portfolio weapon artist feedback

MarcoAntonio

Hello people!!
I am a selftaught artist and I have been working on my own games for years.
Right now I want to became a weapon artist, specialized on melee weapons (swords,axes,spears....I love that kind of stuff). I have been working for 7 months to improve my skills and I would love to get feedback for my portfolio. Furthermore, I also want advice and your personal opinion about my skills.
Besides, I want to work as a weapon artist, but I don´t know how to get a job. I have been looking info through the forums and I think that I am supposed to write a letter and a resume and send it to my favorite studios.... But how? What do I have to write? I have not idea...

Thank you in advance!

dGreenberg

Hey Marco! I'm not a weapon artist but I wanted to see if I could offer any advice from a different point of view. I think it might help if you tried to work some more on your presentation.

Right now all of your models are being displayed on the same dark gray background (with the Battleaxe having a vignette, which is nice), but it can be difficult to separate the metal value with the background value. An easy fix would be to change the background color, so your weapon values can pop a little more (using brighter colors to offset darker weapons, or darker colors to highlight brighter weapons), but you could also go more in depth and create more of a display background to pump up your beauty shots even more. 

Polycount has a lot of great answers over at the wiki if you get a chance to check it out. Here's one that has some links for prop related stuff, and this one is more about breaking into the game industry. Hopefully that helps and good luck with your search, man!

slosh

I could be totally wrong here cuz I'm not a weapon artist but I would say with the weapons you are creating, it might put you more in a prop artist role.  When I see someone as being a weapon artist, I immediately think about hard surface guns, etc which definitely requires a certain specific skillset.  I don't think it's wrong that you are trying to specialize but maybe your work is too niche.  It might be a good idea to branch out more with your weapons.  Expand to guns as well and maybe even other props to give yourself a more well rounded approach.  Just my thoughts!

MarcoAntonio

dGreenberg said:

Right now all of your models are being displayed on the same dark gray background (with the Battleaxe having a vignette, which is nice), but it can be difficult to separate the metal value with the background value. An easy fix would be to change the background color, so your weapon values can pop a little more (using brighter colors to offset darker weapons, or darker colors to highlight brighter weapons), but you could also go more in depth and create more of a display background to pump up your beauty shots even more. 

Yes, that´s something I still have problems. Thaanks dGreenberg! I will try to set a better presentation for my next weapon.

slosh said:

I could be totally wrong here cuz I'm not a weapon artist but I would say with the weapons you are creating, it might put you more in a prop artist role.  When I see someone as being a weapon artist, I immediately think about hard surface guns, etc which definitely requires a certain specific skillset.  I don't think it's wrong that you are trying to specialize but maybe your work is too niche.  It might be a good idea to branch out more with your weapons.  Expand to guns as well and maybe even other props to give yourself a more well rounded approach.  Just my thoughts!

Yep, I have already thought about that and have also tried with hard surface guns. I have to say that it was not difficult for me to get something decent so it would not be a problem. The thing is, that I prefer to make weapons for rpgs (weapons like the ones we would see on a elder scrolls for example). Anyway, I will also make hard surface weapons. I have already try to make something and so I think that I would not have a problem.

Furthermore slosh, what do you think about my works? Do you think that I have the skills? (I know that I still have a waaaay lot to learn but still I would like to know my current position). What do you think I should work more?