Looking for a Critique on my character artist portfolio

jasonm10918

Hello everyone, 

I'm brand new to Polycount and would like some feedback and critique on my portfolio.  I recently graduated from art school and I have been working on a few assets, trying to get them to a good quality.  I don't have a lot of work to show, but I'm striving for quality so any constructive feedback on what I could work on to improve my current or future work would be greatly appreciated.  

I have just started the process of looking for entry level and internship work so I'm hoping my portfolio will be strong enough with the limited amount of work that I have to land me that first job.  I'm also willing to travel pretty much anywhere that will take me.  Any suggestions or advice from those who are currently in the field on what I should expect or consider while I'm searching to break into this industry is welcome.  

Here's the link to my portfolio: http://www.jasonmetcalf3d.com/

Thanks!

Sebeuroc

Hey Jason, welcome to Polycount! Looking over your portfolio I do have a couple suggestions/thoughts.

•  Biggest thing - I would highly recommend cutting the graphic design stuff entirely. If this is your character artist portfolio and you're applying for jobs in the game industry, then focus your folio on that. If you do graphic design on the side an want to have a place to show your work, then give it another place to live online. It may be best to put your game art on ArtStation and use that for your applications. It's confusing to have both types of work side by side and it undercuts your ability to pitch yourself as either a game artist or graphic designer.

• I don't see any real-time models. Your work shows that you have an understanding of the basics of modeling, texturing, and setting up a scene for rendering. That's great, you need to show those things, but if you want to get into the industry then get your work into a game engine and capture your renders in that! I wouldn't say you should lead your pieces with a 3d viewer like Marmoset or Sketchfab, because they take a long time for an art director to view, but it can be a good secondary way to display your pieces.

• Go ahead and apply for jobs/internships. But keep practicing and developing pieces! You're absolutely on point, quality over quantity is the way to go.

I hope this helps. Good luck! 

Brian "Panda" Choi

Ditto what Zane said.  Especcially cutting out thhe Graphic Design and moving it to another portfolio.  You don't want to give ADs any room to think that you're anything else in thew 5 seconds they're looking at your home page.

jasonm10918

Thanks Sebeuroc and Brian!  I appreciate the feedback.  I totally missed your replies earlier.  I have since removed my graphics design assets to a different folio.  I'm working on an asset right now that I will be showing with Marmoset and I'm working on getting some other work done in Unreal Engine.  Thanks!

NikhilR

I'd say the Picard bust needs a lot more refinement to bring it closer to the actor.
Was it meant to be a stylized interpretation or were you going towards realism?
Early flight and common drake is so far your better pieces.
The anatomy study looks good too, you can definitely push it with more skill detailing.

Game art wise, only your early flight and Common Drake are a go. Render them in marmoset/unreal 4 with PBR materials and HDR lighting. Will make a world of a difference.
I would like to see the concept for common drake for a better comparison

jasonm10918

Hi NikhilR, I was aiming towards realism with it.  I do agree that it needs more work but I'm not sure what it's missing.

NikhilR

I'd compare your bust with this official bust that is currently on the market.
https://www.previewsworld.com/SiteImage/CatalogImage/STK450149?type=6
For the moment your work is more stylized.

I'm thinking it comes down to your approach to facial anatomy, rather than just capturing a likeness.

With likeness sculpting its really about training your eye see differences between a sculpt and photoreference.

One thing that helps is tackling a variety of different facial structures simultaneously as speed sculpts, then coming back to each one seperately and refining the details.

For skin detailing there are a number of approaches. I would look at Hossien Diba's approach to sculpting. There's a gnomon tutorial by him somewhere. Ryan Kingslien and Vimal Kerketta has some videos up as well focusing on facial structure and skin detailing.
Many free options available around as well.

jasonm10918

I've seen that bust before   I will admit that this was my first attempt at a full head bust out of school so my anatomy is definitely lacking.  Thanks for the advice and tips!  I'm looking at gnomon for some additional tutorials.   

NikhilR

jasonm10918 said:

I've seen that bust before   I will admit that this was my first attempt at a full head bust out of school so my anatomy is definitely lacking.  Thanks for the advice and tips!  I'm looking at gnomon for some additional tutorials.   

All in good time! We've all been there at some point!

jasonm10918

NikhilR said:

I'd say the Picard bust needs a lot more refinement to bring it closer to the actor.
Was it meant to be a stylized interpretation or were you going towards realism?
Early flight and common drake is so far your better pieces.
The anatomy study looks good too, you can definitely push it with more skill detailing.

Game art wise, only your early flight and Common Drake are a go. Render them in marmoset/unreal 4 with PBR materials and HDR lighting. Will make a world of a difference.
I would like to see the concept for common drake for a better comparison

Thank you for these tips!  I just started using Marmoset and I'm just about ready to finish a new piece with it.  I can get early flight into Marmoset pretty quickly.  Here's the concept I used for the common drake: 

  

slosh

I would cut out the Picard bust until you get a better handle on anatomy and likeness.  The anatomy sculpt has a lot of issues as well but it does show you put a lot of effort into it.  I would say work on anatomy a lot more and once you get more comfortable and can identify many of your own flaws in that sculpt, replace it with something better.  And as someone stated, you need to put these in an engine with PBR textures.

jasonm10918

slosh said:

I would cut out the Picard bust until you get a better handle on anatomy and likeness.  The anatomy sculpt has a lot of issues as well but it does show you put a lot of effort into it.  I would say work on anatomy a lot more and once you get more comfortable and can identify many of your own flaws in that sculpt, replace it with something better.  And as someone stated, you need to put these in an engine with PBR textures.

Thank you for the feedback.  I'm definitely aiming to remove the Picard bust and replace it with something else.