Character Artist Portfolio Review

Magihat

Portfolio: https://polybutts.com/

Recently passing my second year of working full-time as an artist in the games industry I realized I've never done a portfolio review thought now was the time as things are starting to get crowded in there. My goal is to work mainly in character art but I have so far always worked in smaller studios where I couldn't really focus only on on thing even if that still was my main expertise. To start off here are some general points that I have been thinking about myself:

•  What needs to go? Anything stands out as unfitting for any reason? Should the props be removed or are they useful in showing different technical skills not necessarily applied to the characters?
•  Common mistakes? Both technical and stylistical that is noticeable
•  Structure & grouping? Should it be more truncated and should personal work come before professional or vice versa?
•  Subject matter? More creatures or animals, more different styles or more concise?
•  Presentation of the models? I notice a lot of artist have a more muted and cohesive presentation between models often backgrounds that is in the dark gray range and not a lot of contrast.

I know stylized characters is a bit of a niche and I honestly can hardly think of many bigger studios that does stylized content outside of mobile and when they do it seems most of it is outsourced to game art studios like Airborn, Omnom or Rabcat or freelancers so I think that would be my goal if I am to continue doing stylized content?

Thanks for taking a look, any feedback is highly appreciated.

Magihat

Just giving this another chance at being seen. 

bkost

Hi @Magihat the first thing I did after clicking into your website was find a way to navigate to artstation to view your portfolio. The familiarity of viewing a portfolio on a platform I already know leaves me to 100% looking at your models and not worrying about how to navigate a new website. So maybe take that into consideration while applying to new jobs.

So now that I've navigated to ArtStation, I feel it is covered with a bit too many posts. Be brutal and cut out your weakest models. And consider dumping all the strongest 'Vind' and 'Down the Well' pieces into their own post. (Seeing a single prop post is not impressive). Or perhaps the post thumbnail's could just be changed instead. (this is concerning the prop posts) Take for example the The Vind - Indonian Villagers post, it gives a great idea of what I expect to see in the post. 

Take my critique with a grain of salt, you've got some great experience under your belt. The important step is to keep improving each day

carvuliero

For starter why do you have double post of half of your characters ?

Tay - there is something wrong with this girl jaw , probably proportion of the face are wrong and she have a cat eyes , is she hybrid of some sort

Forest Warden - you can see only hair and her feet which are structurally wrong so I will let her go

Folog - his forearm and arms are wrong thighs too either fix that or let him go

Animals - this are not very good in my opinion

I am not big fan of"Vind" ppl  , you could keep Watcher of the Veil she's Disney looking and will give you a better chance to find work in this style

You could separate props and characters in different sections or place props on the bottom

As for arrangement I will suggest to place your best few in the first row

NikhilR

Hmm, I didn't see any of these problems with his pieces, all of them look fine to me.
This is without looking at a reference.
@Magihat - Do you have reference/concept art for these pieces?

slosh

I'm somewhere in the middle.  I think on the surface, they look pretty good.  But if you look closer, there are issues.  Your texturing is quite weak to be honest.  I would say only Ancient Warrior comes somewhat close to being well textured.  The others are very flat, solid color looking pieces with very little variation in material or texture.  I agree that the Vind characters are a bit low quality.  Shapes are nice but some parts feel a bit blobby and unfinished and the textures look like straight solid colors.  Having stylized art is fine but you need more polish and iteration in most of your work.  I would either look to push more into PBR texturing with more high fidelity material and texture work or push more towards hand painted textures with nice gradients and color variation.  Right now you are neither and it doesn't make your work pop.  I've been following your art for a while now but I'm not seeing a huge leap in your quality.  It might be worth looking into a mentorship of some sort as you never want to work in a bubble for very long.  I hope you don't take that the wrong way.  You are talented but I think you could be pushing the quality bar much higher.

Magihat

Thanks for the feedback, they are very useful for when I proceed. I will do my best to respond to the critique

@bkost That is fair. I do wonder if companies feel the same way when looking through applications tho? I planned on having my community profile be more open to some experimental and unfinished stuff while the portfolio would be more scaled back and structured but maybe it's just best to keep them consistent?

@carvuliero For your first point I don't really have any rational explanation other than that I felt better having them separate but I get why it wouldn't be an optimal for viewing purposes to split up the marmoset viewer and other renders. Will move things around as I settle on which models to cut and how I wanna truncate things.

As for your other points do you think you can elaborate a bit what makes those things wrong? I know I need to work on my anatomy but I obviously made those mistakes. Don't have to be specific but just a general idea so that I don't repeat. As for Tay looking wrong and having cat eyes it is part of the stylization, I don't say that as an attempt to justify but it was the reality of the situation and a decision partially led by the art director. 

@NikhilR There are some posted by the concept artists that I worked with for Vind and Down the Well but for the other.
Vind: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/qA0WQL
Down the Well: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Z508vG
Additional Down the Well: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/DxY8l9 (the lanky dude 5 images down was the basis of Folog but the direction changed drastically mid modelling)

@slosh First of, thank you for your honesty.

You are hitting the nail on the head about working in a bubble and mentorship is something I have been looking for a long time but I sadly haven't found any that is a good fit due to timezone differences or timing in general. I have never really had anyone above me and sometimes I haven't even had any other 3D artists to work with so I got stuck in a rut and improvising a lot. Even looking at others artists models on Artstation may be misleading sometimes as I don't think I picked up the right lessons from doing that. Adding to that there is also blindness that social media recognition can bring as you could be getting a lot of praise for something that is not good in execution simply because it hits some notes that resonate with a lot of people, looking back at my things I usually only see the problems but there is still that (perhaps false) sense of accomplishment if you have gotten a lot of recognition.

Would you say that re-texturing would be worthwhile for some of these or should I just move forward and be more careful when texturing with upcoming projects? If so, not counting the "professionally" produced models - which would you suggest I update the textures of?

NikhilR

Thanks for linking the references, I think you've approached your characters quite well, and they have been approved for production, so you're good there and even if they can be improved further its more subjective than anything at this point, meaning in future productions you can keep working on your craft, you shouldn't ideally be dismissed on the quality of your current work. 

Like I did notice the stuff that @slosh pointed out, but I can let it slide and see the bigger picture. 
In a AAA studio you are rarely if ever going to work on a character solo, and while its always good to keep raising the bar, you are good with your current portfolio.

Since you want to work in larger studios, are they any particular studios your focusing on? Again I'm looking at this from a broader perspective, if there is a studio in Sweden/Europe that you want to try for, that makes matters simpler since you can tailor your work to them.

If you're looking to do realistic characters that's another matter.

Popol

I think the number one problem is the lack of anatomical knowledge. You only make stylised characters and it looks like you learned to make characters only by copying stylised stuff from other artists but never bothered to make a realistic study. This is a huge problem because making stylized character without anatomy knowledge can only get you so far, you need to know how a real face is made so that you can come up with a stylized version of it that looks artisticly pleasant.

slosh

I'm going to have to agree with Popol's sentiment as well.  Stylized art is somewhat hard to guage as it can be difficult to know someone's core knowledge in anatomy.  But people who do excel at anatomy will usually have some fully nude characters with the anatomy full rendered in their style, thus showing they do have a vast comprehension of the subject.  I think you could benefit from the same.  As for texturing, definitely just move on to a new project and focus your efforts there.  Perhaps doing something a bit more high fidelity with more focus on anatomy and texturing can take your folio to the next level.

carvuliero

Hopefully this will be useful

NikhilR

I still think your stylized work looks great, and you have a good understanding of anatomy for what is needed.
Again I'm looking at this specific to references comparing your work to them.
The reference for folog seems quite different from the final was that intentional?

As for the style of a stylized character, or rather your specific art style, I think that's really subjective, not to mention unless you're doing something more on the concept side and your style is driving the project, everything that you will likely do in AAA isn't going to involve your style at all.
You could definitely push the texturing with some procedural shading, there is a stylized shader material that's specific to substance, that might help in this matter (pm'd)

If you're looking to do realistic work, you'd go through the pipeline learning more about anatomical landmarks etc, if that's what your interested in.

Magihat

Thanks everyone, this is exactly what I was looking for and it really got me fired up to get my shit together. I hope this thread can be useful for other people in similar situations as well!

@Popol You are right. I have been using style references as not only that but also for anatomy and since I, as you point out, don't have the greatest grasp of actual real human anatomy my work have been suffering from being paler interpretations of someone else style. I have done some occasional anatomy studies but they are sparse and not as frequent as they should have been especially in an early stage which left me threading water now. I did recently get Anatomy for Sculptors just the other week and the way they break things up have already been useful.

@slosh I think your suggestion of doing something more high fidelity and with higher focus on anatomy is definitely the way to go as that would leave less room for excuses and the ability to cover up bad anatomy with clothes. Right now I'm thinking of whatever I make next I also want to have a underwear version of that character.

@carvuliero Thank you for this, it's extremely helpful! If I where to speculate I would say that the face being weird is a compounding effect of me not knowing anatomy well enough and following the 2D concept to closely while not taking into account that it might not be anatomically correct either. I really appreciate you taking your time to do that paint-over.

@NikhilR I really appreicaite your kind words. As for Folog I did almost finish the high poly of him in the form that you can see in the concept but it was changed for a more "friendly giant troll" type of character so it was intentional. I don't often do my own concepts, I think the closest to that you can see is Toren or some of my random sculpts. Already responded to your PM but I do think it looks fantastic and if anyone else is reading this and wonders what that might be its this: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=47&v=CLViJCnnvPI
(which is from what I can gather another take on the SoMuchMaterial thing)

_____

So from this thread and feedback I have gotten elsewhere going forward my course of action would be:

• Doing more anatomy exercises at a regular basis
• Focus my next piece around sound anatomy and tightening up my texturing first hand.
• Have a better habit of using mainly real world references as a starting point
• Cut out the weakest parts of my portfolio and truncate what is left into fewer more encompassing entries
• Combine the regular renders and marmoset viewer files
• Seek character art mentorship/classes/someone experienced to get consistent feedback from
• Reassess portfolio and my own content at a more frequent basis to avoid making the same mistakes again

Of course I am always open for further feedback but this is just what I am thinking about now.

Magihat

So this is how I truncated and edited the content. 5 entries was removed before even this so it's down to less than half I originally had.