Asking for a Portfolio Review

Joseph_Bramlett

Hello Polycount,

Im a long time lurker here and ive been trying recently to make a stronger effort to getting my work out there and scene and to hopefully land a job. AS im sure many of you know its hard to get feedback on your work when you are kind of isolated in a bubble so im reaching out to you all to hopefully get some clarity on the strengths and weakness of my portfolio. What should I cut? What worth tweaking to become good enough to stay in? Any over arching problems or reasons you see in my portfolio not to hire me?

Heres my portfolio link: https://www.artstation.com/josephbramlett

Thanks for your time!

PolyHertz

Three things:
1. Cut back on the texture noise, you're overusing it in almost all your pieces.
2. Cloth doesn't just end (it's not paper), it is either woven and stitched at the ends or torn with loose threads.
3. The eye shader and eye sockets on all but your newest character need to be redone. The sockets seem to end before they reach the eyeballs or their lids are too far out (tear lines would also help). The eyes look way too dark in many of the shots further making them look creepy.

Carabiner

I agree with @PolyHertz 's first point -- to elaborate on that, I'd say it's okay to have a little wear/grunge/noise BUT only in places where it's logical for the piece. Places like panel joints, seam lines, joints that would experience a lot of moving back and forth, etc. So like add a little inside the panel lines in Samus' suit, but not across the entire thing.

Here's an example of where I feel it really detracts from your model:



Why would those panels have such deep pitting and dirt all over them? It just doesn't make sense when you think about how Samus would come into contact with the world.

I do want to say that I think your skin/face work is quite good on Samus especially, so if you can get the rest of your stuff to match that level you'll be in a good place.

Joseph_Bramlett

@PolyHertz Thanks for taking the time to look at my stuff! Ive heard the feedback about the texture grunge a few times recently. I was wondering, do you think my newer two pieces (The Dark Knight & James Sunderland) fall into that camp? I can definitely see it on Samus for instance and perhaps even the older characters. As for your point about cloth I think i see that as well with the Two Gekki characters especially. I tried to pay more attention to it with the newer characters but it could still use some love. The eyes are a mystery to me. I agree with you but the materials and all that are the same across them. They even all have tear lines. I have to assume its the lighting and i just can never seem to set up lights to light the eyes and the rest of the model. 

@Carabiner Thank you so much for taking time to give me some feedback. I just said this to Polyhertz but I would like to ask you aswell "Ive heard the feedback about the texture grunge a few times recently. I was wondering, do you think my newer two pieces (The Dark Knight & James Sunderland) fall into that camp? I can definitely see it on Samus for instance and perhaps even the older characters." Im actually surprised to hear you like the skin/face on Samus because when I released her she received a lot of hate for that specifically but im glad you like it.