Newbie portfolio review -- critique me, please!

natman

Hey there! Hope I'm doing this right/in the correct place -- I'm a current sophomore putting my portfolio together, and I'd love any kind of critique I can get. I want to highlight my 3d work as well as my digital art. I understand that the model of the cat and the mansion aren't up to par, so I'm currently working on improving them as they were done quite some time ago. Any tips would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

http://nataliemanwaring.portfoliobox.net/

Ashervisalis

I love portfolio reviews!! Here's my critique on it;

I'm honestly not sure what you're going for. You've got animations, character models, environments, an intro montage, and 2D drawings. I feel like if you want to get a job, you're going to need to be more focused, because right now none of them are really up to professional scratch. I feel your strong point is animation, but you still have a bit to go to improve. Your animation clips are also a bit short; I'd like to see something compelling, making me want to keep watching, and with more variety. 

Put all your animation in one video, instead of having a potential employer need to click on random videos to see your stuff. Take out all your 3D environments, as they're not up to snuff. I can't speak for the character modeling, but I can say if you pursue this path, you should get into sculpting, and not modeling the character in Maya. The intro for Blade Runner should be taken out as well. The 2D character drawings are neat, but I don't think these will land you a job. If you pursue 2D character drawing, you should have a career goal in mind, and check out 2D character artist portfolios to compare yours.

The chef animation is funny. It's not really portfolio worthy, but it's interesting. The fire animation at the end is pretty bad, so it ends on a low note, but going through spaghetti world had me smiling!

Keep going, you'll find yourself improving with every project you do. Just be more focused on what you want to do, as right now your skill set is too spread out to become amazing in any one of them. Keep posting your portfolio once or twice a year, reach out to professional artists and ask them how to move forward. Also, drop the Portfoliobox.net website, and use ArtStation. It's a way better format.

Zi0

Like mentioned above, pick the thing you like the most and specialize in it, become very good at it.

CybranM

I agree with Ashervisalis feedback, there is room for improvement and focusing in a specific area (animation, 3d modelling or 2d etc).
Is the spaghetti animation inspired by Felix Colgrave's videos? If it is you've got the style pretty close

natman

Thank you very much for the feedback, guys! And yes, the spaghetti video was indeed inspired by felix colgrave. I'll switch over to artstation. I updated my portfolio not long ago as it is -- right now I'm honestly not sure what to specialize in as I'm a second year, but any suggestions (I think someone said animation?) are much appreciated. Would splitting my work up into categories help? I also updated a bit of the modeling in my portfolio to be... not as bad, haha. Thanks again!

Kanni3d

natman said:

Thank you very much for the feedback, guys! And yes, the spaghetti video was indeed inspired by felix colgrave. I'll switch over to artstation. I updated my portfolio not long ago as it is -- right now I'm honestly not sure what to specialize in as I'm a second year, but any suggestions (I think someone said animation?) are much appreciated. Would splitting my work up into categories help? I also updated a bit of the modeling in my portfolio to be... not as bad, haha. Thanks again!

Splitting your work into categories may help for organizational/browsing sake, but you should still specialize, as you've got way too many paths in one portfolio

If you've got passion for multiple, I've seen people do a portfolio/domain specifically for 3d, then another domain specifically for illustration. Putting one too many specializations in a portfolio makes it confusing, but also hinders you spending all that effort/time onto becoming phenomenal at that one thing Best of luck!!

Nick_Medukha

When I just started learning 3D my portfolio was kinda similar to yours. Bunch of medium-quality works in all possible directions as you learn and want to try something new to find your niche, in my case it was stylised props, pbr, hand-painted environments etc. In my case had like 10 works in portfolio and now 6 of them are hidden. really.

My fail was that I thought that I should do as much different stuff as possible to get clients in different categories. You end up being a guy who can do many things, but nothing of them are in a good quality.

I see characters, animation and archviz in your portfolio, pick something one and push hard on it. And post only only BEST works in portfolio. If you post something new, and see that one of your 2 y.o. work doesn't fit and looks not as good as new works - just hide it. Your portfolio is your outfit - it is what people see first, so keep it clean and stylish )

Cheers!