What can I do to improve my portfolio?

Brandross

So, I'm finally feeling financially secure enough to take some time to look for 3D modeling work, or take on some bigger projects.  What can I do to get my portfolio to win the approval of a prospective employer or dev team?

Portfolio:
https://www.artstation.com/bwminnick

JordanN

Your materials still need a lot of work. In the dirt & debris example, there is no lighting yet your texture has dark shadows. Likely because you took a photo of the ground when the sun was still out. In a PBR workflow, your albedo cannot contain any directional light, because it needs to be rendered in every type of lighting environment and the shadows fall into place (i.e indoor, overcast, sun, flashlight etc).

Where are your bump maps, metal maps and roughness maps too? The grass looks the same as gravel material. 

The rocketship example is also very dated. You need to update your workflow.
https://www.marmoset.co/posts/physically-based-rendering-and-you-can-too/

I would remove the 2D painting. If you're going to be a 3D modeler, focus on that.

I think your best work may be your retro inspired environments, but it's still not there yet for applying for a job.

If others chime in, I think you may want to start afresh and model one simple prop first that is PBR. After that, model a whole bunch of props that are much complex and detailed. When all these props are done, then you can start putting them together and build your first environment with them.

Shyralon

Personally I would recommend to do two things:
- learn about lighting and how to present models in a nice way. This is probably your weakest area right now, your modeling looks solid.
Product photography and color theory might be a good starting point for this. Then get yourself marmoset toolbag and/or Unreal Engine and try to create appealing renders of your props/environments. You could begin by using/learning a simple 3 point light setup and then try to replicate more complex lighting setups from references once you have a basic understanding of how things work in your renderer of choice.
This will drastically increase the quality of your portfolio as good lighting can make everything, even mediocre models look good (that's why product photography exists)
-The other point would be to make portfolio pieces which are actually relevant to todays requirement for games.
This means using normals maps and going through the high to low baking process, PBR materials and a polycount which is suitable for todays games.
Most of your assets look like they are coming from a (pre) ps1 era and/or are pixelart, which might be a nice style to go for if you are dling retro games but it does not showcase the skills needed today as even mobile titels have a way higher polycount/texturebudget than most of the models you have right now.
Going through the whole process and build current gen game models will help you a lot

Aside from this I would take out the 2D section (as you want apparently want to do 3d) and the rocket ship which looks a bit outdated compared to that.
I think currently your best work is the metroid inspired environment, it just needs better lighting and presentation