Portfolio Feedback / Career Advice - Need some help

andrecastel

I've been a really bad community member, I'm here everyday, but mostly watching. I want to change that, I actually started my career thanks to a community like this, back in 2004 in a brazilian 3d art forum. That was my school, participating, getting feedback and helping others in same path.
Now i I feel a bit selfish coming here to ask for help, after a long time without posting... but I really need some help.

The studio where I work at is making some cuts and I'm pretty sure I'l be without a job by the end of the week. The reasons? There are too many 3d artists (for the size of the company), for the last few months we've been mostly without any work to do, I've got paid late for the last 2 months (I was one of few "lucky" ones) and I'm the last 3d artist to have joined the company. I've been looking for a new job and applying to some in the last couple of months , but I realised I need to do some changes to my portfolio. It was hard looking for a job as I felt like I wouldn't hire myself either. So now I HAVE to find a new job (I have a wife and 3 kids depending on it), so I'm willing to change whatever has to be changed.

I've been working as a 3D artist for over 10 years, with video games for the last 7, since I've moved to the UK, but I never got into a bigger studio. I like learning new stuff and trying different areas, from traditional art (drawing and watercolour) to 3d modelling, rigging and even risk myself into some coding. But I feel like I never got very good at one thing, just average at a lot of things. Does anyone else suffer from the same thing?

I enjoy working with characters, and have tried making new pieces for my portfolio, as at work I've been doing mostly simple characters for casual games. To be honest I've been losing my passion (hopefully it's just because of the current job), was hit by depression and "impostor syndrome".. I guess I needed an wake up call, now I can't really cry for the wasted time or lack of better pieces for my portfolio, but need to actually work on it from now on.

I'm sorry about the long story, but wanted to give you guys some background...
now this is my portfolio www.andrecastelart.com

I'm open to any feedback, even if it's a matter of reworking some pieces, getting rid of some or dumping the whole thing.
Any advice would be welcome as well and I appreciate any help.

Thank you!

Ashervisalis

Honestly, your portfolio is pretty difficult to look at. I'd get rid of all the definitions throughout the page. Your thumbnails are all small and de-saturated, and you need to click 'more' to see the rest of your projects. I think there is a unanimous agreement on Polycount to just use ArtStation as your portfolio. You have some cool projects but the presentation is a bit of a chore.

andrecastel

Fair enough... thanks Ashervisalis. I shoul probably get rid of most of the text in the main page and focus on the actual portfolio.
I still like having a dedicated website for the portfolio where I have more control, but I might be a bit too old fashioned and need to focus more on artstation, would love to hear more thoughts on this.

carvuliero

I would change background color to dark gray so your art can pop ,something similar to polycount color scheme

You really hurt yourself with first image , its show your flaws in facial anatomy

Second image - fix his forearm , simple liquefy with do

Image 3 - I would dig the cartoony characters out and place them on top , they are better looking then your "semi - realistic " ones and will increase your chance to find new work significantly

Do you have other work maybe post some of your art from the last 2 years even if its not finished there might be a hidden gems amongst them

andrecastel

Thank you so much! I will work on these changes... I was thinking on reworking some bits of the first image and post in the forum for feedback, might get some help fixing the head anatomy and improving its presentation.
I might get rid of the non character art from the portfolio as well.
I don't really have other artwork to show from the last 2 years, except some simple low poly characters for casual games that I did for work. I'll try to get a hold of them.
Thanks for taking the time. 

andrecastel

I've made some changes, thanks for the feedback. It should be clearer now and I will be updating my artstation as well.
I'll be keeping my website for now as a way I can also show some of the work I've done in the past to prove my experience, it's in a separate bit, so it's more of a thing if people choose to look at.

And as an update, things happened as we were expecting and pretty much the whole 3D art department were laid off, including myself. Now I've got a month to find a new job.

Spag_Eddy

That sucks, man. Sorry to hear. Good luck seeking the next adventure!