or vehicle artist as there better than your other stuff.

I know that a lot of lecturers tell you to put everything into a portfolio but you shouldn't listen to them on that front.

next you should have breakdowns of your stuff so that people who are looking at your portfolio know how you came to the final process, such as texture passes, wireframes etc.

you should also cull out anything that isn't to the highest standard you can create, right now i would say that your satchel is your weakest so i would take that out.

in your environments, i would take a look at your lighting and your material definition, some of your objects are technically wrong such as the way the wood grain is running along objects (it usually runs along the length of the object), your normal map strength is a bit too strong as well. also take a look at how things are built in pieces there are a few objects where your texture runs over multiple pieces of the model without changing.

also I dont know about other people but i have fiber broadband and some of your images took a little time to load, you should grab yourself an artstation and use that

hope this helps

Kid.in.the.Dark

Project Critiques based on Showreel order:

First Car - Lacks reflection, looks very matte and dull. Side on view to reveal your car is one of the most dullest ways to present it so make sure whenever you're revealing a vehicle with a single shot you show a cinematic shot for that... for example




Robotic Hand/Mechanical Glove -
I don't feel like this prop/asset demonstrates much... it lacks design more than anything, it shows that the fingers are welded together via metal pivots but implies no functionality to what it is... essentially I can't tell whether this is meant to be a robot's hand, a hand for a manikin and essentially eliminates the option of glove for human since there's no slot to place their hand in... what I suggest to push this idea further is to add additional detail to aid the concept of it... wires, gear work, etc... anything that can boost it's narrative but at the same time making sure to provide additional attention to surface material definition (this applies to the entire portfolio since you tend to use overwhelming values for reflective surfaces etc)

Red Gorilla-like alien -
I'm not sure what it is but as the model rotates it starts to get wavy wiggly warping to it's arms/body but besides that it generally doesn't have much of a design to it... it looks very generic and provides no hint of backstory/narrative to it's origin which loses major points in the design category of a character, I'd suggest making a back story to it and then building features and developments based off the relevance to that backstory.

2nd Car -
Same critique as the first one, lacks reflections and the lighting is very dull... I'd suggest using a HDR map if you haven't already... it's basically compulsory to have when rendering vehicles in settings like this... you get a lot of eye candy from it off the metal surfaces as if you go with a flat skylight and standard lighting you'll never obtain those nice reflections that essentially make car promos look awesome without physically modelling objects for that reflection around it.

3rd Car - 
Same critique, the frame rate on that turn around is really low and actually feels uncomfortable to look at, I'd go back and have a look at why that is.

all environments -
As Nathan mentioned, the biggest issues are the lighting and material definitions... My biggest red flag was the overwhelmingly polished wooden shelves/cabinet... that needs to be dropped in value immediately because it sticks out as the single most damaging artistic choice to the rest of your environment (take note of that as a learning curve) because it could be the single thing that would raise an eyebrow to anyone whos looking to employ you regardless of whether the rest of your portfolio looks okay or acceptable, be responsible with reflection... it looks cool but the real talent in material definition is in materials that are matte.

Generally, I'd listen to what Nathan's said about breakdowns, etc... but most importantly portfolio direction... specialise, build, dominate...
Also again, based on what you have in your portfolio so far... your weakest work in the portfolio are characters, and your strongest are a balance between environment and vehicle. Whichever one you decide to go in, cut the rest... and that does mean everything that's irrelevant to the field you choose... if you choose environment you'll need to cut all the vehicles, characters, motion graphics stuff, etc... it's a pure commitment decision unfortunately.

Hope this helps man, keep going!